I am so glad Dr. Williams asked "Do you have a dog?" -- I was really judgemental about the instructor who taught one of my classes before me, because the videos talked about the instructor's dog, and I just thought that was the most ridiculous waste of time. But honestly? If it works to promote engagement, I'll get a dog, and talk about him in the videos.
Overall, the question of "does the Instructor Character have a specific voice?" - she didn't put it quite that way, but that's my takeaway from the first part of the interview. I didn't understand the cutout thing at first, but I went back a few times, and it makes more sense now. The advive would be wonderful if I had let's say 50 students (in a busy month) but at 150... I don't know if it's realistic to try to incorporate the wonderful ideas of design justice, which I totally agree with -- this is ironic, since the instructor, in these cases, is the real individual with real needs who isn't going to have their needs or human weaknesses recognized.
The question of how students might engage with each other... Dr. Williams urged us to think about the elevator pitch, what would I say about myself to someone in an elevator. That's exactly why it's so hard -- because I wouldn't say anything to someone in an elevator. There's no point. But I can engage with her question in good faith -- if I was the type of person to talk to people in an elevator, what would I say? I have no idea. That universe is just too far away from this one.
Discussion Boards aren't meaningful because they know I'm not reading them. They know I'm not reading them because they know--DID SHE JUST MENTION HAMAS??? Okay, this is nuts, I'd never use that as an ice-breaker.
I really enjoyed listening to her, and I wish I was in a position to take some of this advice.
I've been teaching online for like 5 years, and it's always been pretty much terrible when compared to classroom learning. I think I need something that tells me how to make online BETTER than in-person (not more convenient, better) otherwise, it's going to intensify the despair (yes despair) I feel as a teacher of online asynchronous classes.
I won't have a lot to say about this, because ADDIE, I get it, and I appreciate the (for the most part) plain language of this refresher-article. I did find myself focusing, in this piece, on the "events" of learning. I repeat them here for my later use
Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction: gain attention, inform learner, stimulate recall, present information, guide, elicit performance, provide feedback, assess, and enhance are directly related to internal information processing (Gagne, Wager, Golas & Keller, 2005) - cited in Branch, p. 9
Also, the alternatives to instruction -- while some of the article seemed eerily prescient or ironic, the alternatives to instruction were really interesting, particularly the use of writing as a way to see what part of the process was faulty in the first place (if an employee seemed to need training or re-training after doing something wrong)."Instruction is appropriate only when the competency of an individual can be improved... through sill acquisition" (p. 13)
This was hard for me to listen to. My main reaction is -- neither institutions nor individuals are capable of creating systems to address Covid-relarted trauma, because they themselves are traumatized. I have found that Camus's The Plague and Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year have been helpful in illustrating some ways that people fail to incorporate "trauma informed design", but I'm open-minded about this, even if I have a stressed-out reaction to listening to the text-to-speech of this article (perhaps bc I am involuntarily focusing on all the ways I know of that certain instituions haven't bothered to care at all about faculty mental health? I don't mean UCF, I'm just whining).
The article says assessment shifts from a way to understand the student's facility with skills or concepts to a snapshot of the learner's trauma, and it uses the idea of absurdity to illustrate how and why this is. This is fascinating. I say that without sarcasm. But I'm not a doctor and I don't know how I can possibly use that information. Article also says that isolation was part of the trauma for many (but not all) and so connection with the instructor and with other learners is important. It's asynchronous and I can't make them attend a class, so that's a tall order. This article is true and is just making me grumpy.
Recursion and iteration are important -- I do not think I am being given enough leeway or slack to really iterate, or to measure failures. I'll just get taken off the class if it doesn't go really really well. And I do work in isolation, because there's all these rules about what I can and can't change, coupled with little or literally zero material in the course shell (in one case, it was outdated to a hilarious degree, and I was told to create new materials and not tell anyone. The real reason I didn't tell anyone was because I preferred fixing a broken class to getting one in perfect condition that I had no creative input into, and since I'm being paid less than the 5th grader next door gets to mow my lawn, I have to preserve the one net gain I get from this, which is experience in curriculum design.)
Overall takeaway- The absurd is one of the problems they've identified that I believe truly IS an obstacle in regaining student interest and engagement, and I note that it's also an element of comedy and (through adjacency) games. Some would say it's a different meaning for the word 'absurd' and... maybe, but it's not different enough to ignore the possibilities here. Can games absorb the negative qualities of absurdity so that we can overcome them through absorbption?
WOW, this one made me even angrier!
I'm kidding, sorta, this was a very sweet set of ideas. I don't have the ability or the administrative support (and God knows I don't have the student co-operation) to put personalities above content, or to foster a personal connection. Notice I don't say that I lack the time. I'm sure I do, but time is a resource I'm happy to pour into this kind of thing, whether the demands on my time are reasonable or not. What's not there is the support. I feel like I should copy/paste some of the things I've been told to do to students so that I'll have more time to be exploited by parts of the university I don't care about at all.
I do take one of the article's points very well -- the idea of "grit" being outmoded nowadays. That's fair. I don't know if it can be replaced with human connection, at least not in any way that I can assess, but grit could be replaced with creativity somehow?
Assuming the reading is Jessie Kwak's article and not the free e-book (which I downloaded and will read, in preparation for another conference talk on equity that I'm supposed to record) -- the article (or rather, Tina Moore) reminds me that any action (or lack thereof) at all in curriculum design moves it closer to equity or inequity. Hugely important point, because many of those actions (esp. the ones that lead to inequity) will be taken in the very name of fairness.
Ungrading comes up here again, and the problem I'm running into (I've talked to many teachers who are having a similar problem) is that when I do invite students to bring WHATEVER they have to the table, they see it as a trick question, when it's the opposite. It seems like I'm refusing to tell them the actual rules to the game, even though what I'm saying is that I want any excuse at all to give them points. This is mostly my approach, and I think I just overcomplicate things, so I'm looking forward to the book to see if it gives me simpler, saner, and more "trustable" approaches to equity in design. Meanwhile, here are some ways that this set of ideas might influence my work on game balane in curriculum design --
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