I continue to appreciate the Smith text. I'm teaching a course this fall that will include some distance ed participation by Trinity students. I don't have an online course on my plate right now although I might like to offer something down the road. OL 101 is yielding a more immediate payoff through the book. It's making me rethink my approach to my F2F classes.
There's a lot of good stuff in chapters 3 and 4. For example, I like the question about what if my students were tested 6 mos. from now and I were held legally liable for any portion they don't remember. Would I reduce the amount of material covered? (p. 38) It gets at the fundamental question, "What is it I am trying to teach the students?" (p. 36) and is related to the need to be realistic and prioritize.
The sentence, "It is better to understand new material than simply to memorize it by rote," also struck me (p. 59). I know this and I incorporate the philosophy into my course design to some extent, but I think I can do better. Partly I'm teaching too much to the test, I think, which gets it backward. Also, perhaps I'm too wedded to the texts, which cover a lot of material but don't necessarily provide adequate depth for the handful of most important points. It's hard to put this into words but I think the Smith book is helping to bring about a paradigm-shift for me as a teacher (classroom or online).
Jeff, I'm glad you find the Smith book helpful. I also made a pretty big shift when I transformed my f2f Ed. Psyc course to an online format. I took to heart what Smith said about including only the really good stuff that I wanted students to take with them. Like you, it made me weed out a lot and add some higher level thinking and production learning activities.
ReplyDeleteIt's fun to see how this is connecting for you, Jeff. I'm also finding chapter 3 to be very pertinent, and I've appreciated that same question about our responsibility for student learning. After all, we really are responsible for our students' learning over the long term! I often use this pair of phrases to help me "keep it real" with course design: By the end of today's class, students will ........... so that (6 months/1 year/5 years down the road?)they will be able to........."
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