How Much is Too Much?: Balancing the Course Content

Guest Writer, Lynnette Mawhinney

Fifteen weeks. Fifteen weeks is what we, as faculty, are given in order to provide our students with foundational knowledge to be utilized in the workforce. For the last six years I have been teaching in higher education, I continually find myself overwhelmed at the beginning of the semester. I am trying to think how I can fit all the vital information my students need in order to be successful teachers themselves. How am I supposed to do that in fifteen weeks!?!

But faculty historically find a way to cram all the information students need to know into a lecture form. On the other hand, as we are taught early on in teaching, all information needs to be scaffolded (Lev Vygotsky). So we slow down, break the information up, and reinforce it with hands-on activities. We find a pace that suits the students and ourselves.

Yet, I cannot seem to get my mind around a keynote speech I saw this summer. Howard Gardner, father of multiple intelligence theory, said that faculty should take one important concept they would want their students to know in an hour. Then take that same concept and break it up over the course of a whole semester. As one who teachers Educational Psychology, I immediately think, “he’s right!” This is the most effective way for our students to retain information. Although, at the end of fifteen weeks, it is only one concept they know, when they will need multiple concepts for the workforce.

So I am left asking the question, how much is too much content? Where is the balance between covering all the content students need to be successful verses overloading them with information they will never retain?

Teaching, Technology and the Liberal Arts

Guest Writer, Nancy Evans

The 1990s was, among otherthings, the decade of the "change agent" in education. Change was tocome from the ground up, starting in classrooms, and for many, technology wastouted as the change agent of choice. This was back in the time when instructional technologists and "early adopters" were trying to lead the way and the unstated goal in many cases was to change the way students were taught under the guise of using technology. In other words, technology was one way to get rid of the"sage on the stage" and replace her with the "guide on the side." But the technology itself was a big obstacle. It was new and complicated and made for a lot of uncomfortable moments — losing documents, breaking floppy disks, crashing operating systems.

Technology was not yet wellfunded and granting agencies tended to focus on training; that is, training inhow to use the darn thing. All-in-all, the focus was on the technology (and, tosome extent, still is). We needed to know what is new, how do we get it, how dowe use it. Instructors have been particularly frustrated with this approach since it hasn't left much room for the art of teaching or even to ask "Why?"

But today is different. Jose Bowen is on to something new in "Teaching Naked" and it isn't the technology or even the information that is new. It is learning that matters andteaching that facilitates it. If a liberal arts education encourages communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creative problem-solving, expanding one's thinking, and making connections between subjects, then technology opens the world for students to ask questions and discuss with students elsewhere, to experience the lives of others in other places, to pick the brain of an expert,and put it all together with other students in a variety of ways. It's agreat big open library where we are all curious. A bit of the old with the new. (see Laura Blankenship, "Technology as a liberal art" for more on the liberal arts and technology.)

Much of the next generation of technology is found in Web 2.0 which refers to web development characterizedby communication, collaboration, and shared resources; nothing solid and tangibleat all. Examples of Web 2.0 tools are blogs, wikis, shared documents, studioprojects, and the plethora of web-based, free tools to organize and sharestudent work (see tech tidbits on the ATS web site). Technology has never been more conceptual. Web 2.0 is notjust the Web technology. It is a way of using the Web as a gathering placewhere students can create, cooperate, and experience the world. This technologydoes change how one teaches.

Web 2.0 is not really veryscary. It has something in common with drinking wine (or a beer) and with your colleagues and talking about your favorite research topics. (Don't be cynical, it could be lively.) If we are all curious and creative and have a natural desire to learn, then given facts and guidance from professors and some quiet moments to take it all in, perhaps students can allow their natural curiosity to take over as they collaborate, create and share.

Teaching with, and, or vs. Technology

Guest Writer, Linda Stine
Discussions of academic excellence, it seems to me, start and end with the teaching/learning environment. How are we presently trying to make sure our students learn well? How can we do it better? Does technology help?

In June the Department of Education published a scientifically rigorous meta-analysis of studies comparing online vs. in-class learning in a wide range of settings and populations. The two main conclusions:
* students learn just as well online as they do in face-to-face classrooms
* hybrid classes (ones that combine online learning elements with face-to-face instruction, such as a WebCT-enhanced course) are more effective than traditional in-class instruction alone.

Having spent much of my summer researching the problems and promise of online learning for my adult writing students, I’m still unsure what kind of educational technology to use and how best to use it. I would love to hear what the rest of you are doing. Are you using technology (WebCT, Smartboards, websites, clickers, multimedia, etc.) to do things that you couldn’t do otherwise or that you couldn’t do as effectively? What have you tried that proved to be more trouble than it was worth?

And how much technology should be used during the class period itself? Should we all be teaching naked?

No, no—not that kind of naked! “Teaching naked” is how the president of SMU describes reserving technology for the purpose of increasing student learning and engagement outside the classroom, creating online activities that require students to learn the content before coming to class and thus freeing up the actual class time for the kinds of personal interaction that only work face to face. His belief:

Coming to class has to ‘add value,’ and reducing the technology and increasing the human interaction is the best way to create something interactive that cannot be duplicated online.

He’s not arguing against educational technology, just against using it during classroom time when he thinks we could be more effectively engaging our students in conversation. (I’d be interested in your reactions to the article—it’s brief but quite thought-provoking.)

So, any thoughts on the complex technology/teaching/learning issue?