WSU Teaching & Learning Blog

Educause Learning Initiative highlighted a technique called Google Jockeying (http://moourl.com/qjj0m). A student is assigned the role of the class “googler”. The information is then presented simultaneously on a separate screen and would supplement the lecture presentation. It is suggested that this might be a way to positively harness the need for consulting additional information. The role could be assigned to a different person during each lecture. If separate screens are not available, the lecturer might pause and let the google jockey give a synopsis of information searches and let participants add any new searches that might help them in understanding or clarifying the presentation. Incorporating this role is a good way to quickly assess understanding and it is an opportunity to coach the students on using the internet and on evaluating internet resources.

Previously I posted about the Department of Communication’s summer doctoral seminar on communication activism. The seminar went quite well and I’m pleased to announce that a podcast episode about the seminar is now available. The audio, captured on the go using a little olympus digital recorder, documents some of the excitement and learning that occurred during this year’s event. 

You can get it (at no cost) in the iTunes Music Store - search for “Conflict Learning Audio”. You can also hear it online and/or download it at my Conflict Learning Audio podcast page http://www.campus-adr.net/podcast/  The direct link to just this episode is here.

FYI, the podcast server is an old machine that sits under my faculty office desk, so please be patient with it, especially given the hefty 19.7 MB size of the file.

If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can go directly to the podcast in iTunes using this link.

Here’s the full episode description:

Engaged Scholarship Seminar - 2008-06-21 by Bill Warters

This episode focuses on the 2008 Summer Doctoral Seminar hosted by Wayne State University’s Department of Communication. The theme was “Communication Activism: Engaged Scholarship” and it featured guest scholar Dr. Larry Frey from the University of Colorado. We get to hear from some of the student participants and listen in on an engaging discussion that took place after students returned from a activists’ tour of Detroit. Interviewed participants include Audrey Wagstaff, Brian Ekdale, Janet Donoghue, Karen Greiner, Nadine Yehya, Sarah McGhee and Teemu Kauppi.

(43:06min, 20MB)

A great collection of writing about wikis in the higher education context is available online as a wiki (no surprise there, eh?). It is entitled The Wild Wild Wiki/Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom. Perhaps more interesting is the news that the University of Michigan press will be turning the collection into a book. Here’s the contents you can read online.

Volume Introduction “WhatWas a Wiki, and Why Do I Care? A Short and Usable History of Wikis”
Wikis and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
- “Wikis in the Classroom: A Taxonomy”
- “Wiki Justice, Social Ergonomics, and Ethical Collaborations”
- “Building Learning Communities with Wikis”
- “Content and Commentary: Parallel Structures of Organization and Interaction on Wikis”
Wikis in Composition and Communication
- “Disrupting Intellectual Property: Collaboration and Resistance in Wikis”
- “Wiki Lore and Politics in the Classroom”
- “An (Old) First-Timer’s Learning Curve: Curiosity, Trial, Resistance, and Accommodation”
- “Above and Below the Double Line: Refactoring and that Old-Time Revision”
- “Success Through Simplicity: On Developmental Writing and Community of Inquiry.”
- “Wiki as Textshop: Constructing Knowledge in the Electronic Classroom”
Wikis and the Higher Education Classroom
- “Is there a Wiki in this Class? Wikibooks and the Future of Higher Education”
- “Agency and Accountability: The Paradoxes of Wiki Discourse”
- “One Wiki, Two Classrooms”
- “Glossa Technologia: Anatomy of a Wiki-Based Annotated Bibliography”

The  Pearson Foundation Digital Arts Alliance has produced a thought-provoking video on the direction that our education system needs to be moving in. You can check it out on YouTube. (thanks to Anne-Marie for the link)

This year’s workshop on Harnessing the Interactive Web held during Xtreme week was fun. Attached are the slides (2.9 MB pdf) from the session. Thanks to all who participated. 

Each summer the Department of Communication here hosts a seminar for doctoral students from communication departments around the country and abroad, focusing on the work of a guest scholar. This year we are pleased to be joined by Dr. Larry Frey from the University of Colorado at Boulder. The focus of the week-long seminar is on Communication Activism. We have selected an impressive group of about a dozen doctoral students for participation and they bring a wide-ranging set of interests in combining activism and scholarly research.

Part of our seminar includes a public event (this year May 29, 1:00 PM, Bernath Auditorium, WSU Undergraduate Library) where we open up and involve a wider audience, sharing some of the expertise of our guest with the community and hopefully exposing the students to some of the interesting things happening in our region relevant to the seminar. This year the topic is Engaged Scholarship: Taking Activism and Social Justice Seriously in Our Work. We will use a “samoan circle” model for the discussion so that audience members and the visiting doctoral students can join in the conversation. After some initial framing remarks by Larry Frey, we will turn to the circle for commentary and dialogue.

Please join us if you can!

Engaged Scholarship Event Flyer

Clearly the trend within higher education is a move toward larger class sizes. A recent article in the Association for Psychological Science magazine Observer presents some tips for managing larger classes. They report that faculty often first have to deal with their own feelings about the change:

Faculty responses to increased class sizes often resemble Kubler-Ross’s (1969) stages of grief and loss: denial (”There is no way to increase the size of this class and maintain academic integrity!”); anger (”I can’t believe they did this, administrators don’t care about students or faculty!”); bargaining (”If I teach 20 percent more students without additional compensation, what do I get in return?”); depression (”How am I ever going to teach this class in a meaningful way again?”); and finally acceptance (”OK, my class is larger. How do I deal with the hordes?”).

If this sounds familiar to you, you’ll appreciate Todd Zakrajsek’s presentation of some very pragmatic tips for staying connected as your class size grows. Check it out here.

Alan Levine, one of the better known digital pioneers in higher education, put together a great tour of 50 different tools that can be used to tell a narrative tale with pictures and more online. A narrated slideshow walks you through them, and a wiki points you to the sources discussed. Very interesting…

If you have been doing any service learning work with your students, or are thinking about it and need some motivation, you’ll appreciate this listing of 93 potential research publishing opportunities. The Guide (available here as a pdf) was developed by Gary Homana, a participant in the 2007 Service-Learning Emerging Scholars Works-in-Progress Seminar hosted by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).

The U.S. Professors of the Year Award Program was created in 1981 by the Carnegie Foundation to increase awareness of the importance of undergraduate instruction at all types of higher education institutions. The program recognizes faculty members for their achievement as undergraduate professors. This short podcast from Inside Higher Ed interviews the 2007 winners to learn some of the things they do to make their teaching a success.