I recently observed a class of 210 first year students in a lecture
class while I sat in the back row. Very eye opening - facebooking,
youtube, ESPN highlights and full length movies were occupying the
laptops -- and most students had open laptops. This experience coupled with the juxtaposition of what I observe going on in the same kind of classrooms in the evening during student organization meetings (highly interactive, students engaged, working with animation to interact and solve problems) set the stage for the opener of today's symposium.
Michael Wesch, asst. professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State, was the keynote speaker at this morning's TLT Symposium. Though I have heard him speak previously, he is continuing to explore strategies for breaking down the awful student disengagement that characterizes many large lecture classes at research universities. (And, of course, it is ironic that talks about engaging students and avoiding lecture formats are nearly always delivered in a lecture format).
Wesch invites his students to work together to create the focus for their work during each semester. They work together to develop problems to address, explore readings, shape the course syllabus, engage in community blogging, and assess each others final papers. Over time, he has decided to approach teaching by "engaging real problems with students and harnessing the relevant tools". See 'digital ethnography' at http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg
Wesch's ideas for using open communication tools and student directed learning are really compelling. Though work in cocurricular learning that has traditionally used experiential learning -- and transformative learning via service learning, leadership practice and teachable moments - there is more that student affairs practitioners can do to develop deeper, asynchronous conversations among students using Wesch's approaches.
Michael Wesch, asst. professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State, was the keynote speaker at this morning's TLT Symposium. Though I have heard him speak previously, he is continuing to explore strategies for breaking down the awful student disengagement that characterizes many large lecture classes at research universities. (And, of course, it is ironic that talks about engaging students and avoiding lecture formats are nearly always delivered in a lecture format).
Wesch invites his students to work together to create the focus for their work during each semester. They work together to develop problems to address, explore readings, shape the course syllabus, engage in community blogging, and assess each others final papers. Over time, he has decided to approach teaching by "engaging real problems with students and harnessing the relevant tools". See 'digital ethnography' at http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg
Wesch's ideas for using open communication tools and student directed learning are really compelling. Though work in cocurricular learning that has traditionally used experiential learning -- and transformative learning via service learning, leadership practice and teachable moments - there is more that student affairs practitioners can do to develop deeper, asynchronous conversations among students using Wesch's approaches.
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