In this 6th chapter, Bowen is advocating for instructors to design their teaching, assignments, and courses such that they use internet resources and tools. It is a good idea to interact with students periodically (no more than once a day and not on Friday afternoon!) via email. This allows linking and summarizing the particular topic of the day and perhaps linking it to what is going on in the world and in students’ lives. He also thinks that Twitter and other messaging apps are a good way to interact with students outside of class time. He is urging instructors to find ways of keeping the learning happening outside of class between class meetings. This would take a little time to craft a good paragraph linking the material together. I understand why this is a good idea. But I do have trouble trying to imagine how I could fit this in on a regular basis with my teaching/research/service schedule as it currently is. Writing this blog takes some time away from other things I should be doing. It’s a little like saying I’ll write 20 minutes a day. Wish I could do that. It works when I have done it, but other things rise on the priority list and after a while, it disappears. So this suggestion, like any suggestion for improving our teaching praxis, requires discipline to keep at it. But this is what Bowen is advocating, changing the way we approach our teaching which does require rethinking the priorities on our to-do list.
I do like his ideas about using freely available internet resources as sources for students' first contact with the material being learned. But it does mean taking the time to determine which sources are reliable and truly of pedagogical value. Which is why once you find a good textbook that works for students I am so reluctant to change. It takes time to assess and field test a textbook for a course. And this would be the same for using internet resources.
Currently, my university is encouraging faculty to consider adopting
open educational resources for our courses. Thank goodness our Centre for Teaching and Learning is willing and able to provide some resources to help us curate that freely available content. But it still takes time away from other things I need to be doing. What do I do less of in order to do this?
Resources
Bowen, J. A. (2012). Technology for engagement. In Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning, Chapter 6. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. p 129 - 152.
