Online Learning - Hybrid Pedagogy

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Online Learning

A collection of 27 posts

Truthy Lies and Surreal Truths: A Plea for Critical Digital Literacies

Digital Literacy

Truthy Lies and Surreal Truths: A Plea for Critical Digital Literacies

Misinformation abounds. This has always been the case, but the problem has become acute in the age of digital communication. As Mike [https://hapgood.us/2016/11/13/fake-news-does-better-on-facebook-than-real-news/] Caulfield [https://hapgood.us/2016/11/13/fake-news-does-better-on-facebook-than-real-news/] and Zeynep Tufekci [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-is-in-denial.html]

Confessions of a Graduate Teacher (Once Lost, Now Found)

Confessions of a Graduate Teacher (Once Lost, Now Found)

This is a story about two hemispheres of graduate school: teaching and dissertating. It is a story about how those two parts sometimes cohere but are more often rendered in sharp relief. It’s also my personal story, a confession. Fissure and return define my graduate experience. It hasn’t

Not Enough Voices

Digital Pedagogy

Not Enough Voices

On Friday, 12 August 2016, Sean Michael Morris gave one of two closing keynotes at the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute held at the University of Mary Washington. Below is the text of his talk; the audio above is edited from the video recording [https://youtu.be/lhlHKjtfjJ4?t=45m48s] of

The Purpose of Online Discussion

Online Learning

The Purpose of Online Discussion

Are online discussions really discussions? I’ve been wondering this since I started teaching online. Many of my students, friends, and colleagues get a sour look on their face when it comes to discussion online, whether it be synchronous or asynchronous. They express, sometimes implicitly and others explicitly, a common

Designing for Emergence: The Role of the Instructor in Student-Centered Learning

Designing for Emergence: The Role of the Instructor in Student-Centered Learning

My experiences as a graduate student [http://education.ucdavis.edu/student-profile/mary-stewart] of writing studies and online education have repeatedly left me inspired by the various “–isms” (e.g.,constructionism [http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html],connectivism [http://www.connectivism.ca/about.html]) that put the student front and

A Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas; a Dangerous Space for Safe Thinking

Critical Digital Pedagogy CFP

A Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas; a Dangerous Space for Safe Thinking

Danger and safety are both integral to education, particularly if one ascribes to critical pedagogy, which is, in many respects, about balancing the two elements. On one hand, it invites students and teachers alike to break free from safe thinking: to consider what they have been taught; to rethink the

Best Practices: Thoughts on a Flash Mob Mentality

Critical Pedagogy

Best Practices: Thoughts on a Flash Mob Mentality

I have colleagues who invoke “Best Practices” the way that evangelical Christians quote the Bible: God has spoken. During these conversations, I am tempted to say in a serious voice, “Best Practices dictate that teaching writing should include loud music in a public place and synchronized dancing. In short, a

Toward an Interactive Criticism: House of Leaves as Haptic Interface

Digital Humanities

Toward an Interactive Criticism: House of Leaves as Haptic Interface

“And now,’ cried Max, ‘let the wild rumpus start!” ~ Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are When I first read Mark Z. Danielewski’s House [https://www.amazon.com/House-Leaves-Mark-Z-Danielewski/dp/0375703764/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=posthuman-20&linkCode=w01&creativeASIN=0375703764] of Leaves, I barely got through 50

Gaining Insights into Online Teacher Training through Essential Questions

Online Learning

Gaining Insights into Online Teacher Training through Essential Questions

My favorite pedagogical tool is theessential question [http://www.authenticeducation.org/ae_bigideas/article.lasso?artid=53]. Briefly, these attempt to focus student attention on the broader implications and deeper meanings behind content. I had been using them in my own quaint way before readingUnderstanding by Design [http://www.authenticeducation.

A Pedagogy for Cross-cultural Digital Learning Environments

What is Digital Pedagogy?

A Pedagogy for Cross-cultural Digital Learning Environments

Education can benefit from the global network of connections we call the Internet, since the issue of access is less of a concern in thedigital space [http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Hybridity_1.html]than in brick and mortar institutions. We should ask, however, if the possibilities for a

How to Build an Ethical Online Course

Digital Pedagogy

How to Build an Ethical Online Course

The best online and hybrid courses are made from scraps strewn about and gathered together from across the web. We build a course by examining the bits, considering how they’re connected, and creating pathways for learners to make their own connections. The design-process is what distinguishes online teaching most

Engaging Students: Lessons from the Leisure Industry

Engaging Students: Lessons from the Leisure Industry

While on a cross-country trip a few years ago, I stopped at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and had a revelation. It was a few days before the nearby Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was to begin, and the parking lot was filled with motorcycles. Some of the bikes were occupied by

A Plea for Pedagogy

A Plea for Pedagogy

It goes without saying that technology is changing education. Children’s brains are being rewired, universities are being threatened with extinction, and we will be in serious trouble if we ignore the transformative power of new technologies. We live in an information/knowledge economy where we are constantly connected to

MOOCagogy: Assessment, Networked Learning, and the Meta-MOOC

MOOCagogy: Assessment, Networked Learning, and the Meta-MOOC

“Building community doesn’t mean that learning happens.” ~ from an audience comment at InstructureCon 2013 Learning in a MOOC Instruction does not equate to learning. This is the fundamental fly in the ointment of instructional design, and the epistemological failing of learning management systems and most MOOC platforms. Learning, unfortunately,

The Early Days of Videotaped Lectures

Online Learning

The Early Days of Videotaped Lectures

“It’s early days for online education,” declared a recent article in the technology blogTechcrunch [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/72-of-professors-who-teach-online-courses-dont-think-their-students-deserve-credit/] , with its typical giddiness about the changes that technology is poised to bring to schooling. But the narrative that education and technology have only recently intersected ignores decades

How NOT to Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts

Faculty Development

How NOT to Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts

Here’s a little secret: when I started teaching people how to teach online, I had no clue what I was doing. It was 1998. I was a graduate student, without extensive computer skills or even teaching experience. I’d been a high school English teacher for a few years,

The Failure of an Online Program

Digital Pedagogy

The Failure of an Online Program

It’s evening. An Irish pub in Louisville, Colorado. Fish and chips. Beer. A game of soccer on the TV. I’m sitting down with one of my faculty to revisit the department’s Developmental English course (ENG 090). My goal: bring the course fully online, eliminate the text book,

Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It

Online Learning

Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It

This is the first ofa four-part colloquy of articles [http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/tag/online-learning-colloquy]. Each piece has been contributed by authors who have intimate experience with the struggles, failures, and successes of online learning programs. One new article will publish each day following this: “The Failure of an Online

A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age

Online Learning

A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age

On December 14, 2012, a group of 12 assembled in Palo Alto for a raucous discussion of online education.Hybrid PedagogycontributorsSean Michael Morrisand Jesse Stommelgathered together with folks from a diverse array of disciplines and backgrounds, representing STEM fields, the humanities, schools of education, corporations, non-profits, ivies, community colleges, and

A User’s Guide to Forking Education

A User’s Guide to Forking Education

At exactly this moment, online education is poised (and threatening) to replicate the conditions, courses, structures, and hierarchical relations of brick-and-mortar industrial-era education. Cathy N. Davidson argued exactly this at her presentation, “Access Demands a Paradigm Shift [http://www.mla.org/program_details?prog_id=353&year=2013],” at the

Online Learning: a Manifesto

Digital Humanities

Online Learning: a Manifesto

Online learning is not the whipping boy of higher education. As a classroom teacher first and foremost, I have no interest in proselytizing for online learning, but to roundly condemn it is absurd.Online learning is too big and variable a target. [http://mcclurken.blogspot.com/p/draft-primer-on-online-learning-in.html]It

Udacity and Online Pedagogy: Players, Learners, Objects

Digital Pedagogy

Udacity and Online Pedagogy: Players, Learners, Objects

This sentence is a learning object. Wayne Hodgins, the “father of learning objects,” first came up with the idea for them while watching his son play with LEGOs. The basic notion is that we can create units of learning so fundamentally simple and reusable that they can be applied in

Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 3: Degree Requirements

Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 3: Degree Requirements

This is the third in aseries of articles [http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/tag/curriculum-crowdsourcing]that works to get feedback on the program I’m directing and helping to develop at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR.Marylhurst [http://www.marylhurst.edu/]is a small liberal arts university focused on non-traditional students

Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 2: Design Principles

Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 2: Design Principles

This is the second in aseries of articles [http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/tag/curriculum-crowdsourcing]that works to get feedback on the program I’m directing and helping to develop at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR.Marylhurst [http://www.marylhurst.edu/]is a small liberal arts university focused on non-traditional students

Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 1: Program Name

Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 1: Program Name

This is the first in aseries of articles [http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/tag/curriculum-crowdsourcing]. Clickhere [http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/crowdsourcing_a_curriculum_2.html] for part two on design principles. Clickhere [http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/crowdsourcing_a_curriculum_3.html] for part three on the degree