Intermediate Group 2: Saturday, January 11, 2014, 1:00pm: Pedagogy
-Do need to be more proactive in the language were using to communicate with those outside the
geosciences
Online education:
-when students have many experiences face to face, better equipped to handle online classes
-At what point do we lose them?
-public realm will move online, but whether upper level education moves online---we should not see
that happen, the face-to-face is so critical
-As a community, we see the writing on the wall, but see the benefits of face to face interaction--we
need to be proactive, articulate arguments that are based on student assessment
-evidence based process
-we don’t know how effective online education is
-some anecdotal information is being collected
-ex: different grade distributions for same course online vs. in person (example where online students
earned lower grades than those in the class, but when the way online class material was
organized/modified to compensate for not having face to face interaction, the online students earned
grades equal to those in the classroom with face to face interaction)
-need to gather side by side comparisons
-although communication, problem solving, independent learning (ability to problem solve on
own) etc. are more difficult to assess in general
-blended classes (need lab)
-still need direct interaction—people hired to interact to compensate in super large online courses
-down the road once online classes are developed, they can be taught by anybody
-“walmartization” of higher education
-how do you replace the human being without diluting the product?
-how do students interact with each other in an online environment vs. in a classroom
-current technology will change…
-what’s the efficiency model—if you’re interacting with the same number of students in different states
vs. in one classroom—same amount of work
-need to collect evidence to demonstrate that there’s a huge value added in the traditional academic
environment
-how do we measure these things so we can compile it?
-need to compile statistics—what percentage of classes are online?
-encourage adoption of new technology—deal with it and figure out how to prepare arguments of what
works and what doesn’t work
-administrators want to see people get their feet wet in the online environment
-personal interaction extremely important
-other disciplines are moving to having more online components
-dabble with online, etc. to find out what works, what doesn’t work
-in engineering, body of knowledge has become so large that there is too much to do in 4 years, and
programs are/might have to move to 5 years
-geology is different because students can specialize in grad school
-who’s best served with purely online, purely face to face instruction?
-research people-more face to face?
-more general–more online?
-ways to bring guest speakers into the classroom?
-for mining engineers, etc. in remote locations, online education is an advantage
-how to recruit students when the gen ed classes have been reduced/removed
-recruiting out of an online format is much more difficult in geoscience—many students pick the
subject due to experiences, interaction with an inspiring professor, etc. situations that don’t
occur online
-fancy visualizations of data -1st step, but need to be able to explore and use that data
-unless students go through process of raw data to fancy visualization, they can’t understand
the process
-we can train students in what the visualizations came from and how to deal with them in their
complexity
-IRIS (incorporated research institutions for seismology) workshops-create an interactive community
-have a range of opportunities and not all will appeal to all students
-take advantage of cross disciplinary opportunities
-workshops present many best practices, get people started so they can see results, but many are
overwhelming
-Focus on small steps—they can create big differences, then move onto something bigger
-many are doing it already, but don’t realize it or what to call it, need to get in touch with what they’re
already doing, and build on it—there’s a building capacity
-this is one part of teaching doesn’t cover all of teaching
-good feedback for cutting edge—good to organize/identify the best beginning steps
-how do we proactively get the tips out-esp. to those who are set in their ways
-flashing series of slides with tips for engaging students at meetings
-one-on-one in departments
-people often listen to new faces more than those in their department that they always hear
from
-more effective having a traveling person (Dave McConnell, etc.)—but many won’t be able to
attend
-we should think about these things and encourage it in graduate students (captive audience
and most of them really want to learn from professors)
-need to help new faculty develop
-need to focus on quality of education and convince administrators that this is important
-quality if so subjective—how to quantify it somehow for administrators?
-donors come back and give money to departments/courses that they really love
-need to provide these opportunities for educators early in their career and for those in mid-career as
well
Graduate student TA training-is a one semester class enough—need pedagogical training for students to
continue beyond one semester—ex: mentoring
-offer a range of opportunities (CIRTL has online opportunities, mentoring,
-won’t happen all at once, much better off than we were years ago
-emphasize understanding abstract ideas and creating models—ex: drawing a sketch from a photo or in
the field to enhance understanding
-don’t just think of technology as online courses