Why should students take my course?

Yesterday a small group of folks here on campus gathered in the Faculty Alcove of the library to watch the first webinar for Connected Courses. The Webinar featured  Mike Wesch, Cathy Davidson, and Randy Bass, and was FANTASTIC.

What was so great about it? The speakers were fantastic: succinct, inspiring, on topic, smart smart smart. But what really made the event special was that I got to watch it with a group of folks all engaged in helping learning happen in different ways: one professor of psychology, one of Spanish, one specialist in digital scholarship, and two undergraduate students not enrolled in any of my courses.

It was AMAZING to discuss teaching and learning with such a diverse group of folks who all really care. The students, especially, challenged me to think differently, to question some of my own assumptions, and to try things that sound pretty scary to me (like an anonymous chat backchannel during class discussion. Scary!)

#ccourses @DigLibArts Ss talking about anonymous back channel chat during classes. This is the most exciting & scary convo abt pedagogy ever

— Andrea Rehn (@Profrehn) September 15, 2014

After the webinar, we were asked to respond to a specific writing prompt (ahem, another demonstration of good pedagogy!) Here’s the writing prompt this post intends to address:

So what is the real “why” of your course? Why should students take it? How will they be changed by it? What is your discipline’s real “why”? Why does it matter that students take __________ courses or become _________ists? How can digital and networked technologies effectively support the real why of your course?

Mike Wesch made a comment that spoke to my course’s “why”:

#ccourses @mwesch: we are not producing future disciplinary experts, but rather people with ideas and questions of their own. Keep it open.

— Andrea Rehn (@Profrehn) September 15, 2014

WSP101, the course I am focusing on for this project, is an introduction to a program in self-directed learning in which students can choose to design their own learning programs (within the limits of the course offerings of the college, and their study abroad and internship experiences). It’s a really exciting program, and offers students who are both ambitious and motivated an opportunity to tailor their experience at our small college to suit their own goals. So, in a way, the “why” is easy for this course.

Why take this course? To learn how to decide for yourself what you need to learn and to practice some ways to achieve that learning.

I think the Whittier Scholars program fits easily into the connected learning concept. I am just updating the methods the program has long used by encouraging students to build their own personal learning networks on Twitter and Medium, and other places.

But another comment yesterday really got me thinking:

#ccourses Randall: Ss need accountable talk and sense of responsibility to others. This is at the core of purpose driven courses.

— Andrea Rehn (@Profrehn) September 15, 2014

Whittier Scholars, for all its wonderful flexibility and clear basis in students’ own interests, can also seem a bit vague or difficult to evaluate. Sometimes, that can lead students to feel unclear about what constitutes accountability. This is something I need to really work on.

The class this semester will be doing self- and peer-evaluation quite a bit. In fact, they will be writing ocassional narrative evaluations of their own participation and submitting their self-assigned grades to me. I, then, will respond to their narratives and suggested grades. Grading, in other words, will be a dialogue. I hope this will help. We shall see.

Addendum:

I wrote all that, and then I saw this comic on my Twitter feed. This is so true and right and good that I can’t help posting it here:

https://twitter.com/dogtrax/status/511818693941415936/photo/1