I agree that it is hard to move away from text. When we’re thinking about sound in the classroom, it might help to focus on what soundCan do that text can’t. The example that comes to my mind is conveying emotion: sound operates differently than text there. You may be able to think of other examples too.

I think your questions here get back to how you understand the role of technology in the world. Is it essential for our students to understand it? Is that understanding a rhetorical project, like Selber claims? Are the rhetorics of writing and multimedia different enough that students need both?

Nice points, Anjelica, and others. I’m particularly interested in the discussion about paper vs multimedia project. It might be productive to think about why students resist papers and to use that information to create a bridge between writing and other kinds of composing. Could working on multimedia projects help get students more excited about…[Read more]

MOOCs are an interesting challenge. They give students access to prestigious schools and professors, but their level of student-professor interaction is usually zero, which means the interactive portion is all student-student. This raises some interesting questions about where/how learning happens. What role does the professor need to play to make…[Read more]

You all are making some interesting comments based on Mo’s information. As a follow-up question, what in your opinion would make an online degree more or less valid? Or, what are the common perceptions of online education vs. in-person? Do the perceptions match what you think the reality of online education is? Does it depend on the school? Is…[Read more]

Mo, your point targets an issue that Marymount is currently working on, which is making sure that the online classes we offer are equally rigorous as in-person classes and take a comparable amount of the student’s time. The hardest thing to replicate in the case of literature classes is the discussion and sharing of ideas and interpretations. Many…[Read more]

As a follow-up, are there any examples from online classes you’ve taken that you think were good models of active online learning?

Sharon, you asked about active learning online and class preparation. In my experience, it takes a lot more advance planning to create and run active learning experiences online, especially if you want the students to produce something more complex than a written response to reading or a lecture because there are usually multiple steps involved…[Read more]