Michelle's Musings

Slowly, as I get ready for another semester, the pieces seem to be falling into place.  I was involved in two different workshops in August–one through my college and one at the university level–and both workshops introduced me to great new technologies and gave me lots of new ideas for activities and assignments I might try out in my courses.  There is so much we CAN do with technology, and there is so much I want to experiment with, but, at the same time, I don’t want to overwhelm my students!  Because of this, I’ve been thinking a lot over the past several days about ways I might be able to incorporate new tools into my courses without making my students feel uncertain or uncomfortable.  I think I’ve come up with a solution.

I keep coming back to the idea of giving students more choices in terms of the assignments they complete and how they complete these assignments.  I strongly feel that if an instructor wants to use social media in the classroom, students need to have some say in the matter because not all students feel comfortable using social media or want to use it for educational purposes.  I decided, therefore, that I needed to create an assignment that students could approach in different ways.  This way, students can choose an option for completing the assignment that appeals to them the most or that they feel most comfortable with.  Traditionally, I’ve asked students in one of my courses to find and critique a journal article (ideally from an area that is of interest to them), and this is a great way for me to assess whether students are understanding some of the terms, concepts, and ideas they have learned in the course (and whether they can apply what they have learned).  I started thinking about this assignment and I wondered if there were other ways students could show me what they have learned in the course and how they might apply it.  What if–for example–I asked them to use Twitter or Facebook to share and reflect on news stories or resources they were finding that relate to the content of the course?  Or, what if I asked them to create a YouTube video in order to try to teach others about something they learned in the course?  What would happen if I allowed students to choose what they wanted to do in order to complete this assignment?  Would more students choose to complete an article critique and not bother at all with social media, or would more students gravitate toward using social media?  Would I see similar patterns–in terms of how students choose to complete this assignment–in my online and face-to-face sections?

I guess I will soon find out because I’m definitely going to try out this new assignment in the fall.  I can’t wait to see what happens! 

Awhile ago, I learned about a video called “A Vision of College Students Today,” and one of the first thoughts I had after viewing this video was “how can I integrate this into my classroom?”  I wondered if my own students could relate to anything presented in this video, and I was curious about what their initial reactions would be after viewing it.  I imagined lots of great discussions we could have about how the data presented in the video was gathered.  Who was in the sample and how was the sample obtained?  Is the sample representative of college students?  What kinds of questions were included on the survey and how were they worded?  From the video, it appears there were 200 students in this sample, and they “surveyed themselves” by collaborating on a Google document.   Could this have biased the results in any way? 

As I thought more about how I might turn this into an assignment, I found myself wanting to learn more about this video and just why it was created.  I wondered if I could find any other documentation about the video, and after doing a quick Google search, I discovered a website that shared more of the story behind the video. 

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/10/a-vision-of-students-today-what-teachers-must-do/

I learned the video was created by Michael Wesch, and I wrote to him to see if I could find out more.  He then shared a journal article with me that he wrote about the video.  The video and the article paint a rather dismal portrait of today’s college student.  When I finally did write an assignment based on this video, I asked my students to first watch the video and then read Wesch’s article.  I asked them to talk about issues related to sampling and survey construction, and I also asked them to think about the many claims Wesch makes about college students today and to discuss ways they might be able to test those claims.  Wesch claims, for instance, that there are problems with education and students today are disengaged.  He claims that while many of us love learning, we hate school, and students struggle to find meaning and significance in the classroom.  He claims that students tune out what is going on in the classroom and instead log on to Facebook.

As I revisit the idea of trying out this assignment again this fall, I find myself once again watching Wesch’s video and feeling very sad.  This was not the experience I had as a college student, and I hate to think that what I am seeing in this video is now the rule and not the exception.  How can we change this?  Perhaps we as teachers need to re-think what WE are doing to engage our students and make the learning experience meaningful for them.  Faculty at the University of South Carolina have some good ideas, as you can see below in their video response to “A Vision of College Students Today.”