Teaching and Learning Online

Did I mention yet this semester that #mystudentsareamazing?

We are halfway through with the semester and I have been positively entranced by my remarkable graduate students. I don’t think I have ever had this many talented grad students all in one semester. I feel thrilled to have so many smart people in my life right now!

It’s a veritable treasure trove of talent with my amazing #EDC531 students, many of them taking the Seminar in Digital Authorship as part of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Literacy. And my #LSC531 students enrolled in Information Competencies of Youth have bowled me over with their creativity, thoughtfulness and depth.

Both the joys and challenges of teaching online are becoming more evident to me as I long to have longer, deeper discussions with all of my students this term. Of course, I am pleased with the convenience of being able to teach in my pajamas — or when battling a cold, as was my experience this week. I see plenty of evidence from students’ writing and media production projects that they are demonstrating their learning in meaningful, rich ways.  But while the one-hour Google Hangouts do increase our sense of connectedness, and the students are really learning to use FlipGrid for genuinely rich seminar-style discussions, I also really miss the vibrancy of being together in the same room. And I admit that online learning simply does not seem to work for all learners.

I can see that online learning puts the learner in a more powerful position in terms of taking responsibility for their learning– and what I love is that many of my grad students are doing just that, in ways that demonstrate how they are actively making connections between their work and academic lives. It’s truly an honor to be part of this learning community!