This morning, the New York Times has an article by Richard Panek on new teaching models, primarily the Program in Course Redesign at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Academic Transformation. I haven’t seen the reports at all (something else to do in my copious free time!), but the article jibes with my sense of teaching: jiggling academic routines a bit can help dramatically, but entirely online experiences risk high attrition.
Of course, I say this at the start of a semester with an entirely online class. After my last experience a few years ago, I’m spending a lot of effort with the “soft” part of the course—encouraging students separate from the academic content, setting up opportunities for them to engage in the conversational parts of an in-person course that allow repetition of key information in different formats and times. I’m also trying to have a bit of fun with different things in online lectures (now that most students have much more ready access to broadband and I have tools on my laptop that are sufficient for most things). So the first-unit lecture has a takeoff from the scrolling-text start of the Star Wars movies, and another will involve philosopher-puppets. But I’m not sure that quite counts in what this redesigning-coursework project is doing.