Leap of Faith

I've been putting some thought into the notion of Web 2.0 a lot recently. Involvement with SCSU's Summer Tech program has me reflecting upon this a bit more intensely the past few days. In Summer Tech, faculty interested in technology in the curriculum spend a week exploring alternatives for the clasroom. Some participants are new to some of the technologies and concepts we're discussing, while others have had some good experiences. All in all, I think those involved this year represent a mix as varied as the experiences of our students...and with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and good spirits. It's a great group.

What I realized working with Summer Tech is that there are some core assumptions I make about using technologies, like a Wiki, in the classroom. I certainly assume that students will "play along" and become as invested (or at least partly as invested) as I am in the technologies I explore with them. At the same time, I also believe that in order for the students to become invested, I have to trust them to take responsibility for their own learning. I'm not suggesting that I leave them to figure everything out on their own, but rather that they apply a spirit of inquiry for whatever subject we study. I often have conversations with colleagues in my department that often boil down to unmet expectations for the students to move beyond a traditional "classroom mentality." As of late, I find myself wondering whether that's not just a product of the spaces we set up for our students in our classrooms. Is it possible that they aren't able to escape the molds of a traditional educational model because we set our classrooms to reinforce those practices?

I think, as often as I talk about it (and I do talk about it every chance I get), I am sometimes my own biggest obstacle to student progress in this respect. I know that students come into my classroom with years of educational experience that tells them that classrooms work in a particular way. They just expect "business as usual." And I quite frequently feed into those expectations by some of the ways I introduce topics or respond to student questions. Ultimately, I want my students to experience something different than those expectations. I hope that they'll make new connections, investigate things that intrigue them (not me), and perhaps discover something about themselves that they didn't know or understand before. But if the spaces I create always involve some element where I am the authority...giving the "right" interpretation...making the connections for them...am I not undercutting any chances that they will explore and become more invested in their own learning?

So, for me, I think embracing Web 2.0 as a concept involves a "leap of faith" of sorts. I can't say that I've always been successful, but when I think about those cases where I have had success, it's because I've made a move to pass on control of learning to my students. In the case of my "Internet and Advertising" course, the students are ultimately charged with helping me co-create and investigate the content for the course. I don't presume that what I tell them is all they can or should know. I simply try to set up the possibility for them to start thinking about connections they could make as they explore a topic. The biggest problem I have, and one that gets voiced to me by colleagues frequently, is that in order for any of this to happen, I have to relinquish control of what happens in the classroom. I'm never completely comfortable letting go completely. I always strive to make clear what my expectations for the class are. But I do give the students the latitude to investigate, explore limits, and just test things out. Are they always on target? No. In fact, there are many times when I think they're missing the mark completely. But that becomes a teaching opportunity...a point where I can say, "Ok. Let's think about this for a second. Are we really considering this fully? How else can we consider what's happening here?" And it's in that discussion that some of the best connections are made by the students. They begin to see things differently. You can almost see them working things out. Do they all make the same connections? I don't know. And I'm not sure that's the point. If it's my mission to help them to become better critical and creative thinkers, is it always necessary for them to reach the same ultimate conclusion that I have expected for them? I don't think so.

I can imagine that there are those that say (because I've heard it said), that the nature of the discipline they teach requires students to learn specifics...facts that students just need to know. I appreciate that point of view. I'm not suggesting that student exploration of topics changes that. What I do think about a lot is what sort of space is set up for students trying to learn those "need to know" elements. As an example, I think back upon my own undergraduate experiences (and graduate experiences as well) where I had to learn specifics and be accountable for them in some way. My most successful experiences were in study groups. My classmates and I would get together and talk things out, come up with examples, quiz each other...anticipate what the instructors wanted from us. Eventually I wound up creating review sheets and mock exams for my study groups (should have been a clue that I was destined for the academy!). But should it be any surprise to me that it always seemed like I took the lead in the study groups? That I always seemed to know some of the concepts just a bit better than my group partners? I didn't always outperform my friends (test anxiety was always a big issue for me), but I always found that those study experiences helped me learn the material so much better. My point is that content can be seen as "facts" that need to be learned, but are there ways in which we can help students learn them better. If we didn't believe that were possible, textbook companies certainly wouldn't be making a killing on study guides and instructor's materials. But perhaps the challenge we all face is how we might construct a space in which the students are invested in their learning...perhaps in ways they (or we) hadn't understood before. If we close off possibilities for the students to explore and question, they may not ever find what works for them. On the other hand, if we simply dive in and say, "Here are some ideas...some givens...what do you make of these?" won't our students have more opportunities to discover what works (or doesn't)? Will it always work? Hardly. But I think the potential for it to work out in positive way is well worth the risk.