We have to carefully build our classroom and educational space online before we start populating it, lest text, hierarchical menus, and pop-up windows be confused with interactivity and community. Teachers stand to learn more from students about online learning than we could ever teach. Many students come to an online or hybrid class knowing very well how to learn online. It’s often our failure to know as well how to learn online that leads to many of the design mistakes in this generation of online courses.

1. Photo by flickr user karindalziel
Rewriting the Syllabus
Examining New Hybrid and Online Pedagogies

2. Jesse Stommel
@Jessifer
You can also follow Mary the Dog @MLAdog

3. Photo by Zsolt Halasi
Follow Along
bit.ly/CUdigped

4. “Unless the mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the
apparatus they employ, they must have some understanding of the
physical and social facts behind and ahead of the material and
appliances with which they are dealing.”
John Dewey, Schools ofTo-Morrow
Photo by flickr user Thomas Hawk

5. We need to handle our technologies roughly -- to think critically
about our tools, how we use them, and who has access to them.

6. Online learning is not the whipping boy of higher education.
Photo by flickr user seier+seier

7. MOOCs are a Red Herring.
There is a bigger beast in the offing.
Photo by kevin dooley

8. Photo by flickr user Lotus Carroll
Enrollment in online courses at post-secondary institutions:
grew from 9.6% in 2002 to 29.3% of total enrollment in 2009
5.5 million students took online courses in 2009
by 2014, this number is expected to increase to 18,650,000
as of February 2013, 1.7 million had registered for a Coursera course
as of January 2014, Coursera had 21 million enrollments
for a total of 332 million minutes spent

9. Meanwhile, learning communities thrive online extra-
institutionally, supported by the 1500 blog entries, 98,000 tweets,
and 695,000 Facebook status updates posted every 60 seconds.
Photo by flickr user mugfaker

10. Photo by flickr user Darwin Bell
We have to carefully build our classroom and educational space online
before we start populating it, lest text, hierarchical menus, and pop-up
windows be confused with interactivity and community.

11. Some proposed tenets
Photo by Stéfan

12. The openness of the internet is its most radical and
pedagogically viable feature.

13. A course is not a reservoir for content.

14. “Curriculum [...] is constructed and negotiated in real time by the
contributions of those engaged in the learning process.”
~ Dave Cormier,“Community as Curriculum”
Photo by Wetsun

15. A good syllabus is not a contract.
By the end of a class, the syllabus should be broken.

16. Students are not columns in a spreadsheet.

17. We need to pander to intrinsic
rather than extrinsic motivations.

18. "When students struggle for excellence only for the sake of a grade,
what we see is not motivation but atrophy of motivation."
~ Peter Elbow,“Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer”
Photo by Kalexanderson

19. Teachers need to talk less and listen more.

20. When we teach online, we have to build
both the course and the classroom.

21. The learning management system is merely a tool.

22. A well-designed course isn’t overly simplistic
but needs minimal instruction.

23. Compare: NYT site. Lots of stimulus. Lots of navigational
choices. No patronizing instructions or architecture.

24. Now the LMS.Telegraphs where to go. Everything is in tidy
boxes.The content and engagement density is painfully low.

25. FERPA is not an excuse for bad pedagogy.

26. Some simple guidelines: If you’re asking students to do public
work online, let them know their work will be public, offer the
option of anonymity, never post grades publicly, and don’t forget
about intellectual property (which is separate from FERPA).
Photo by flickr user anieto2k

27. Best practices are snake oil.

28. “Too often, faculty design pedagogy around the worst-case scenario
and then apply that pedagogy to every student."
~ Janine DeBaise,“Best Practices:Thoughts on a Flash Mob Mentality”
Photo by wvs

29. Don’t wield outcomes like a weapon.

30. Content-expertise does not equal good teaching.

31. Educators at every level must begin
by listening to and trusting students.

32. Teachers stand to learn more from students about online learning
than we could ever teach. Many students come to an online or hybrid
class knowing very well how to learn online. It’s often our failure to
know as well how to learn online that leads to many of the design
mistakes in this generation of online courses.
Photo by flickr user kennymatic

33. All learning is necessarily hybrid

35. Hybrid pedagogy does not just describe an easy mixing of on-ground
and online learning, but is about bringing the sorts of learning that
happen in a physical place and the sorts of learning that happen in a
virtual place into a more engaged and dynamic conversation.
Photo by flickr user orangeacid

36. “The commitment to learners, to their exploration, their community,
their authentic engagement, and their ultimate agency and
empowerment, governs our work.”
~ Pete Rorabaugh, Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media
Photo by Bob Jagendorf

37. “To listen for voices that have something to say, but which may not find
purchase in traditional academic venues.”
~ Sean Michael Morris, Collaborative Peer Review: Gathering the Academy’s Orphans
Photo by MythicSeabass

38. “To teach as myself, I must let my students see who I am.”
~ Chris Friend, Finding MyVoice as a Minority Teacher
Photo by Tambako the Jaguar

39. Photo by flickr user Dirigentens
“It doesn’t matter to me if my classroom is a little rectangle in a
building or a little rectangle above my keyboard. Doors are
rectangles; rectangles are portals.We walk through.”
~ Kathi Inman Berens,“The New Learning is Ancient”
“A course today is an act of composition.”
~ Sean Michael Morris,“Courses, Composition, Hybridity”

40. “In the world of digitally networked publics, online participation -- if you
know how to do it -- can translate into real power. Participation,
however, is a kind of power that only works if you share it with others.”
~ Howard Rheingold, Net Smart
Photo by flickr user anieto2k

41. Photo by flickr user henry grey
ThankYou!

42. Photo by flickr user jared
Additional Resources
A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age
Cathy Davidson, NowYou See It
Howard Rheingold, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online
Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel,
“The Discussion Forum is Dead; Long Live the Discussion Forum”
Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel,“Tools for Collaborative Writing”
Jesse Stommel,“How to Build an Ethical Online Course”
Jesse Stommel,“Online Learning: a Manifesto”
Jesse Stommel,“The Twitter Essay”
AVision of Students Today