Building Scholarship of T&L Communities

JAMES ETIM
Posted September 30, 2008

I attended The Teaching Professor Conference held on May 16-18 In Kissimmee, Florida. There were very many interesting sessions which I attended, including “Building Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Communities: Methods of Engagement, Assessment and Reward “ and “To See the World in a Grain of Sand: An Approach to Educating our Students and Ourselves about Globalism and Diversity”. These presentations were lively, informative and engaging. In this section, I will discuss two papers that I found very interesting: the three person presentation by Dr. Ngoc-Bich Tran, Dr. James Baker and Patricia Petty titled “How to Succeed in First-Time Online Teaching: Top Ten Tips” and the presentation by Joan Flaherty “To See the World in a Grain of Sand…”.
In the past, I have done web-assisted instruction using Taskstream. However, given that I am trying to develop an online course, I was open to absorbing the information offered by the three educators who had moved from being novices a year or so earlier to being very adept in providing workable online courses for their students. Below, I present some of the things I took away from their presentation.
They began with the ten tips which are-
· Be open minded and enthusiastic when committing to teach an online course
· Be organized by planning and developing the course early
· Motivate your students
· Use available online resources
· Provide enhancement materials
· Provide clear and consistent instructions and feedback
· Keep open lines of communication
· Be patient and considerate of students
· Offer student support
· Enjoy it
In looking closer at these ten tips, bullets 2, 4, 7 are very useful as I begin thinking about my online course. Bullet 2 says- “ Be organized by planning and developing the course early”. This simply means that the course to be taught should be planned and developed at least one semester before it is taught, that the structure of each learning unit of the course must be designed and followed consistently and that students should be presented a calendar to follow as soon as the course begins. In terms of Bullet 4 that states that developers should use available resources online, this is a good advice since it will be easier to hyperlink or refer students to those online resources. The burden of copying materials, scanning them and or seeking copyright permission will also be lessened with this approach. Finally bullet 7 involves the following- set online hours, answer e-mails within 24 hours and be tone friendly in your e-mails since these are public documents. During the Question and Answer session, they pointed out that faculty must work closely with the Instructional Specialist in the college/ university to ensure a smooth process. These are useful as I begin thinking about using Blackboard to expand what I am currently doing.
The second presentation on globalization was equally interesting. To begin with, part of UNC Tomorrow states that “UNC should educate its students to be personally and professionally successful in the 21st century and, to do so, should enhance the global competitiveness of its institutions and their graduates” One way to implement this goal is that “UNC promote increased partnerships between its own campuses and international universities and enhance the global awareness of its faculty and students”. To enhance such awareness, I attended the presentation by Flaherty on globalism and diversity. The presenter began by defining globalism and diversity and pointed out that the world is now interconnected because of technology, economics ( free trade, oil, currency) and demographics( easy movement of people). Given this situation, there was the need for schools and universities to encourage “cultural intelligence”- the ability to adapt to a new and unfamiliar culture – so that graduates can possess the skills to be able to interact with others in the global community. The presenter also suggested that there was the need to internationalize the curriculum through encouraging students to travel internationally, bringing in international scholars and joint programs with universities in other countries. According to Flaherty, there were some obstacles to achieving the goal of internationalizing the curriculum- faculty resistance, finance, time, and administrator buy-in etc. However, she recommended the following for each faculty as he/she worked towards globalism and diversity in the curriculum-
a. Honor and listen to different perspectives
b. Include multicultural literature and texts (as applicable)
c. Honor other peoples background by having them talk about what happens in other cultures
d. Allow for journaling
I would say that there were many interesting presentations and the Teaching Professor Conference afforded me the opportunity to interact with others involved in the kinds of scholarly activities I am interested in. I would highly recommend that faculty from any discipline in the University attend one of these conferences. I guarantee they would learn something from the many presentations which will help in improving their teaching