January 28, 2008
An Instructors' Blog - Teaching Praxis in Soc 203
Post on January 28 2008
Created on Monday, 01/28/2008 6:21 PM by Robert Hanneman
It's Monday evening, and I'm going over my notes and preparing for our class meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Seemed like a reasonable time to sketch down a couple thoughts.
First, you need an explanation of what this blog is about, and how it came to be. The second part is easy -- Chuck Rowley (Associate Vice Chancellor for Computing and Communications) thought it would be a good idea; who am I to argue with an associate vice chancellor of anything? Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. I've had the chance to be involved with a lot of people from computing and communications over the (too many) years, as they have tried to create information technology enabled learning environments on campus. Our classroom for this class is their latest effort, and they invited me to try it out.
Last year, at Leo Schouest's suggestion, I re-did my undergraduate multivariate analysis class to be used in a similar classroom. I thought that it worked out pretty well, so I've adapted the graduate class for the same approach. You, kind students, are the first to suffer the consequences of this endless experimentation.
So, what is this blog about? I've never written a blog before. I don't read them. So, really I have no idea. But, here's my thought. This is a place where I'd like to try to give you some of my impressions about how the class is going, and particularly about whether the technology and teaching approach seems to work -- from my perspective. I'm hoping that you will comment with your preceptions, from your perspective.
Tomorrow, we'll be working on using cross-tabulation to calculate joint and partial association. I had the uneasy feeling as I was walking home on Monday evening, that the data set I wanted to use might not actually have the "joint" variables in it that I want. Thankfully, on checking, it does.
When I teach a regular lecture course, the anxiety is that the lecture may be too long, too short, too convoluted, or that I've got too many or too few (usually too many) powerpoint slides. In our class, the anxieties are mostly: "is the data they need there?" and "is the technology going to work?" Doing class in our current format is actually a lot more fun for me than traditional lecturing -- but there is anxiety about being prepared for class, anyway.
I wonder, do you, as students, have the same kinds of anxieties about class? Different ones? None?
One last thought, then I've got to go tear out some built-in bookshelves (we're starting a major remodel in the middle of a teaching quarter -- what was I thinking?). What I'm trying to do with the class is to make it much more active and interactive; to promote group work and peer-to-peer teaching; and to get people to be comfortable with collaboration in research work. I'm also hoping that some folks who have probably had bad (or at least not good) experiences with "hard" "quantitative" sociology may see that some of this stuff is, in it's own way, kind of cool and intellectually stimulating.
Well, perhaps that's too much to hope....
Please share your thoughts and reactions on anything I've raised, or anything else. Another part of this experiment is to provide a forum for a sort of on-going teaching (and learning) evaluation, so that we can continually evolve how we're doing the course to make it work better for both of us.
Comments
I can respond to questions posted regarding the lecture. It is neither too long or too convoluted. I am having (finally) some "aha" moments, most occurring as a result of going over my lecture notes in conjunction with revisiting the assigned readings (now where have heard that was something I should do, hmmm?) It feels crazy actually experiencing some excitement about this, but I do!
I would be equally happy if there was another 3 hour class per week (sorry group :) ) The study group has become a tremendous source of help for me also. Now time to go back into my virtual basement to complete "catching up" while studying for the midterm.
Oh yes, I too have a home project taking place though fortunately my husband and sons have the exciting task of prepping the garage for a new door installation. I'll be cheering them on in spirit!!