TazMania-ActOne

Two points jumped out at me right away that confirmed some of the worries I’ve had that constructing an online or blended course in philosophy will be quite a challenge. Not impossible; but a challenge.

The first point is that online courses work best (the authors suggest) when they are structured from the outset, with a “clear path” forward that the student can make sense of (allowing for things like chunkability, repeatability, etc.). My problem is that I have never, in nineteen years at Dordt, taught a course the same way twice. Some of the reason for this is just unique to Dordt – we don’t have a large major, and there is nothing approximating a consistent profile of a “Dordt philosophy major” (or minor). Upper-level courses are filled with students from a wide range of majors, and most of the students in the course have only taken a couple of philosophy courses. Non-majors predominate (and I’d hate to think of “non-major” as a profile). That’s all OK. I love it. But it also means I have to find ways to help students from different majors learn something in philosophy that will help them as the particular students they are (with the major they have) and challenge them in ways that will benefit them when they return to focus on their major course of study. It’s always been difficult for me to think in terms of a narrow set of learning objectives to which each and every student will be subjected (if I may say it that way). I don’t get to fashion or discipline a lot of majors, as most other profs get to do. So it’s important for me to get to know the particular students who’ve gathered – it means I have to do a lot of things on the fly – experiment, roam, wander.

So I sense a tension between the student-centered/active-learning focus (that allows for the flexibility I need) and the need for a structure designed from the outset. I look forward to working with this tension in the coming weeks (to see if online courses can be as flexible as I can be in the classroom).

The second point is that, according to the learning style inventories, I have a preference for “multi-modal learning” (I don’t favor any particular one, which I suppose is good for a philosopher). The second inventory, however, indicated that this “balance” is offset by a very decided preference (highest number possible on this one) for the “reflective” over the “active” – so that I have difficulty with environments in which there is insufficient reflection happening (Oh Man, just ask my wife and friends for stories that confirm the truth of that one!).

Now I may be wrong – and hope that I am – but I have the suspicion that online courses work better when reflection isn’t so predominant. Online courses seemed slanted toward the “active” more than the reflective. [For example, I’m not a fan of blogs because I don’t think they really contribute to reflection. It’s like when I hear someone say, “Studies show that men think about sex every five seconds.” To which I respond, “Nobody thinks about anything every five seconds.” OK, I’m an old curmudgeon.]

Now if there is one thing that I do try to teach and model for students in every course, it’s how to reflect on things. So I’m looking forward to learning that I’m wrong in my suspicions about online courses