A new semester has begun, both as a teacher and a student. Some days I feel as if I'm meeting goals and deadlines.....other days, not so much. I've recently joined faculty in a nursing program with a caring curriculum. During the last semester, I explored what this "caring" curriculum means, again both as a faculty member and learner. Through other course work, I realize that much of my own personal philosophy aligns well with phenomenology, which I've learned links nicely with caring science. Through exploration of caring science, one key revelation was the need to reduce the power differential between myself and my students. While I am the authority in the classroom- designated by the institution- these students will one day soon be my peers in practice. Thus, I feel the need to acknowledge their worth and value by inviting them to share in the culture of the classroom.
While I may say my schedule is busy, at least I have some flexibility in when I am on campus. I designate my office hours- even to the point of stating whether students must schedule in advance to meet. My students don't have that luxury. Two days per week are given to working on clinical skills, either in the labs or the practicum setting of a clinical agency. Two days per week are reserved for class. These students are taking 9 to 15 credit hours each semester, and we tell them to expect to spend two hours working and studying at home for each credit hour. Many have jobs, families, and other responsibilities, yet we expect them to be present for learning- in class, clinical, and home- for anywhere from 27 to 45 hours each week. And while I try to be careful in assigning too much to be done at home lest I push them beyond the allotted hours for my courses, I shamefully acknowledge that their work for me likely does exceed what it should.
As a result of my concern for how busy and inflexible the school schedule is, I decided to be a little innovative this semester. I'm teaching a course I taught in the fall, and I came to realize early in the last semester that the course is designated as a hybrid course. This means up to 49% can be taught online! What a revelation that was for me, because previously it was a rare session that was taught truly online. Thus, my first innovation was to make plans to transition this course to a true hybrid model. The class is scheduled to meet once each week, for one hour and fifty minutes. In our 16 week semester, this allow slightly less than 16 hours of content to be delivered online. While my current plans won't reach that maximum, we are in Georgia, and a few snowflakes could cancel a whole week of class! I taught this cohort in another class in the fall, and when I broached presenting the course online, they unanimously agreed, offering thanks that I was giving them back a few hours each week that they could be at home. The other innovation I've introduced, again with my student's agreement, is a contract grading scheme. This has been quite a bit of work up front- as was promised by all the literature I've read. However, I feel freed to offer feedback and more holistic assessment and evaluation of student work. Although we are only two weeks into the semester, one student has already told me that she feels so very less stressed. While she contracted for an A, she said now she won't receive a 90 and "beat myself up" because it was almost a B. Instead, she shared, when she receives a grade of A she will simply accept it as being "A" quality rather than wondering how she could have done better.
So, now that I've bitten off possibly more than I can chew, I need to begin exploring technology as a way to support learning within my classrooms. And I don't want to just have gratuitous technology just to say it is there. I've played around with narrated PowerPoints, even learning how to convert them into both mP4 and YouTube formats. I know how to record myself with the computer's video camera, and I'm minimally able to create a VoiceThread or Jing. Despite having some knowledge of technology, I want whatever I use to be pedagogically sound. Some teachers use fancier- and likely more challenging- means of providing content. Some, I've heard, even use social media as an instructional method. As I navigate through this semester, I need to not only become more familiar with what is available, but also figure out what works for me, my students, and is supported by evidence or demonstrates best practices. To help guide me and keep me on task, I've created six goals that I plan to achieve by the end of this current semester. As I work through each of these goals, I'll update here on my journey. I can't promise I won't whine a little in protest as I'm challenged to learn even more. But I can promise I'll share something with each post that might help you a little too.
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