Carol Gering

I often ruminate on the effectiveness of my own teaching. Particularly at the end of a semester, I find it helpful to reflect on the successes and frustrations of the methods I used. In an effort toward teaching more openly, I decided to have that conversation with myself right here…

Background

My spring class was CIOS F258, Digital Photography and Image Correction. I taught in a classroom equipped as a lab, with a computer for each student.

Online Components

Although this is a face-to-face class, I require students to participate in online activities as well. After several years of teaching in this manner, this has become institutionalized practice for me. I’ve experimented with several variations of this:

• Class wiki
• Individual student blogs
• Class blog
• Blackboard course site
• Flickr

My strategy has been to limit online activity to just two of these during any given semester. In the past, I’ve used a combination of a class blog on blogger and a Flickr group—without Blackboard. This semester I used Blackboard (because I wanted students to have access to their individual grades) and a Flickr group. I eliminated the class blog and put announcements and assignment deadlines on Blackboard. I have to say, I missed the class blog this semester. Even though I’ve never done a great job with keeping the class blog fresh, I miss the aesthetic layout; Blackboard feels so sterile and compartmentalized.

Use of Class Time

In previous years I divided almost every class session into segments for 1) hands-on camera use and 2) photoshop. Based on feedback from a former student, I tried to be more focused this semester. Rather than having students take photos during each class, I consolidated the hands-on camera time into two intensive 3-hour studio sessions. During the other class sessions, I focused on either photography concepts or photoshop techniques—but not both in the same week. There were pros and cons to this approach. On the positive side, I think the studio sessions were very effective. On the negative side, by limiting the class time to either camera or photoshop (not both), I had more trouble filling the 3-hour timeframe. Particularly when we were working in Photoshop, three hours seemed too long. At the point I could see students were no longer absorbing anything new, I truncated the material and allowed time for them to practice (or to leave if they felt confident in the skills we’d covered). This resulted in several class sessions being shorter than usual. Next time I teach this course I’ll try something in between: more focused than my original method, but more integrated than what I did this semester.

Feedback to Students

Without exception, this always feels like my greatest weakness. I believe strongly in the importance of feedback, but I really dread grading! Best things I did this semester were the project and the print report. These both carried high-point value; I created grading rubrics to outline what I expected (and make it easier for me to “be tough” when grading). The thing I’m worst at: making students accountable. In short, I’m a pushover. As a prime example, I need to be firm about requiring students to tag their assignment photos properly on Flickr. I tried to be more consistent this semester in deducting points for late submission. My method for grading Flickr participation became overwhelming and I didn’t keep up well.

Conclusion

It was a good semester. As always, I feel regret for the pieces I didn’t do well, but I believe students learned—and, that’s the ultimate success. Primary changes for the next time I teach this class will be: re-instituting a class blog, finding a way to streamline Flickr grading, and integrating camera practice and photoshop skills during some of the class sessions.

I admit it: I love Cool Iris. It’s just so elegant and beautiful.

If you’re unfamiliar with Cool Iris, it’s a browser plugin that currently works with Firefox (Windows XP/Vista, Mac, and Linux), Internet Explorer, Safari (Mac) and Flock. It allows you to preview images and video on an “infinite wall” and then enlarge any that catch your eye. The interface is an approximation of scrolling through items on an iPhone. A key benefit is the speed with which you can sort through a large quantity of images and enlarge specific images—much faster, for example, than clicking through sequential photo pages on Flickr.

Web sites have to be enabled to work with Cool Iris (examples of enabled sites are Flickr, Hulu, Facebook, Google Images, YouTube), but you can also use Cool Iris to view images on your own computer.

As enamored as I am with the interface, it hadn’t yet occurred to me that one might use it as a presentation tool…until I followed a link from Chris Lott’s blog to the Open Ed Conference presentation by Alan Levine.  What a great idea! This could be useful in either my digital photography class or my desktop publishing class when I’m lecturing on elements of design or composition. Besides being significantly faster than the media tools I normally use for presentation, it will let me easily jump from image to image rather than (only) viewing them sequentially. I’m excited to give it a try!

I just came across an Open Education Resource that I think may be especially valuable. Teachers’ Domain is an online repository of media resources for educational use, gathered primarily from public television. There are three editions of the site: K-12, college, and an edition specific to New York State educators. The college edition has a number of resources for Science, as well as Engineering and Technology. The K-12 edition has many more resources available than the college edition, but some of the movies for grade 12 could also be applicable for developmental studies and 100-level courses. There is also a “special collections” area that includes—among other things— an Alaska Native Perspectives on Earth and Climate. You may need to create an account to access some of the content.

You’ll want to note the license agreement for any resources you use. As typical with OERs, the licenses range from link and view only, to remix and share with attribution.

Major funding for the site was provided by the National Science Foundation.

Inside Higher Ed featured an article today on the strategies used by University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) to deal with failure in gateway courses like developmental math. There were a number of similarities with our situation, including university focus on access rather than exclusivity (demonstrated by a high acceptance rate for applicants). According to the article, UTEP has determined that their current structure for developmental ed isn’t working well, so they’re exploring new strategies to improve student success.

Highlighted efforts include increased interaction with high schools, six-hour refresher sessions held immediately prior to placement exams, and free access to ALEKS (computer-based math exercises that the Math Department at UAF uses for many courses). Their goal is to divert students from enrolling unnecessarily in developmental courses. Among other motivations (like decreased funding), one rationale seems to be that the stigma of developmental placement negatively impacts student success.

This is particularly interesting to me in light of our recent decision to create an open courseware version of developmental math—with the stated goal of providing student practice and avoiding the stigma that might be associated with failure in a a credit-bearing course.