What Not To Do This Summer

It's been rather unreasonably hot here in Long Island of late, and as July approaches I am as concerned as any faculty member with my summer productivity.

As faculty we tend to make lists for ourselves for the summer: the research we will do, the articles we will write or submit, the reformatting of the bibliographies of the articles from last year that we need to RE-submit, and so on and so forth.

For your fall classes, I'm sure you're reading new material, revising your syllabus and assignments (I'm sure you're doing this now, right? You would never leave this till the last week of August!), and perhaps revising your Blackboard courses.

If you're interested in technology, perhaps you want to use this summer time to learn something new - a new tool, like Twitter or the Sympodium, or a new way of using the tool, like moving review sessions online and reserving class time for new material.

So let me give you my rules of thumb that will help you decide what NOT to do in learning new technology tools for your classes. Because honestly, if I can give you a reason NOT to do it, that's best for everyone, isn't it? Many's the time I've helped a faculty member spend an absolutely terrifying amount of time doing something with technology for his or her classes. And it doesn't always produce a result; sometimes there's no result at all. Far better that you not waste your time on technology stuff that won't have any effect on the class. Trust me. There's not enough time in the summer for that!

1) WIll it be a fundamental part of the class?

So often faculty are nervous about technology and they want to dip their toe in. It'll just be for the last week of classes, they tell me, or it'll be optional. Don't bother then, I respond. If you're not making a fundamental change in the way you teach your course, then you're doing something ancillary. And students have a keen eye for the ancillary. They can spot it from 100 yards and they won't go anywhere near it. They're not in your class to do extra things; they want to take the class, get the grade, and get gone, for the most part. (Perhaps on a less cynical level, they're in the class to learn something about European Romanticism, or international marketing, or television production. Even in that delightful situation, they're not in the class to mess with technology tools that aren't contributing clearly and directly to that goal.)

That doesn't mean you have to do something huge. But you do have to do something fundamental. Something that will happen every week (so students will get a chance to learn how you want it done and see how it contributes to the class). Something that will achieve a specific goal you have in mind. It can be small but it needs to be repetitive and it needs to be core.

Students aren't keeping up with the homework? Have them do a self-scheduled online quiz each week before they show up. It can't be for no credit (it has to be fundamental, it has to be core), but you can keep the percentage of the grade low enough that it won't much matter if they cheat - if they get the answers to the questions in ANY way they may keep up better than if they didn't do it at all. And if they're computer-gradable, you don't even have to manually grade them. It helps them keep up, or see if they aren't keeping up.

Students aren't contributing in class? Have them turn in reading responses online before the class meets. Your classes will be directed to where they are right now in the material and you can just give them credit for turning them in.

Students aren't getting a key concept? Give them a learning object that covers that concept in detail, let them review it as often as they want, and make sure somewhere later in the course you assess whether or not they got it. Students who need more repetition, or who need the material in a different format (to see it rather than to hear it, for instance) will be helped by this.

All of these suggestions are fundamental - you will change how you actually do your class. That's scary, but remember, it's also a work in progress. You might change what you do or how you do it as you go forward teaching with technology. But if you don't use a technology tool in a way that's fundamental to your class, I recommend you not do it at all. It's too much time and trouble to do something extra just for the sake of doing something extra.

2) Is it the first time you're teaching the class?

If you're teaching a course for the first time, now is not the time to try a bunch of new technology tools as well. Trust me on this one. You'll spend enough time getting the material you want to teach under control and figuring out how much work to assign, what are the types of work that get the best results, and how much you can cover in a class, a week, a semester. Don't figure you might as well throw some podcasting or Blackboard quizzing or something else in there on top of it all. If you're comfortable with those tools, by all means, incorporate them. But don't try them for the first time while you're teaching a particular class for the first time. You won't be able to separate how well the students are doing with your course material from how well the technology tool serves the course material. And you may just explode from the sheer volume of work to which you find yourself committed as well.

3) Is it reusable?

Are you trying something you can use in future iterations of this class or in another class? Then go for it. But don't dive into building a film of, say, the movements of the armies at Gettysburg when you're never going to teach the Civil War again. And don't spend the time building a list of web links that pertains to this year's student interests that next year's students may or may not be interested in at all. You can go down a lot of time-consuming rabbit holes with this sort of thing but you may not come out again.

4) Is it graded?

This one can be a killer. I'm not proposing anyone up their grading work. But if you can't honestly give some sort of a grade for the work, even if it's just pass/fail, then the work isn't fundamental to your course and you probably should skip it.

Your LMS - like Blackboard - has good tools for giving the students a numeric grade, or a letter grade, or even a pass/fail mark. Contributions to a discussion board, for instance, can be counted, and credit given if a student just makes a certain number. More complex tools or more complex assignments may need a rubric attached and expectations clearly conveyed. Students doing video essays with FlipCams, for instance, should know if they need to keep and submit drafts, or if they'll be allowed to revise, just as they would do with a text essay. And they should get a grade that reflects the amount of work that went into the assignment. That sounds commonsensical but again, when faculty are afraid of committing to the use of technology they sometimes assign students a lot of work without giving them concomitant credit for that work. Make sure the work counts, and you'll be much happier with the result.

There, there's four rules of thumb that can help you avoid a lot of work. Feel better? Honestly, if the thing you want to do isn't fundamental, isn't reusable, or isn't graded, or if this is the first time you're teaching the course, I highly recommend passing on the technology integration for now.

When you want the rewards that you can get out of integrating technology into your teaching, then you should tackle learning the tools and reworking your class to integrate them. It's a commitment, but when you get over the hump of the first-time learning and the first-time using and you get fluid and comfortable with the tools and you get back the student work that you want to be seeing, you'll be glad you didn't fritter away your time on smaller things. The time you invest will pay off.