Providing Pedagogy
In addition to narrative context, the learning objects and media assets in an interactive online textbook need pedagogy--devices or elements that are not part of the narrative and are not in the link per se but that teach about the content and are useful or essential to the learning process or otherwise help students achieve the learning objectives. Minimum pedagogy would consist of learning objectives--what students should know, think, do, and/or feel after completing the module--and a system of headings to structure the scope and sequence and relative salience of the content.
Pedagogy also may include a systematic way to begin and end each module, links to definitional glosses, contextual or historical asides, bibliographic or reference annotations, graphic organizers, chronologies, expository captions for photos and art, questions or problem sets, interim reviews, and examples or applications. The pedagogy you provide may reside on your computer as files to which your course is hyperlinked. Pedagogical elements that hyperlinks themselves provide may include, for example, case studies, profiles, research studies, news reports, or journal articles with thematic content. However the links have pedagogical value to the learner only to the extent that learners are given opportunities to interact with the content and assess their grasp and use of it.
Thus, a link to a document describing ground-breaking research would have pedagogical value to the extent that you frame questions about it (or guide learners in framing questions) and to the extent that you suggest answers to those questions (or provide ways for students to interact to find answers). At the least, you would ask or test why the research was ground-breaking and what knowledge it discovered, expanded, or overturned.
One consequence of providing pedagogy in online contexts is that textbook supplements for students--such as test questions and study guide material--may become integrated into the course rather than provided as separate publications. These components, too, enhance the pedagogical value of online courses.
Labels: e-textbooks, hyperlinks, learning objectives, learning objects, media assets, online courses, online textbooks, pedagogy, writing and developing your college textbook, writing narrative
Online Course Development
My recommendations for developing an online course start with building a working table of contents with textual headings, just as you would for a print textbook. The best structure for online application is a sequence of units of study, which can be presented online as a learning sequence comprised of self-contained modules. Depending on length and complexity of content, a module can function at the level of a unit or a chapter. In any case, text headings serve as conceptual organizers for topics and subtopics within a module.
The more self-contained modules are, the more easily they can be moved in the sequence of instruction or chosen for other customizations with content from other sources. Learning objects, your own or ones you find online (or in repositories such as MERLOT), are self-contained lessons or bits, such as definitions or examples. You can put bits together to help populate sections within a module. Discrete learning objects and modules permit maximum flexibility in constructing courses, but it it critical to functionally interrelate information as well.
I think a serious flaw in online course development is the tendency to unharness information from larger meaning. For this reason it is essential to include pedagogy, such as learning objectives, module openers and closers, discussion questions or critical thinking questions, overviews, summaries or reviews, and glosses for technical terms. Each module should have learning objectives--what students should know or be able to do after studying the unit. There should be one of more learning objectives for each main heading within a module. Among your learning objects should be text boxes or links to brief documents in which you address the question of larger meaning within each module and the conceptual (and logical or historical) relationships between modules.
Consider developing a course in 8 to 14 units or modules inclusive of pedagogy, depending on semester length and course requirements, such as opportunities for assessment or student presentations. The number of modules should provide a practical course load for learners (and for the instructor to administer) at a rate of around one module a week. Getting course content into a finite number of modules is the same challenge you face in having a reasonable number of chapters in a textbook. Highly dense and technical material usually needs a larger number of shorter modules assigned at a rate of two a week. Keep in mind learning theory and research about chunking information for maximum effective learning rate.
Module content consists of the learning objects, bits, personal documents, links, and media assets that you assemble to help students satisfy each learning objective. If you wanted your introduction to economics students to distinguish among financial markets, for example, what would you show them and what would you have them read and what would you have them discuss, etc.? Learning materials you offer them might include choices among podcasts, videos, animations, simulations, news articles, scholarly articles, research reports, interviews, graphics, photos, links, prepackaged lessons, maps, demos, tutorials, blogs, dictionary entries, government statistics, and so on. For teaching effectiveness, the media assets you choose must be somehow endowed with pedagogy and couched in the larger meaning that makes learning anything worthwhile.
Next time: More on finding media assets and endowing them with pedagogy.
Labels: distance learning, e-textbooks, learning objects, media assets, online courses, online textbooks, pedagogy
Topical Development in Textbook Writing
I talked with someone recently who was developing an online textbook. A competition analysis based on online course syllabi had left him fairly baffled about what the course should cover, so he and his colleague had mapped frequency distributions of all the topics expressed in the course syllabi. They then chose the 12 topics with the highest frequencies of use and built the 12-week course around them. Problems arose in marketing the course, however. I said that the problems probably resulted from difficulty of use in teaching the course, caused mainly by the random ordering of a finite number of topics as discrete units of information and by the lack of pedagogy.
I explained that unlike encyclopedias, textbooks are not arbitrary compilations of topics of equal value. Rather, textbooks teach, and learning is constructed from a scope and sequence of interrelated topics nested in an expository structure. The author pointed out that the course was intended for upper-level undergraduates (majors) and grad students. I said that regardless of level, there needed to be a core narrative with learning objectives, a system of headings, and pedagogical devices to engage and guide or aid students in the course. Pedagogical devices include, for example, unit opening and closing elements, figures and tables, glosses for terminology, question sets, and features such as real-world examples, research briefs, news items, or case studies.
The author said that instructors in his field have no background or training in how to teach, and I said, "Aha, the truth is out!" The sad and sorry truth! There's the rub, and why is that? Why (and how) is it that people can get PhDs and teaching appointments in their fields with no training in or even exposure to learning theory, instructional methods, and general pedagogy?
I know this issue has been addressed in the rapid spread of campus-based faculty development centers during the past decade, also in the growing popularization of the idea in intellectual circles that college teaching can be a form of scholarship. The word obviously has not spread far enough, though, and the new era of online exposition surely requires the same kind of background and training. In any case, I am now helping to revise that online textbook (and am glad of it).
Labels: pedagogy, teaching, textbook headings, textbook writing, topical development, writing a textbook
Choosing a Textbook for Your Course--Part 9
This is the 9th in a series of blog entries from an article I wrote last spring: EVALUATING COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS FOR COURSE ADOPTION. This post considers in role of supplements, textbook apparatus, and pedagogy in the selecton process. © Mary Ellen Lepionka, March 30, 2006. All rights reserved.
Supplement Packages
Ancillary material also can be a good reason to adopt. I have sometimes been swayed by outstanding or especially useful supplements, including, for example, courserelated anthologies, web sites, subscriptions, videos, and software. A web site with rotating 3D diagnostic fossils and animations on comparative anatomy, primate evolution, and human haplotypes and migrations sold me on a biological anthropology textbook that was otherwise too difficult for the students. I also once chose a sociology textbook because it came with a reader on expressions and consequences of globalization. As a result of state PIRG pricing protests, ancillaries now come unbundled as well as shrinkwrapped or boxed with the text. So, today I might be able to subscribe to the web site and order the reader without having to order the textbook.
Publisher research shows that textbook adopters most covet acetate and electronic transparencies (despite all the Tufteesque criticism of PowerPoints) and free videos. Many instructors also want a comprehensive Test Bank, perhaps even one that has been validated scientifically and comes with a testing service. Which supplements are most important to you when considering a text for course adoption?
Pedagogy and Apparatus
Something that many instructors do not know is that good textbooks are constructed to match what is known about the way people learn. In choosing a textbook, you probably will have the best luck with one that has been consciously endowed with pedagogy and apparatus. “Pedagogy” refers to instructional methods and teaching devices. “Apparatus” refers to the organization and sequence of elements within a chapter, unit of study, or book. For example, textbook apparatus minimally includes an opening section, the body, and a closing section for every chapter. The opening section may include, for example, the chapter outline, a chapteropening photo, a list of focus questions for the chapter, and an introduction or chapteropening vignette. The closing section may include a summary, a list of key terms, a set of problems or application questions, and a “For Further Reading” list. Chapter pedagogy, on the other hand, may include learning objectives, questions, captions, margin glosses, content recaps, features or boxes set off from text through design, and the like. Textbook pedagogy is supposed to be guided by scientific (more or less) models of teaching and learning.
There are many models of what happens cognitively when learning takes place, but the process of direct instruction generally follows these steps: 1) establish objectives, expectations, and relevance, or otherwise engage and motivate; 2) activate prior knowledge, or review any prerequisite knowledge and skills; 3) present new information, engaging students’ selective attention to acquire and remember the information; 4) use questioning to check for comprehension; 5) give opportunities for independent practice; 6) assess performance and provide feedback; 7) give opportunities to apply learning outcomes. Good textbooks do the same things.
In nondirect instruction, in contrast, students acquire content on their own through active learning and interaction with others. They learn through observation, inquiry, discussion, modeling, progressive skill approximation, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, and handson experience. This is good too, but rarer. Textbooks exist that favor one model of instruction over the other, and textbooks exist that attempt to combine the best of both worlds.
Does a textbook you’re considering have brief readings in each chapter? If those readings are identified as belonging to specific narrative contexts, then they are meaningful for learning and therefore are examples of pedagogy, the more so if they include an explanatory introduction, annotation, or question. If the readings are followed by questions that test students’ comprehension of the readings, this is an example of the direct instruction model. In this case, students are supposed to master the readings the same as they do the text. There will be questions about the readings on the test. If, however, the readings are followed by questions that ask students how the readings relate to chapter content or to life, then this is nondirect instruction. The students must discover a connection for themselves, and the textbook trusts that they can do so. Classroom discussion can confirm it. Which model better expresses your approach to teaching your course?
Generally, the more apparatus and pedagogy, the lower the level. However, beware the empty antipedagogy that bloats introductory textbooks! Beware the gimmicky, obviously outsourced boxes without context, relevance, interest, sense, or engagement with the reader. But please also avoid the prejudice that boxes are bad. Done right, boxes are paragons of good teaching, facilitating students’ rapid longterm acquisition of chapter content. Rather than interrupting and distracting from text, they are deeply embedded in narrative context and bring textual processing to a higher cognitive level.
Labels: choosing a textbook, Criteria for textbook selection, evaluating textbooks, pedagogy, textbook supplements
