Coming About

When you are on a sailing trip, as I have been for the past week or so, you learn to do things differently out of necessity … space onboard a 33-foot sailboat simply doesn’t permit the usual manner for doing simple everyday things.  

For example, how I go about cooking (if you can call it that) is very different. I do not prepare food in the same way. Fresh water is in limited supply so I use bottled water to wash fruits and vegetables when I’m making something as basic as a salad for our dinner. Instead of washing the lettuce or tomatoes under a streaming facet like I do at home, I’ll place a portion of a bag of precut lettuce pieces in a small Tupperware container, add a few cherry tomatoes, pour a little bottled water over it all, seal the container and shake. Then I carefully drain the wash water from my nice clean veggies, pat it all with a paper towel, add a little dressing, replace the plastic lid and shake again … and viola! Salad, ready to eat.

Salad in my home kitchen is a much more elaborate production of cutting, chopping, seasoning, and tossing.  In the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, my simple salad tastes just as good as the fancier variety at home, maybe better. The same simplified existence can be applied to taking a bath on board (what my mother used to call a “sponge bath” instead of a relaxing tub soak) and myriad other everyday acts of living that are stripped to their essentials (no pun intended), and made do-able in the most frugal of living spaces – probably less than 200 square feet, including sleeping quarters, the galley (kitchen), head (bathroom) and salon (living and dining area).  

Doing Things Differently with Web 2.0

If anything, this past year’s experience in using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom has taught me anew that a similar heuristic applies to teaching with technology: the technology  cannot be grafted onto whatever practices are already in place – it simply doesn’t work that way!  It requires a new mindset, a different way of approaching the teaching and learning interaction.  I found that I had to re-think my syllabus, my activities, and my assignments when I began to teach with wikis and blogs and other tools.  They didn’t work as “add-ons” because they weren’t substitutes for what I was already doing. These tools represented a whole new way of thinking: for me, for the learners, and for the learning we sought to happen in our time together.

This “different” way involves much more than learning to set up a Wetpaint wiki or adopt a blog format for reflective practice.  It is as much of a perspective shift as I’ve had in learning in how to get back to the basics in living aboard a sailboat.  This new mindset  strips the teaching interaction to its essentials which, for me, involves a philosophy of how adults learn so that the learning is meaningful, deep, and lasting.  What teacher doesn’t want this?  It’s doing it that seems to be so hard, because it requires giving up control. Marvin Weisbord expresses this idea perfectly in his new book, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! I’ve discovered that less intervention from me really can mean more learning for them, but it’s a struggle each and every time I enter the classroom. Chris Argyris called this the difference between espoused values and beliefs and theories-in-use.  Doing what we espouse seems ever so much more challenging!

This evolving philosophy about teaching, learning, collaborating, and my role as a facilitator has emerged over time through more than 20 years of working with adult learners, and more than 5 years of teaching in higher education.  I won’t go so far as to say that I am “there” yet, wherever “there” is,  but I can see the road my thinking has traveled through the years. I am also convinced that no one can travel this road for another… we must each explore its terrain for ourselves if we are to experience this shift in thinking. 

I was startled into this realization a couple of weeks ago when I was working with a new adjunct who will be teaching for us this summer at VCU. He is very enthusiastic but his graduate teaching experience is just beginning. I had shared my syllabus with him and the Blackboard site I developed last year when I taught the same class. He admitted that he had never really used Blackboard before, but he was intrigued, and when we met he said, “I want to do this class exactly as you did it last year … with the wikis and blogs and concept maps.”  

Suddenly, this seemed  overwhelming. We’re talking about a five-week summer course, and it begins in less than three weeks.  Very quickly, I saw the difference between learning to use the tools (a matter of showing him how to set up a wiki, establish a blog, or create a concept map) and sharing a philosophy of practice so that he could do it “exactly” as I did last year. 

With time, energy, and interest invested on his part, the first task can be accomplished readily (although it would probably take more than three weeks to become adept in the use of any of these Web 2.0 tools), but I was at a loss how to convey the second, which is a deeply engrained attitude that says when I exercise less (expertise/authority/ control/ guidance), the learners have the opportunity to create more (innovation/ motivation,/ownership/accomplishment).  This is anarchy to some, a relinquishing of the role of sharing what you know.  I do believe that there is a time to share what you know so that my learners may learn from whatever knowledge and experience I’ve acquired,  but I’ve discovered this works best when it comes after they have created their own learning experiences so that we have something to share with each other as we make meaning of the learning that has occurred.

It seems to me that the use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom will always reflect the underlying philosophy of the teacher-as-user, but their power lies in their ability to also shape and modify that philosophy as well.  My evidence of this is my participation in what our Center for Teaching Excellence has offered in the way of institutes, workshops, faculty learning communities, and more when it comes to learning how to use technology in teaching.  I’ve seen my own appetite grow with learning how, which is where we all have to start, but it really began to flourish when grappling with the what and why. Processing this deeply takes time, experimentation, and reflection, something our adjunct will need to do for himself.  In the end, it’s a simple salad, one that is back to the basics of why we teach and what we hope our learners learn. 

Bon appétit!