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2G | INNOVATION ABSTRACTS #2:
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Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development
With support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation

 

 

 

 

PROVING THE CRITICS WRONG

Our campus faculty community is fairly progressive. However, where teaching is concerned,
conventional wisdom dies hard. As Charles Cole (1983) has pointed out, for a group of peole who often
champion unpopular causes, faculty members are remarkably resistant to changing their assumptions about
teaching. Three years ago, a new system for teaching extension classes came into being; COMNET involves
teaching to multiple sites in Utah and Wyoming. [I have described involvement with my first class in an
earlier Innovation Abstracts, Volume VIII, Number 23.]

Two commonly held beliefs about this system have been frequently expressed and represent prevailing
conventional wisdom among faculty: (1) the learning experience for students over COMNET is bound to be
inferior to the face-to-face, in-person course; and (2) student course evaluations for these classes are bound
to be lower. So if you are up for promotion or tenure in a department where teaching counts, you would be
well advised to avoid teaching a COMNET course. (Of course, if you are in a department where teaching
doesn’t count, you would be better off doing research and also avoiding such a course.)

Having taught two courses over the COMNET system and having felt I made some improvement each
time, I was determined to make my third attempt a superior course. I was scheduled to teach a master’s
level Current Issues in Instructional Technology course during Winter Quarter 1987. I decided to give it my
best shot and to prove the critics wrong.

I used all the tricks I could muster. Some of them are offered here for your consideration:

1. Use a structured workbook, giving week-by-week assignments. Students, especially in distance education
courses, appreciate having clear structure to a course, including requirements spelled out in writing.

2. Use teaching assistants to lead group discussions. T.A.’s generally only operate the equipment and
monitor tests at each site. Part of the initial hiring requirements for T.A.’s was teaching experience,
and many took my request that they lead discussions very seriously. To accompany each student
worksheet, I prepared a set of expected answers and instructions for T.A.-led discussions. The first
twenty minutes after roll call in class each week was scheduled as discussion time. During this time,
the various sites worked independently, checking with me individually by pane if a problem
occurred.

3. Hold teleconferences with experts. This aspect of the course took considerable prior planning. In eight of
the ten weeks in the course, we held a one-half hour telephone interview with experts from all around
the country. Often, these experts were the authors of articles that students had read that week. Half
the time was allotted for presentation, the remainder for question and answer, usually one question
per site. One week’s interview was with the author of the text, another week with a prominent
author from the M.I.T. LOGO Group, another with a member of the President's Commission on
Instructional Technology in Salt Lake City. The most prestigious expert was Dr. Harlan Cleveland at
the University of Minnesota, discussing the thesis of his book, The Knowledge Executive (1985). Two
interviews were with young entrepreneurs with utopian visions for education and technology, one
from Wyoming and the other from Maryland; each had gone into business and then lost money when
the idea didn’t sell. These sessions with the experts were tremendously stimulating, but in no case
was I able to offer any honorarium.

4. Study topics requiring self-examination and introspection. For students who had been experiencing
distance education for a full year, what could be more appropriate than an examination of issues in
distance education? Students read about the British Open University and similar experiments in the

 

 

 

Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712

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