This week's discussion

I really enjoyed this week’s discussion about teaching through inquiry and the positive and negative effects of having access to vast resources. Both questions were well-formulated and easy to sink your teeth into. I wrote on the second question, but responded to posts on the first one, so I really felt like I managed to discuss a lot of material. It was interesting to read other people’s view on pedagogy generally and online pedagogy, and in the course of my reading and responses, I began to develop clearer ideas on what the salient features of the topic were. I very much liked that there were two questions to respond to and not just one. That opened up, at least for me, different ways in which the two issues overlapped.

One negative aspect of the activity was that there was a fair bit of repetition in the posts. This is natural, of course, since some of us have similar ideas—hopefully the right ones!—on these matters, but it does become a bit boring and unhelpful to read the same point made several times. Another minor inconvenience was that several people posted .docx files, which I am not always able to read (depends on where I am and thus which computer I am using).

Taking off from the idea of student-driven content in Rethinking Education, perhaps it would be a good idea for some discussions to involve a student or two who post the week’s question(s) (with oversight from the instructor) based on their own interests. Some rough guidelines could be given, but it could work. Alternatively, one or two students could ‘lead’ the discussion by posting initially on a topic of their choosing (again with oversight) and having everyone else respond to that.