“The Task Force on Curricular Innovation and Technology is charged with looking at existing and potential structures for promoting innovative thinking among faculty with regard to emerging pedagogies and technological opportunities.”
In early February, the Task Force and Technology will be hold open meetings to solicit advice from the faculty concerning this charge. In anticipation of those meetings we solicit responses and an open discussion from all facets of the Lafayette Community. Please share your thoughts on our existing curricular strengths and weaknesses as well your perceptions concerning the threats or opportunities presented to the College by online learning and courses like MOOCs.
Additionally there may be other ways that you think the College needs to provide support for our teaching endeavors. For example…are our teaching spaces adequate? How about class sizes?
Please share any and all concerns about our teaching responsibilities that you feel we should be thinking about.
At this point, I think, many members of our campus community still need an overview of what is going on before they feel comfortable making comments. As I am not ashamed to admit, I only recently learned that:
– There is a difference between “ordinary” online courses and MOOCs. Not every case of online teaching is a MOOC.
– Different institutions will use MOOCs and other online courses differently, depending on their strategic aims and on the strength of their name/brand recognition: some aim for reaching the largest possible public “out there” (in courses of 20,000+ students), others more modestly at strengthening already existing ties to an already existing community (e.g. alumni, admitted students). Personally, I think that uses of the latter, more modest type might work at Lafayette.
Only once we all know the basics, and that we all mean the same things when we say “MOOC” or “online teaching” can we have a productive larger conversation about whether, or rather, how to integrate these new technologies into what Lafayette does.
I don’t know if this comment belongs here but since I am abroad on sabbatical and can’t attend the meetings, I want to weigh in. Class sizes are large in economics and we had wanted for years to experiment with having a large lecture section of principles of economics. We tried it once or twice but asking faculty to take on a class 3x larger than usual without some type of compensation was not popular and the department was not successful in convincing the administration to offer a course release for the person who taught the large section thus the initiative died.
Most of our econ principles and intermediate theory courses (all required for the major) are larger than what I think they should be–they are frequently in excess of 30. I know we are not the only department with these enrollment pressures but when I speak to prospective students and their parents, I feel acutely uncomfortable with these large class sizes. I don’t think they are commensurate with what we ought to be offering students. And, certainly there is a difference with what you can do with 20 students in a class versus 30.