Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

31 – Looking Forward: Stories of Practice
most successful sessions was the discussion of employment.
I invited colleagues who work in various online
professions to join the discussion forum. I created a
forum topic for each of them, introducing them to the
course and explaining to the students how I knew them
or had worked with them, thereby personalizing these
potentially anonymous guests. Each guest then posted a
description of their work and invited the students to ask
questions. And question they did, asking everything
from who are you, to how much do you make, and are
you lonely sitting at home.
Over the three offerings of this course, I have done
little to change the structure or my instructional strategies,
which appear to be working well, but the design is
flexible enough to allow me to change the content as
new things emerge. I cannot imagine offering this
course in anything other than a blended approach, as I
have learned that our face-to-face time is as important as
our online time.
A story of studio-based
instruction
The story of studio-based instruction (SBI) was introduced
at the beginning of this chapter. 83 In this section,
we’ll place that story within the framework provided by
Figure 31.3. SBI requires teachers to think differently
about course structures. In other online graduate
courses, I had simply taken the number of weeks available,
subtracted two for start-up and conclusion, and
plotted the topics to be covered over the remaining 11
weeks of a 13-week semester. In my previous online
courses, I situated three activities, each increasingly
complex, over the 13 weeks, and planned two synchronous
class meetings for students to share their second
and third assignments. Content, in the form of text lectures,
was placed in the course document area, and a
discussion forum was created to correspond with each
lecture. Students were expected to read the content, post
comments, and negotiate the assignments. I designed a
format for the content lectures, so students could expect
to see the same pattern presented each week. This approach
received excellent reviews. The format included
sections for my presentation of content, student tasks,
suggested resources, and a to-do list. However, I also
received criticism because the course was so tightly de-
83
An interesting description of studio-based learning can
be found at http://schoolstudio.engr.wisc.edu/studiobased
learning.html
signed, and the activities were so varied that students felt
they had covered the content broadly but not deeply.
Criticism from my previous courses, about breadth
rather than depth, informed my decision to try SBI.
While I still had the 13-week semester as a constraint, I
decided that Inquiry Into Digital Filmmaking—EDER
675.15 was not going to be a sampler of filmmaking
techniques; rather, it would be an inquiry into the potential
of digital filmmaking in research techniques,
content development, DVD production, and digital literacy.
At the graduate level, the course could not be a
how-to workshop for filmmaking, so students needed
the opportunity to either (1) demonstrate their existing
skills and prior knowledge through digital filmmaking,
or (2) gain those skills quickly enough to begin to use
them in the course. As digital filmmaking and editing
were relatively new, I also did not want to penalize students
who did not have regular access to editing software
or digital video cameras. Therefore, I needed to
create a variety of tasks such as creation of simple films,
development of DVDs or completion of research papers
on related topics.
Mindful of the need to design a learning environment
that supported a rich understanding of the potential of
film, while allowing students to gain a deeper experience,
I turned to SBI, breaking the course into three
required components. The first component was designed
according to adult learning principles. It asked
students to provide evidence of 30 hours of concentrated
inquiry into the knowledge and skills of basic filmmaking,
asking them to either attend a workshop on digital
filmmaking, 84 or work through the textbook The Director
in the Classroom, or explain how their previous experience
was equivalent to the 30 hours of inquiry into
digital filmmaking. To demonstrate their understanding
of Component 1, students had to share their one-minute
video described in the ice-breaker activity in the Studio
Story section of this chapter. It was suggested that students
complete Component 1 within the first four weeks
of the semester.
Component 2 consisted of four modules of which
students were to select two. A few students negotiated
for the two to be merged into one larger component,
and some students chose to work collaboratively. Details
of the modules are available online.
84
British Columbia filmmaker, Nikos Theodosakis, developed
a workshop and textbook entitled The Director in the
Classroom. He offers a constructivist approach to introducing
digital filmmaking in the K–12 classroom
(http://www.thedirectorintheclassroom.com)
500 Education for a Digital World