Task: Thinking in Triads

Background

The mere fact that courses use PowerPoint or Blackboard doesn’t dictate whether or how the results of courses will change.

On the other hand, if students have been having trouble reading your handwriting in lectures, PowerPoint is one way to make your message easier to read. Or if you want to help students learn by asking them to confront and critique the ways in which other students are thinking about the assignment, then discussion boards in Blackboard can enable increased student-student interaction.

Learning outcomes are determined mainly by what people already know when they begin, of course, and by what the learners then do (and “do” includes thinking, not just physical action). Technology’s role in changing learning outcomes is ordinarily to enable learners to do something different, or to do something differently.

So it makes some sense to describe an improvement in learning as a triad (outcomes being improved by activities that make use of technology). In fact, collectively you did that when you responded to the pre-Institute survey on challenging topics in your teaching. We were able to sort your answers into three groups: those focusing on outcomes ; those focusing on what students and faculty are doing in the course (activities); and those focusing on the technology per se. (see handout on survey results).

We invite you to participate in the following activity to learn how to describe these “triads”. In describing an improvement as a triad, you should try to describe the activity without directly mentioning the technology (see example on page 2. It begins with a response to question #2 on the survey. The faculty member’s answer is reprinted as the first sentence of the example; the remainder of the paragraph was written by Steve Ehrmann).

a) sit together in groups of 3-4

b) Pick a desired improvement from your answers to the survey that one of you in your group wrote (e.g., an answer to survey question #4)

c) Expand and rewrite the improvement so that it has all three elements of a triad: what are the intended outcome(s) for students (and faculty?)? What (changed) activities will enable students and faculty members to achieve the intended outcome(s)? What uses of technology will help the faculty and students carry out that activity?

d) If you have time, create a triad for another member of your group

Example of a Triad

“Issues around discrimination and privilege are always challenging because these issues potentially force students to question their own conception of their place in the world.” It’s more feasible to confront these issues when students of one situation in life have to deal with students from a different situation (e.g., race, social class, etc.) I’ve been hampered in two ways in the past: a) enrollments in my courses are relatively homogenous, b) the nature of the classroom tends to focus attention on the instructor.

I’d like to team up with faculty at other Florida institutions in order to create online discussions among students with very different backgrounds. We’d need to develop assignments to encourage students to debate issues of discrimination and privilege. We’d also need to train ourselves to moderate such discussions so that they engage the real emotional issues but don’t fly totally out of control.

That description includes the

a) outcome – students question their own conception of their place in the world

b) the activity that could help achieve the outcome: students from different backgrounds engaging in intensive, moderated discussions with each other about this issue

c) how technology’s use can help the activity happen: using Blackboard “discussion boards” to permit online discussions among students from different parts of Florida who come from very different backgrounds.