Using Technology to Create a Safe, Humanistic Classroom
by Tom Marino, Ph.D., Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Temple University

Part III

The six online assessments made up one part of the grade and then a final made up the second. The final was a traditional multiple-choice exam. I must say again that this is a work in progress. I am not happy about my exams. Not because the students are free to take them when they want and where they want. Not because there is a chance they may cheat. I feel obligated to teach them about the ethics of doing your own work. Plus you do not need to cheat if you feel safe and if there is mutual respect for your fellow learners and well as for those helping you learn. What I dislike is that, so far, I have not been comfortable with a testing format that actually uses authentic testing principles. I am still exploring ways to test authentically rather than simply use multiple-choice exams. I need to figure out how to test them in a way that they are using the material in much the same way they will be using it in the future. Like in the garden, I need to ask them to grow the tomatoes and show me the tomatoes from the garden. And they need to tell me why the tomatoes came out so well or what made them small and tasteless.

From the Students

In addition to the comments the one student made above, the class evaluations were by and large ambivalent in sum, but each part of the spectrum was well represented. Many of the students liked what was attempted and felt comfortable telling me that. " I feel," said one, "that the course was a new and innovative approach to teaching Embryology. I enjoyed the independence of the online tests and lectures. In addition, the class workshops helped to iron out any questions I had. I feel that you (Dr. Marino) supplied more than enough information not only to understand, but enjoy Embryology."

However, these comments were balanced by comments by others that said. "I thought the subject material for embryology was really interesting yet, I feel that the way the course was structured, it didn't allow me to be motivated. I feel that if there were more lectures and scheduled exam, I would have felt the class was more important that it seemed. I think embryology is a really important subject and wished that more of my time could have been spent studying the material."

Another student wrote, "Teaching the course as a lecture would have been better in terms of learning the material. Most people did not dedicate much time to learning the material until the last minute. Without the constant "threat" of an upcoming exam (as we have in our other classes), it is hard to motivate to study for the class."

What I have learned from my initial forays into online learning is that for independent learners, freedom can be a wonderful thing. They can make the material their own at their own pace and in their own time. However, many students need more structure, especially as more material gets put online. This was an observation that I had not realized early enough. It was also not apparent to me until much later, that often the brightest and youngest students, who had mastered the lecture/study/testing mode for learning information content, were the ones who adapted least readily to the freedom of online learning. They were often the ones who complained most bitterly and loudly when a different approach was tried.

This really should not have been a surprise. Many of us know that students react negatively when they feel that the mode of teaching they have been so comfortable with is not present. They l se their security when they have to go out and learn in new and foreign ways. Indeed, other faculty members often react the same way. They often say that the only way to teach is the lecture/study/test way. Faculty members also do not want to give up the security of the lecture podium. It is their throne from which they can reign over the classroom. And many of them use the guise of content to argue against any type of teaching reform. We hear faculty members, especially from the sciences rail that they have so much content they need to teach their students. How could they possibly worry about mutual inquiry or collaborative group learning.

Parker Palmer again addresses this issue well. In The Courage to Teach he says, "The critics have come closer to the answer by suggesting that this style of teaching persists because it gives teachers power. With power comes security: the security of controlling the classroom agenda, of avoiding serious challenges to one’s authority, of evading the embarrassment of getting lost in territory where one does not know the way home. Teachers are unlikely to relinquish such power even in the face of students who hunger for another way to learn.

"But that is only half the story. Students themselves cling to the conventional pedagogy because it gives them security, too, a fact well known by teachers who have tried more participatory modes of teaching. When a teacher tries to share the power, to give students more responsibility for their own education, students get skittish and cynical. They complain that the teacher is not earning his or her pay, and they subvert the experiment by noncooperation. Many students prefer to have their learning boxed and tied and when they are invited into a more creative role they flee in fear."

Summary

As this search for a different type classroom, for a new learning environment, continues, I struggle with the idea of how I can use technology to really change my classroom. How can I use technology so that my students can work in the garden and get their hands dirty, instead of reading seed catalogues. It seems that as I move from the lecturer on the grand classroom stage to guide who can help others find the way, I need to hear from other guides. I need to hear of their journeys. What I really want to know is how I can get my students to feel the spark of excitement I feel about by subjects? How can I make them appreciate the wonder of learning? How can I help my students, who like the lecture/study/test mode of learning, appreciate that it leaves them far short of where they really want to be if they are going to truly begin to understand the subject they are studying.

At this time we can no longer operate and teach the way we used to. But what is not clear is how we are supposed to teach now. Faculty wars abound, and the friction that develops, as we move this herd of faculty and students in new directions, can be sharp and heated. It can be a painful journey and one where enemies are made and conflicts proliferate. As information becomes readily available on the Internet, our roles have to change and who we are and what we do will change as well. At this point the main question is how will it change.

And as I think about all these changes and all the challenges, I must not forget why I teach. I cannot forget the importance of why I chose the classroom. In all that I have learned recently, the one thing I hold dear is the basic concept that Mary Rose O’Reilley states so simply and so eloquently. She says, "I remembered that that is what teaching should be about but isn’t: discerning the gift." I must remember that discerning my students’ gifts is at the center of the teaching I do in a safe, humanistic classroom.

Resources:

The Heart of a Teacher. Identity and Integrity in Teaching. By Parker J Palmer, in the November/December 1997 issue of Change (published by the American Association for Higher Education).

"The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching" by appeared in the November/December issue of Change

To know as we are known: Education as a spiritual journey. By Parker J. Palmer Parker J. Palmer New York: HarperCollins Publishers. (1993).

A life in school: What the teacher learned by Jane Tompkins, Boston: Addison-Wesley. (1996)

© The TLT Group, 2000

About the Author:

Thomas A. Marino, Ph.D., is a Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the Temple University School of Medicine. He has been teaching medical students, and other students in the health science professions, since 1978 when he was an assistant professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center. From there he went to Temple University School of Medicine.

In the nineties, Prof. Marino was the President of the Temple University Faculty Senate and then became the Director of the University Honors Program. In his embryology course, he designed multimedia based lectures that helped students understand the three dimensional movements that occur during development. He also co-authored a CD called The Histology Laboratory Assistant with Drs. Albert Lamperti and Marvin Sodicoff that is currently used to help medical and dental students learn histology. Since 1994, Tom has been a member of Temple's Teaching, Learning and Technology Roundtable. Starting in 1997 he has been actively working with the TLT Group. Tom received his B.A from Brown University in 1974 and his Ph.D. in Anatomy from Temple University in 1978.