Fall 2007 Gateway

It has taken me some time to post my ideas, since I've been considering all the options regarding technology and the delivery of the various courses I teach. For this fall, I've decided to focus on the use of a blog for my Gateway class, “London seen through the Eyes of the Other.” I will continue to use my Luminis course webpage to manage other aspects of course delivery, including files and links.

As I thought about my greatest challenges in offering Gateway, I recognize the tension I feel in adapting my course to both the “skills” (e.g., teaching writing) and the “content” (e.g., the theme of the course, as it relates to critical thinking, etc.). In class I often run out of time, due to the fact that I cannot devote enough class time to discussion of the different texts we deal with (three complex novels) while giving the students enough feedback and guidance in the remedial ways that are sometimes necessary in Gateway courses.

Since I do not like the idea of incorporating the use of technology simply for technology’s sake, I have decided to attempt to address this specific problem: How can the use of a blog help me to teach my Gateway? The answer seems simple (at least for now—ask me again in October): I will ask students to use blogs to discuss in preliminary ways the course readings. It’s an obvious way to verify that students have done the reading and have grasped the essential concepts, thereby saving class time for more in depth conversations and issues related to writing. I realize that this may seem simple to an experienced educator, but it will be a challenge for me, for two reasons: 1) I have never used a blog in my teaching before, and negotiating the productive use of a blog in class will mean planning; and 2) teaching Gateway is typically a stressful experience for me (as it is for others as well), and including a blog may add to that stress, at least initially.

I hope to find that the use of the blog will help eliminate the stress of covering what I aim to cover in class. I expect to experiment also with other uses for the blog, including asking students to pose their own discussion questions, having students post journal-type entries regarding their difficulties in writing and the writing process, and making essays for peer review (or even possibly the peer reviews themselves) available on the blog. These are all issues I need to sort out more before August. I’m hopeful, however, that a blog will allow me to teach better, and in turn create an environment that extends the walls of the classroom and allows students to engage more fully with the issues and material, as well as to collaborate more easily with peers—in short, to learn better, and to come away from the experience with a more positive impression.