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Jesse Stommel was the keynote speaker at the Second Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium.  About 50 CU faculty and staff representing more than one CU campus attended his talk, "Rewriting the Syllabus: Examining New Hybrid and Online Pedagogies."

ASSETT Director Michele Jackson led an introduction about what it means to teach with technology.  She thanked the audience and said, "None of what we do would work without you.  Thank you for being engaged.  Thank you for being part of our community."

CU Boulder Associate Professor of English R L Widmann introduced Stommel.

Stommel began his talk with open ended questions for the audience: 'Why do we use technology?  How should we handle technology?'  He encouraged the audience to think critically about technology.  Stommel launched an interactive activity, inviting the audience to shout out what came to their minds when it came to 'chalkboard pedagogy' versus 'digital pedagogy.'  Stommel captured the audience's ideas on two white boards.

Stommel first asked the audience, "What do we associate with chalkboards?"  The audience brainstormed the words: "Dust, flexibility, reliable, erasable, immediacy, not password protected, in the moment, slow technology, interactive, physical, bold, and temporary."  One faculty member mentioned that, with such live learning, you can see the "aha moment happen or not happen" in students' eyes.  One professor said she preferred the flexibility to draw arrows on the board to connect different ideas with each other.  At the same time, the audience also acknowledged how potentially intimidating and vulnerable live writing on a chalkboard can be, especially when inviting students to interact.

Next, Stommel asked audience members, "What has been effective about digital pedagogy as a teacher or a learner?"  The dry erase board brainstorm that ensued included the ideas, "Long lasting, share-able, unreliable, expensive, 24/7, scale-able, searchable, compute-able, manageable, pre-planned, pre-scripted, improvisational, asynchronous, as needed, spell check enabled, reliable, and archive-able."  One audience member said that the digital space can open up more opportunities for students with disabilities and even for students who have to stay home sick.

Considering an Interactive Syllabus

Then, Stommel led a discussion about online learning, first detailing the growth that is already taking place in online courses at post secondary institutions.  Stommel recommended professors put as much consideration into setting up their online classes as they would any other class.  He encouraged the audience to involve their students in the evolution of a course's curriculum, and he quoted Dave Carnier in saying, "Curriculum...is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process..."   He used a jazz metaphor of improvisation: "The joy in the song is when you break from the melody...A syllabus is something you create in advance, but we're open to improvisations."  He encouraged faculty to be open to incorporating students' needs and interests into the syllabus.  Stommel suggested that professors could even invite students to co-author the syllabus.  The group discussed actually putting a syllabus into a Google Drive document open to students to contribute.  One audience member suggested giving students standards and asking them how they would like the standards taught throughout the semester: what kinds of homework at which points in the semester--collaborative, small projects or big projects?  Stommel agreed, saying, "Teachers need to talk less and listen more."

Stommel stressed the importance of forming an online community with students and remembering that they are real people.  He touched on the nuts and bolts of actually planning an online course.  Stommel addressed the challenges that professors encounter in learning to use online learning management systems, saying, "When we teach online, we have to build both the course and the classroom..."  The group even discussed students taking collaborative notes together during a lecture on a Google Drive document.  Stommel said that, "More and more, learning is less about critical thinking and more about critical contribution."

An audience member suggested the idea of online learning as a more affordable alternative to the traditional university model, and the discussion turned toward online learning as a mechanism to help "higher education to survive."  Stommel stressed that professors should remember the principle that, "Learning is emergent...Educators at every level must begin by listening to and trusting students...The teacher stands to learn more from students about online learning than we could ever teach."

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After Stommel's talk, Religious Studies Professor Holly Gayley received the 2013-2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award. Then, audience members were invited to browse hers and other faculty seminar participants' demonstrations of use of technology in teaching.  These faculty participated in both the Teaching with Technology Faculty Seminar and the Hybrid and Online Course Design Seminar.