{"id":1333,"date":"2021-05-11T16:47:26","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T20:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2021-05-23T11:25:20","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T15:25:20","slug":"looking-back-at-the-semester-17th18th-c-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2021\/05\/11\/looking-back-at-the-semester-17th18th-c-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking back at the semester, 17th+18th c. philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I taught 17th+18th Century Philosophy as a synchronous on-line course this semester. It’s a course I used to teach regularly but haven’t taught for about 8 years. Here are some reflections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In my synchronous course last semester<\/a>, about a quarter of the students said that it was better on-line than it would have been face-to-face. The students this term were not so positive. This was how they responded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the standpoint of learning and engagement, having this course on-line was ____ having it in person.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

…better than… 0%<\/td>\u2026about the same as\u2026 52%<\/td>\u2026worse than\u2026 48%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As before, I would have said about the same<\/em>. It’s partly a matter of pluses and minuses cancelling out, but it’s also because I made a self-conscious decision to teach it more like I do a face-to-face class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of preparing slides in advance, I shared an Illustrator window and used it like I would a whiteboard. When I would erase the whiteboard, I instead skipped ahead to a clean art board. That meant that I was able to share a PDF of the accumulated slides at the end of each unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although they were ambivalence about having the course on-line, almost all of the students consulted the video recordings of class\u2014 a resource that simply would not exist if the class were face-to-face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How often did you watch recordings of class on Zoom?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

every week 29%<\/td>often 32%<\/td>a few times 35%<\/td> never 3%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Several students said that they would have taken better notes in an in-person class. Being at their computer and running Zoom, it hadn’t occurred to them that they could still have taken notes on paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forums<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Once again, I assigned weekly forum posts and discussion instead of a longer paper. And again, it was pretty popular:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the standpoint of learning and engagement, discussion forums were ____ a longer paper.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

…better than… 81%<\/td>\u2026about the same as\u2026 13%<\/td>\u2026worse than\u2026 6%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Video presentations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For curricular reasons, the course needed to have oral presentations. I had them prepare 5-8 minute videos on topics I would have assigned if they’d written papers. Although they exercised different presentation skills than for a paper, they still had to deal with the philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I had never assigned videos before, I gave them latitude in format and style. Several just recorded themselves speaking into the camera. Others prepared slides. One student staged a dialogue between Descartes and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, with Descartes in a ridiculous moustache and Elizabeth in a tiara. Another presented it as story time, with video cuts to Descartes who was them but with a drawn-on moustache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was fun to see what they came up with. I genuinely laughed out loud when grading some of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what they thought of it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to writing a paper, the video presentation led to ____ learning.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

…more… 19%<\/td>\u2026about the same amount of\u2026 60%<\/td>\u2026less\u2026 21%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/strong>Compared to writing a paper, the video presentation was ____ enjoyable.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

…more… 87%<\/td>\u2026about as\u2026 13%<\/td>\u2026less\u2026 0%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I taught 17th+18th Century Philosophy as a synchronous on-line course this semester. It’s a course I used to teach regularly but haven’t taught for about 8 years. Here are some reflections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-lv","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1351,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions\/1351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}