Randy Bass gave a presentation on the problem of learning in the post-course era. He discussed how the rise of digital technologies and social media have changed learning from static to dynamic. Learning now occurs across multiple modalities like blogs, wikis, and social networking rather than just in the classroom. Bass argued we are entering a post-course era where high-impact learning happens outside of traditional courses. He suggested academics will need to better connect courses to experiential learning, make courses more dynamic, and shift resources from courses to high-impact experiences.

1.  Randy Bass,
 Georgetown University
 the Problem of
Learning in the
Post-Course Era
MAALT-SEALLT Conference
March 11,2010

2. What’s the problem?

3. Wikis Online
chatrooms microblogging Multiple
blogs modalities
Writing Social
technologies networking Authentic
Data audience
Video Non-linear
visualization conferencing learning Self-
assessment
E-portfolios Task-based
learning practices
Social instruction
environments
bookmarking Virtual worlds perpetually in
and serious motion
games a deeper sense of
Digital From static to cultural
storytelling dynamic understanding and
learning language learning

4. Wikis Online
chatrooms microblogging Multiple
blogs modalities
Writing Social
technologies networking Authentic
Data audience
Video Non-linear
visualization conferencing learning Self-
assessment
E-portfolios Task-based
learning practices
Social instruction
environments
bookmarking Virtual worlds perpetually in
and serious motion
games a deeper sense of
Digital From static to cultural
storytelling dynamic understanding and
learning language learning

5. Wikis Online
chatrooms microblogging Multiple
blogs modalities
Writing Social
technologies networking Authentic
Data audience
Video Non-linear
visualization conferencing learning Self-
assessment
E-portfolios Task-based
learning practices
Social instruction
environments
bookmarking Virtual worlds perpetually in
and serious motion
games a deeper sense of
Digital From static to cultural
storytelling dynamic understanding and
learning language learning

6. Wikis Online
chatrooms microblogging Multiple
blogs modalities
Writing Social
technologies networking Authentic
Data audience
Video Non-linear
visualization conferencing learning Self-
assessment
E-portfolios Task-based
learning practices
Social instruction
environments
bookmarking Virtual worlds perpetually in
and serious motion
games a deeper sense of
Digital From static to cultural
storytelling dynamic understanding and
learning language learning

7. The Post-Course Era

8. “You know. It was taught as a
Gen Ed course and I took it as
a Gen Ed course.”
Georgetown student, end of first year, focus group:
reflecting a particular course in which, he claimed,
he was not asked to engage with the material.

9. High Impact Practices
(National Survey of Student Engagement--NSSE)
• First-year seminars and experiences
• Learning communities
• Writing intensive courses
• Collaborative assignments
• Undergraduate research
• Global learning/ study abroad
• Internships
• Capstone courses and projects

10. High Impact Activities and Outcomes
 High Impact Practices:
 Outcomes associated with High
• First-year seminars and impact practices
experiences
• Learning communities
• Attend to underlying meaning
• Writing intensive courses
• Integrate and synthesize
• Collaborative assignments
• Undergraduate research • Discern patterns
• Global learning/ study abroad • Apply knowledge in diverse situations
• Internships • View issues from multiple perspectives
• Capstone courses and projects • Gains in Skills, knowledge, practical
competence , personal and social
development

11. High Impact Practices
(National Survey of Student Engagement--NSSE)
• First-year seminars and experiences
• Learning communities
• Writing intensive courses
• Collaborative assignments
• Undergraduate research
• Global learning/ study abroad
• Internships
• Capstone courses and projects

12. So, if high impact practices are
largely in the extra curriculum (or
co-curriculum), then where are
the low-impact practices?

13. formal curriculum
=
low-impact practices ?
Are we then entering the ―post-course era‖?
2/16/10 13

14. If the formal curriculum is not where
the high impact experiences are
then there are three options
(1) Make courses higher impact
(2) Create better connections between courses
and the high impact experiences outside the
formal curriculum
(3) Start shifting resources from from the formal
curriculum to the high impact (experiential)
curriculum

15. All of the above…

16. Range of responses
courses designed as
inquiry-based and
problem-driven
Using social
tools at scale
Design courses for depth and
engagement (writing
intensive, project-based,
team-based, etc)
2/16/10 16

17. Participatory Culture
How do we make classroom learning more like participatory culture?
 Features of participatory culture
 Low barriers to entry
 Strong support for sharing one’s contributions
 Informal mentorship, experienced to novice
 Members feel a sense of connection to each
other
 Students feel a sense of ownership of what is
being created
 Strong collective sense that something is at
stake
Jenkins, et. al., The Challege of Participatory Culture

18. Six Characteristics of high impact practices
AND features of participatory culture
 High impact experiences
 Features of participatory (co- curriculum)
culture (on the Web)
 Low barriers to entry  Attend to underlying
 Strong support for sharing meaning
one’s contributions
 Informal mentorship,  Integrate and synthesize
experienced to novice
 Members feel a sense of
 Discern patterns
connection to each other
 Apply knowledge in diverse
 Students feel a sense of situations
ownership of what is being
created  View issues from multiple
 Strong collective sense perspectives
that something is at stake
 Skills, knowledge, practical
competence , personal and
social development
2/16/10 18

19. Looking from the Web in…
How do we make formal learning environments more
like informal learning?
How do we make classroom learning more like
participatory culture?

20. Informal High impact
Learning practices
The Formal
Curriculum Experiential
Participatory
culture Co-curriculum
2/16/10 20

21. the end of the course as a
bounded experience

22. John Seely Brown: Practice to
Content
content
practice

23. Informal High impact
Learning practices
The Formal
Curriculum Experiential
Participatory
culture Co-curriculum
2/16/10 23

24. Three Challenges
Intermediate processes (“thin slices”
of practice)
Reflective judgment, uncertainty
Embodied learning

25. Thin Slices
Participatory learning + Web 2.0 tools
Student work is in process, in practice—
not just in summative work

26. Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice
NOVICE MIRACLE EXPERT
product product
2/16/10 26
Bass & Elmendorf, 2009

27. Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice
LEARNING
processes
NOVICE LEARNING EXPERT
processes processes practice
LEARNING
processes
How can we better
How might we
understand these
design to foster
intermediate
and capture
processes?
2/16/10 them? 27

28. Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice
LEARNING
processes
NOVICE LEARNING EXPERT
processes processes practice
LEARNING
“Thin slices” processes Micro-
of online reflections on
discussion or the cutting
blog room floor
evidence
Traces of of ePortfolio samples:
collaborative Process drafts, reflections
practice

29. #1: Social Pedagogies
and a Large Lecture Course
Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University
Foundations of Biology
BIOL-103
1st year Biology 250 students
course
science majors
& pre-meds

30. Student Learning Goals
(Students develop…)
Participatory learning
Course Design Elements
Social  Readings & On-line Conversation
Pedagogies
 Class & Think-Pair-Share
 Lab & Partnered Inquiry
 Problem Sets & Group Effort
around Authentic and
Challenging Problems
 Research Paper & Shared Steps
 Exams & Room for Uncertainty
Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University

31. Prof Elmendorf’s Instructions to her Students for the
Discussion Board
•Communicate about the reading. One of the best ways to
learn something is to talk about it. Air your bafflement,
express your wonder, ask your questions, try out a new idea
of your own…And while I hope you will talk often about
biology this semester with your classmates, I want to be sure
you have an official forum for these conversations – and that
you are rewarded for the effort you will expend having them.

32. Holding Conversations

33. Online Conversation

34. Jose Feito, on the importance of “not knowing”
―The theme of not-knowing [has] emerged as a key factor in the
maintenance of a truly collaborative intellectual community within the
classroom.
In order for a shared inquiry to proceed productively, the participants
must be able to regularly acknowledge their lack of understanding, offer
partial understandings, and collectively digest the resulting discourse.
Not-knowing is characterized by a group’s ability to defer meaning,
tolerate ambiguity, hold divergent perspectives, and postpone closure.
In order to develop, it requires a relatively non-judgmental classroom
atmosphere, but not an uncritical one.‖
Jose Feito, St. Mary’s University
(Moraga, California, U.S.A.)

35. Michael Smith & Ali Erkan,
Ithaca College
 Using Wiki’s to teach history
 Students work in collaborative teams
to write history wiki-texts on subjects
that interest them in historical context

36. Michael Smith & Ali Erkan,
Ithaca College

37. Not just about knowledge to be acquired, but
Embodied
Ways of thinking
Ways of acting (practice)
Ways of talking
A sense of identity
Not just knowing,
but the experience
of knowing
(and coming to know)

38. Social Pedagogies
and an Introductory Writing Class
Writing, Invention, Media
HUMW-011
1st year writing 20 students
course
Gen Ed
Randy Bass, Georgetown University

39. Humanities & Writing 011
 First-year required writing course
 Section theme: “Writing, Invention, Media”
 Core concept: “writing is a social act”
 Core theme: Changes modes of learning, the
participatory culture of Web, and the nature of the
University

40. What is worth knowing
Worthwhile and doing?
Important
What is important to know
and do?
CORE
What is a core or enduring
understanding?
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe,
Understanding by Design

41. HUMW011: Writing, Invention, Media
Opening Worthwhile
Day
exercise:
Important
Writing in
school?
CORE
Writing
on the
Web?

42. Core Values of Writing in School: Week One

43. Core Important Worthwhile

44. Core Understandings--writing in school (week one)
Core Understandings--digital, Writing on the web (week one)

47. Networked research group

48. Networked research group
Yahoo Pipes

49. Networked research group

50. Participatory Culture and Formal Learning
Student Student Student
team team team
Any mechanism for
aggregating, feeding,
filtering, tagging…
Shared course blog or
teacher / tutor space

51. Rajagopalan Balaji, Capstone Course in Engineering
(University of Colorado)
(Design competition)
70+ students 12 teams two projects
Central Central
RSS RSS
feed feed
Teacher
watches,
coaches Team
Team
blogs blogs
(key source of capture for
intermediate processes)

52. Designing for the post-course era
thin slices of practice
reflective judgment
embodied learning
If we are to connect courses to the ―holistic self-
portrait‖ of the learner, then we not only to link out
but in..

53. Student
PRACTICE:
Learning
Features of
Goals
Participatory
Process
•Help students create
markers of certainty and
uncertainty
•Provide opportunities for
relearning
•Design opportunities for
meaningful reflection on
Practice and integration of
experience

54. Tim Kastelle University of Queensland,
“Successful Open Business Models”
Tim Kastelle
―Successful Open Business Models on the
Web‖ (e.g. Journalism, Music)
Aggregate
Filter
Connect

55. Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models”
―Successful Open Business Models‖
(higher education)
•Aggregate
•Information resources
•Filter
•Knowledge (what knowledge is worth knowing)
•Scholarship (peer review)
•Graduates (employability)
•Connect
•Ideas, experiences, people

56. Shift in How We Add Value
AGGREGATE
FILTER
CONNECT

57. Shift in How We Add Value
AGGREGATE
COURSE
ERA
FILTER
POST-
COURSE
ERA
CONNECT

58. Sir Ken Robinson, “How Education Kills
Creativity”
ted.com

59. Sir Ken Robinson, “How Education Kills
Creativity”
―What we need is a
new conception of
human ecology, one
in which we start to
reconstitute our
conception of the
richness of human
capacity.‖
ted.com

60. Randy Bass
contact (for slides, follow up):
bassr@georgeotwn.edu