During the fall 2008 semester, I taught a university experience course entitled UB101. This was the first time that I had ever taught a course, ever created a syllabus, ever assigned students legitimate grades that would appear on their transcripts, and the first time that I actually had a chance to implement some technology into my course. I thought that it would be valuable to evaluate what went wrong and what worked well so that I can revise my syllabus before next fall when I plan to teach the course again.
Here is the syllabus that I provided my students on the first day of class:
UB101 Fall 2008 Syllabus
The two web 2.0 technologies that I tried to employ were delicious and flickr since these seem to me to be the most accessible and useful for first semester students. I also employed more traditional assignments such as attending a campus event and completing the library skills workbook.
As you can see from my syllabus, I wanted the students to use flickr to upload photos from their first semester as undergraduate students. I created a special group just for this purposes entitled "The University at Buffalo Through Pictures" and set up the account so that I could approve anything submitted to it before it hit the actual group page for everyone to see.
Delicious was supposed to get my students introduced to the idea of social bookmarking and assist them in exploration majors or careers (most of the students in my section were undecided). I wanted them to find relevant information online and then tag their selections. On the last day of class we were to share the information with the rest of the class and show them how to access everyone else's links via delicious as well as their own. They were also introduced to my center's academicadvisor delicious account for their future reference.
These two assignments made up the bulk of the course and probably required students to spend approximately 1 hour on each in total. When I created the assignments I didn't think that there would be any issue with either assignment and that students would actually benefit from completing them. During advising appointments, students frequently voice the opinion that their UB101 course did not meet their expectations and I wanted to make this course different in that it would.
I went through the entire semester conducting my class in a discussion format and consistently checked in with students to make sure that they were beginning their assignments, addressed any questions that they may have had about how to use these applications, provided detailed instructions via email on how to register and set up accounts etc. Students reassured me in class that they were fine with the assignments and were starting them.
However, students did voice issues with the web 2.0 applications when they came in for their individual advisement appointments with me. I'm not sure why they didn't voice these issues in class or email me with their concerns. One student said that he "wasn't an internet person" and didn't even have a facebook account. I failed to see the similarities between the assignments he was asked to do for class and facebook, but nonetheless I created an alternative assignment.
What should have taken students approximately 2 hours was left until the very end of he semester and completed in haste (if at all). The failure rate for the course was considerably high for a university experience course but I didn't feel bad doling out these marks. This event has led me to reconsider the actual implementation of web 2.0 technologies into courses at this point. It seemed as though students were not quite there...as if I, as an educator, was actually ahead of where they were as students.
I was hoping that others with a web 2.0 interest might be able to offer some advice on this topic or point met to some internet resources on why this phenomenon occurred. Also, I am hoping to find other ways to implement this technology but actually make it sticky!
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