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Hi. It's Professor Bernstein, and in this video I'm sharing with you some important
details about our mixed-mode course and why I chose this approach for our class.
We are combining traditional face-to-face classes with online sessions, which means
that we'll be meeting in person once a week on Thursdays and having our other class session
online.
We won't actually be meeting online during class time on Tuesdays. Instead, you'll be
using that time—that hour and fifteen minutes—to do two main things.
One of the main things you'll be watching videos that I've created especially for our
course or some supplemental videos—which I've either created in the past or that are
from other experts in the field.
The other thing you'll be doing is using some of this time to write—to initiate and engage
in written contemplations and discussions of what we're reading and studying. I'll tell
you more about them later.
I want you to know something. I do not assign busy work. I don't want to waste your time.
Everything you do is connected to the larger issues and projects of the course. For instance,
these written discussions are connected to the reading and enhance your understanding
of them. They are also connected to the discussions we'll be having in class on Thursdays. They
ensure that we already have a conversation going before stepping foot in the classroom
so that on Thursdays we can enter into an even more stimulating and high-level discussion
of the texts and issues we're studying. They are also connected to the major projects for
the course, which I'll tell you about later.
So if you're in the class, you've got to be totally committed to setting aside 1 hour
and 15 minutes to the online part of our class. Some of you will find that the best thing
is to do this work during the time our class is supposed to meet. But you also have flexibility.
You can do this work at any point after our class on Thursday and before the following
Wednesday at 9 am (which is when I will check the discussion boards and when online quizzes
are due).
In just a moment, I'll tell you why I want you to have this flexibility, but for now
I want to emphasize a few really important things.
First of all, the work that you do during the hour and 15 minutes you'd normally be
in class is absolutely mandatory, and I will not accept any excuses (unless there's some
terrible emergency) if you don't do it. There's no reason you can't do it because you do have
that time free in your schedule.
Secondly, this hour and 15 minutes does not count towards your regular preparation that
you need to do for our class. That is, you still need to set aside additional time to
do the reading and other activities.
I realize that you are taking other courses and have other responsibilities that you need
to take care of, so I am very careful about the amount of reading and work that I assign.
I don't pile it on because I want you to have the time to do more than just have your eyes contact the words on the
page.
That doesn't count as having done the reading. You need to give yourself the time to really
take in and process what you're reading. I'm not the kind of professor who wants you to
just parrot back to me what I've said. I'm here to support you as you learn how to develop
your own interpretations and responses.
You can't just *** through the readings in our course. I mean you can, but trust me you
won't do well. So you need to commit to making room in your life for your preparation for
our course.
So now I want to share with you why I've decided to use this mixed mode approach for our course.
To help you understand why, I need to tell you a little bit of the backstory.
I started getting interested in online education in 2009 and began teaching online classes
the following year. One of the first things that I did was create fairly short video lessons
or lectures that I uploaded to my YouTube channel. I knew that the videos had to be
fairly short—about 8 to 15 minutes max—because basically no one really watches any YouTube
videos that are longer than that.
Some people might say that's a problem with students these days. They just don't concentrate
for long periods of time. But honestly, if I think back to my own experience as a student,
the fact of the matter is that at some point during lectures I'd zone out or miss something.
. .or maybe I wouldn't get something. . .maybe I needed more time to process a point before
moving on to the next one.
So I'm not into berating "students these days." I don't want to sit around complaining. Instead,
I want to find the best ways of enhancing my students' learning.
There were a number of really interesting and positive results from this video experiment—the
most important one for our purposes is that they enhanced my students' understanding of
important concepts and ideas and they helped them feel empowered enough to do the reading
on their own (instead of resorting to summaries and other "aids").
When a teacher lectures in class, she just keeps moving forward—there's no way to pause
her if you missed a point or spaced out for a few seconds. Plus, the fact of the matter
is that sometimes we're just not in the right mindset for a lecture. You need to be in a
certain mood to be truly open to receiving and getting the information. As professors,
we love to think that we're so captivating that you'll be charmed into paying attention.
. .or as professors we just think "tough" now's the time for class and now's the time
you need to get it.
But videos allow you to access the lectures when you're ready. . .when you're most alert.
. .and you don't have to take in a 60-minute lecture all at once (and nobody does anyway).
. .and if you need a break, you can just pause it. You can go back and move forward. You
have control.
Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, has a great presentation—a TED talk—called
"Let's Use Video to Revolutionize Education," which I want you to watch—it's funny, engaging,
and important. It will also help you learn more about the power of videos in the educational
process and in our class.
So now I want to engage in another type of educational experiment—blending face-to-face
classes with online learning—so that we have the best of both worlds. The lectures
for the course will pretty much always be given through these videos, which you watch
during our "online" day. I'm pretty sure there's never going to be a week where there's one
hour worth of video lectures. So you're going to have the time to engage in writing, which
as I said before is going to enhance your understanding of the reading, prepare you
to have really interesting in-class discussions, and help you with the bigger course projects.
Our course is going to be challenging, stimulating, and—believe it or not—a lot of fun.