In-Class to Online: Looking Back on the Last Year
Overview:
We had folks...who started out with a "Is it working" question and then realized that they didn't even really know what they were looking for. And so they began instead with a kind of descriptive question, just looking at what went on."
Hutchings, Pat. "Taxonomy of Questions from the Intro to Opening Lines." YouTube, uploaded by CELatElon, 11 Sept. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCxPttq_e_Y.
The above quote, taken from a YouTube video provided to SoTL project participants in the first week, gave me a comfortable starting point in my thinking about how I would approach reflecting on the last year of teaching online. Without much downtime to process what had happened in order to know if it was a success, I felt I needed to establish more of a foundation of sorts to start.
My initial desire was to place myself in the precarious position of having to use the online tools that I ask my students to engage with in my courses. While recounting my experiences with certain methodologies, I wanted to "flip" the experience on myself knowing that it wouldn't be as comfortable as, say, writing a reflective essay. I thought that the challenge of constructing an entire website would actually be fun and creative, and it was! I purposely designed each page with a different layout among other features, but similar feel with colors and font. This also challenged me to present my reflections and findings in new ways and the results surprised me.
At times I merely describe the class, the Canvas Modules, or the tools I used. This was helpful to me in order to "see" what I had done. However, I also found I would give myself advice, put down thoughts for future exploration, or just post something worth being able to access again. I ended up with a combination of approaches and styles, not just visually, but philosophically, analytically, and rhetorically. Reflection doesn't just happen on one plane, but is multi-dimensional, I've come to discover. While the above quote helped me begin my project, I was happy to realize that it didn't hold me back in my discoveries either.
The final two pages, the Diary and Comments tabs, are invitations to explore an even more personal side of reflection. First, I wanted to keep a small diary of the journal of the journey. It serves as a Russian doll of reflection: the last year to this Reflective Project to each individual course to how stages of the project came along. The Comments tab is to allow this website to be interactive and not just introspective. Teaching is an extremely social activity and I wanted this project to be more interactive than just a submission to the project coordinator. While I realize there are future opportunities to develop this into publishable and sharable work, why not have this part of it be shared, too? Visitor, your comments, reactions, and observations are welcome in order to build up my personal SoTL archive of the last year--to serve as a reminder that as we sat in front of our computers each day (and even for this project!) that we were, in fact, not alone.
The end result is a combination of things: descriptions, realizations, critiques, experiments, contrasts, explorations, discoveries, and more! I am grateful for the chance to have been able to confront the realities of the last year of teaching online. Although I don't know where the project is headed next, I do hope that I have learned something about my teaching, my resilience, and my eagerness to explore the oftentimes uncomfortable facets of scholarship.
Website created by: Kelli MacCartey, Ph.D.
Distinguished Lecturer, English Department
University of Tennessee Knoxville
An award was granted from Teaching and Learning Innovation for completion of this SoTL Reflection Project, May-June 2021.
My initial desire was to place myself in the precarious position of having to use the online tools that I ask my students to engage with in my courses. While recounting my experiences with certain methodologies, I wanted to "flip" the experience on myself knowing that it wouldn't be as comfortable as, say, writing a reflective essay. I thought that the challenge of constructing an entire website would actually be fun and creative, and it was! I purposely designed each page with a different layout among other features, but similar feel with colors and font. This also challenged me to present my reflections and findings in new ways and the results surprised me.
At times I merely describe the class, the Canvas Modules, or the tools I used. This was helpful to me in order to "see" what I had done. However, I also found I would give myself advice, put down thoughts for future exploration, or just post something worth being able to access again. I ended up with a combination of approaches and styles, not just visually, but philosophically, analytically, and rhetorically. Reflection doesn't just happen on one plane, but is multi-dimensional, I've come to discover. While the above quote helped me begin my project, I was happy to realize that it didn't hold me back in my discoveries either.
The final two pages, the Diary and Comments tabs, are invitations to explore an even more personal side of reflection. First, I wanted to keep a small diary of the journal of the journey. It serves as a Russian doll of reflection: the last year to this Reflective Project to each individual course to how stages of the project came along. The Comments tab is to allow this website to be interactive and not just introspective. Teaching is an extremely social activity and I wanted this project to be more interactive than just a submission to the project coordinator. While I realize there are future opportunities to develop this into publishable and sharable work, why not have this part of it be shared, too? Visitor, your comments, reactions, and observations are welcome in order to build up my personal SoTL archive of the last year--to serve as a reminder that as we sat in front of our computers each day (and even for this project!) that we were, in fact, not alone.
The end result is a combination of things: descriptions, realizations, critiques, experiments, contrasts, explorations, discoveries, and more! I am grateful for the chance to have been able to confront the realities of the last year of teaching online. Although I don't know where the project is headed next, I do hope that I have learned something about my teaching, my resilience, and my eagerness to explore the oftentimes uncomfortable facets of scholarship.
Website created by: Kelli MacCartey, Ph.D.
Distinguished Lecturer, English Department
University of Tennessee Knoxville
An award was granted from Teaching and Learning Innovation for completion of this SoTL Reflection Project, May-June 2021.