"When How You Teach Is Made Visible: Rethinking the Familiar Touchstones and Landmarks of Teaching"

by
Nancy Dieckelmann - Ph.D., RN, FAAN
Helen Denne Schulte Prof. School of Nursing
Robert Schuster - MA, Director, Simonds Center School of Nursing
Rebekah Hamilton - Doctoral Student

This narrative is of a teacher who has significant reservations about teaching at a distance. It makes mindful how a tendency to focus on technology in general, and perhaps on prescriptions for particular technologies, in probing for answers covers over or conceals the critical importance of understanding the common experiences of students, teachers and technologists. In this narrative the taken-for-granted and familiar practices of teaching are made visible in a new way through an experience in distance education. Perhaps distance education provides opportunities for teachers to rethink and improve their familiar touchstone and landmarks of teaching.

The instructional designer in this narrative cultivates the teacher's teaching skills by engaging in practice sessions. The teacher is encouraged to teach in front of a small group and be videotaped. But the teacher is then given the videotape to review privately. This unsure teacher is coached to imagine teaching and the thinking that teachers commonly do prior to class. The common and familiar practices of teaching are made visible for this teacher in new ways through preparing to teach a DE course. Because the instructional designer is also an experienced teacher, there is an ever-present presencing between them. The instructional designer attends the first classes where the teacher is afraid and literally refuses to touch a wand to a pad. The instructional designer stays open to helping the teacher increase comfort and skills of teaching, even the timing and pace of the course. For example, the instructional designer orchestrates the didactic presentation in a way that is not too long, and when students are freshest (this is an evening course) the teacher presents the area that is the most difficult.

We had to adapt the technology and the support behind the scenes to get him through it, but with that, the other amazing part is, once we got through the slides and the content, which I tried to keep to at least just a half of the class period or less, he came alive in the last half of the class. When he started relaying the experiences to these students, they were completely mesmerized. They just, you could tell, just were, just glued in to what he was saying and he also had the talent to know kind of when to pause, and turn it over to them, and say, have you ever had anything that was anything like this happen, or have you heard from any, you know, other people in the field, have they ever had to deal with any, and so he'd let them tell their stories...And then, of course, he had his many years of experience in different states. He hadn't just been in this one state, so he had all those umpteen years of experience, and many, many stories to tell. And so from about 7:30 or a little after, we usually give them a break, until 9:20, they were completely involved and absolutely no one left early ever. No one actually tried to get out of the class. I mean, we had excellent attendance, even in a night class. We, it was a solid class.

The ability of this instructional designer to connect, support and facilitate learning with an unsure teacher reveals the instructional designer as a DE teacher. Carefully the instructional designer assesses the situation and knows that gathering this teacher into the conditions under which this course must be taught will be difficult. By connecting with the strengths and good experiences the teacher has from teaching previously, the instructional designer calls forth what the teacher can do and does well as the teacher is gathered into this new DE course. The teacher is clearly unsure about using the technology and the instructional designer proffers to do what it takes to keep open a future of possibilities for the teacher to become involved more and more over time.

Later in the evening, the teacher begins to tell stories and excels. With help from the instructional designer to help the teacher become better at reading the students through their questions, at writing brief, meaningful and succinct DE course materials, and at planning dialogues that are engaging such that student attendance is high, and the course is highly evaluated by students and the unsure teacher. Thinking conversations among the students and the students and the teacher proliferate throughout the course. As the unsure teacher finishes the course, the meaning of this experience is that the common and familiar ways of teaching are challenged, rethought and made visible in new ways.

What does rethinking the familiar touchstones and landmarks of teaching mean to DE teachers? Teachers are often unaware of the pedagogies they use and how these shape their teaching skills and strategies until they are challenged. Teaching a distance education course is more than learning a new tool or approach to learning, it is also constituitively a personal review of expertise in teaching. It is a chance for the teacher to rethink what and how they teach. The teacher may be expecting the former, but not the latter. Faculty development in instructional technology often focuses on becoming skilled in DE tools and approaches but does not address nor make visible the disconcerting and unsettling/exciting effect on the teachers of this review of teaching expertise. Most faculty development programs fail to make the best of this experience. Would preparing teachers for how personal and current teaching expertise is both made visible and challenged assist teachers as they learn new approaches for DE?

Commonly we think of the DE teacher as the faculty of record. Literally the teacher who is assigned to teach the course. A critical perspective offers a challenge to this assumption. In distance education where frequently the teacher must rely on and depend on technologists in important ways, how much dependence constitutes becoming or being designated as the "teacher" or "co-teacher"? Serious challenges are occurring in major research universities regarding academic staff and teacher titles. Technologists, such as instructional designers, are often academic staff and the issue regards both the formal and informal status in university governance.

In this story, one is challenged to decide who is the teacher. Clearly there is a designated teacher who is unsure about learning the communications technology and is joined by another teacher who is conversant with the technology. The instructional designer in providing support to the teacher also teaches new ways to teach. This narrative can be interpreted as a common experience that will change as teachers become more at home in the new distance technologies. On the other hand, keeping up with the new instructional technologies will perhaps never be a common experience of teachers who will always need instructional designers as partners. Perhaps distance education is the place where new collaborative pedagogies are developing that encourage teachers to rethink and improve their familiar touchstones and landmarks of teaching and develop new partnerships - peer teaching.