Since getting started on the Online Learning Initiative, I have been thoroughly enjoying learning about online tools and online courses (thanks to Steve for the Wiki information, and Jim for a plethora of ideas.)
Most exciting of all, though, is that I have found myself thinking differently even about my existing conventional classes. One example comes from class meeting this week in a summer offering of the Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa.
On Tuesday morning, I had an e-mail from my sister Helen, who is now traveling in South Africa with her daughter; she wrote to give me her SA mobile phone number and tell me about her travels (mainly in game parks and rural areas; I won’t bore you with the details of her tales of canoeing past hippos and crocodiles.)
On Tuesday night Helen was to have dinner with an old high school friend of mine who is now in charge of eco-tourism in KwaZulu Natal Province, and they were meeting in one of the province’s game parks. Then I had an OLI-inspired idea, and called my sister to arrange for her and my friend to talk to my Africa class that afternoon. We had a voice-only connection, but I put it on the classroom speakers, and we had a great back-and-forth with the students asking all kinds of questions about South Africa, eco-tourism, and more. It wasn’t on the syllabus, but it was a teachable moment, and it worked very well.
Yesterday I sent an e-mail to a senior administrator I happen to know at an English-medium Arab university that offers regional geography classes, and broached with him the idea of collaboration in regional geography courses. He was very enthusiastic, and immediately forwarded my e-mail to the university president, and to the Geography Department. Bureaucratic and political issues might slow down or block collaboration from becoming a reality, but I mention it here because there is clearly an appetite out there for online inter-university collaboration at an international level.
In the Fall semester, I have decided to include a two-week online component in all of my classes, an opportunity to experiment with some ideas I am thinking about for the online course (I hope I will be able to teach some synchronous online classes from abroad.)
I haven’t many any great breakthroughs, and I still have only the vaguest idea of the form my online course will take. Perhaps I’m even behind schedule. But I’m having a lot of fun.