This is me. I'm happy in this picture because I'm on vacation with my wife, sister, and brother-in-law in Germany.
An introduction to who I am and my thoughts on distance learning prior to any training
My name is David Taylor and I am a part-time (adjunct) instructor of biology at College of DuPage (CoD) as well as at Elmhurst College(EC). I typically spend my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays teaching majors and non-majors biology courses at EC, and my Tuesday and Thursdays at CoD teaching non-majors biology and environmental science. I am originally from Germany, but my father being American eventually led to our family moving to the United States when I was young. I completed a B.S. in biology at Ohio Northern University, a small comprehensive university, and a M.S. in biology at Binghamton University (part of the State University of New York system). When I first left for graduate school I planned on earning a Ph.D. and eventually working in ecological research, but fell in love with teaching along the way. As a result, I decided to pursue a teaching track, rather than a research one. I moved to Illinois 3 years ago to be closer to my girlfriend (now wife), and have since taught part-time at EC and CoD.
The vast majority of my teaching experience thus far has been at the college-level---all of which has been in the traditional, face-to-face classroom setting. Throughout graduate school, I served a laboratory instructor for a variety of biology classes. Since I have graduated with my M.S., I have served as an adjunct instructor in many different courses at EC, CoD, Lewis University, and Binghamton University. In addition, I spent 2 years as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Biology at my alma mater, Ohio Northern University, teaching introductory biology, zoology, and anatomy courses. The sole exception to my college teaching experiences was when I accepted a 1-year National Science Foundation Teaching Fellowship to teach a college-level course to high school seniors and juniors at LaFayette Public High School (LaFayette, NY). The differences between teaching at the secondary and post-secondary level became glaringly apparent and I found myself challenged in a variety of ways to adapt to the significantly different learning environment of high school. It was a personally impacting cultural experience as well, as a significant percentage of LaFayette students come from the nearby Onondaga native American reservation.
In the context of this on-line course, my learning and teaching experiences have been limited. I have taught mostly at the college-level, and never in an on-line format. Moreover, I have never taken an on-line course before. While I initially resisted the on-line format and the rise of distance learning, I have become very interested in the subject and am eager to start this course and learn more about the subject. I was aware that on-line education was becoming more popular, but was surprised to hear some of the numbers listed in the NBC learn video on the course Blackboard website: distance learning is now a $6.2 billion industry with 3,500,000 students enrolled every year. Those numbers are for the United States only!
I have developed what I would call a very personal teaching style, so have my reservations about the effectiveness of distance learning. In my classes, I work hard to make a point of meeting my students on an appropriate personal level. I strive to learn what brings a particular student into my class, where they are planning to take their education, and what their professional goals are. I spend a great deal of time writing thoughtful comments on top of quizzes, exams, and other assignments. I believe that this makes my students more comfortable in coming to me for help or class concerns or whatever is on their mind. I also think that having a professor that students feel is truly interested in their development makes them more likely to participate and work hard for themselves. Obviously, in a distance-learning class, the opportunity for this level of personal interaction is far less. A professor can still write thoughtful comments on assignments, but I fear that these lose some value when you have not spent time with an instructor personally. An on-line course is as good as the preparation an instructor puts into it, in terms of designing challenging assignments and linking stimulating course materials, but I fear that there is less room for flexibility in distance education, less chance for an instructor to speak and listen to students about their development in the class. Teaching a science course adds other concerns to this list. How can I efficiently administer and proctor on-line exams? How can I incorporate laboratory components in an on-line format? Perhaps I am old-fashioned in this regard and am eager to have my mind changed by courses like this one! However, I valued the face-to-face interaction opportunities I had with the faculty at my undergraduate institution above all else in my educational career.
Along with the trepidation I have for on-line teaching and learning, I can see some clear advantages of the practice as well. First and foremost, since the class is on-line, there is no need to come to campus. In my environmental science classes we discuss a great deal about our own personal carbon footprints----taking on-line courses cuts down the need for gas, traffic, time to commute; there are obvious environmental and financial benefits to increasing the number of courses we take and teach on-line. Not to mention all the paper we would save by not printing everything out!
Finally, I should say something about my favorite teachers in the past. Since I have been blessed by having the opportunity to learn from many wonderful teachers, it is impossible for me to single one out as truly the “best”. However, my undergraduate botany and geology professor comes to mind. I remember this professor as being very clear about course expectation and organized. We received a list of expectation and due dates at the beginning of the semester, and these did not change. Clarity in this respect is vital, in my opinion, to developing trust between an instructor and students and fostering a productive learning environment. In addition, this professor was very personable. In his classes, you always felt respected by him and knew that if you worked hard, he would bend over backwards to help you in any way that he could. Again, I benefitted greatly from this feeling of mutual respect and concern for my personal development. This teaching style is one I have tried to emulate as I feel, more often than not, it encourages students to work hard.
In conclusion, I am excited and eager to take this course. Obviously, I have a lot to learn about distance learning and all of its opportunities. I hope that this course (and others after this one) will help alleviate some of my concerns about how this practice works and that in the near future I will be designing and teaching my own on-line sections of biology here at CoD.
The vast majority of my teaching experience thus far has been at the college-level---all of which has been in the traditional, face-to-face classroom setting. Throughout graduate school, I served a laboratory instructor for a variety of biology classes. Since I have graduated with my M.S., I have served as an adjunct instructor in many different courses at EC, CoD, Lewis University, and Binghamton University. In addition, I spent 2 years as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Biology at my alma mater, Ohio Northern University, teaching introductory biology, zoology, and anatomy courses. The sole exception to my college teaching experiences was when I accepted a 1-year National Science Foundation Teaching Fellowship to teach a college-level course to high school seniors and juniors at LaFayette Public High School (LaFayette, NY). The differences between teaching at the secondary and post-secondary level became glaringly apparent and I found myself challenged in a variety of ways to adapt to the significantly different learning environment of high school. It was a personally impacting cultural experience as well, as a significant percentage of LaFayette students come from the nearby Onondaga native American reservation.
In the context of this on-line course, my learning and teaching experiences have been limited. I have taught mostly at the college-level, and never in an on-line format. Moreover, I have never taken an on-line course before. While I initially resisted the on-line format and the rise of distance learning, I have become very interested in the subject and am eager to start this course and learn more about the subject. I was aware that on-line education was becoming more popular, but was surprised to hear some of the numbers listed in the NBC learn video on the course Blackboard website: distance learning is now a $6.2 billion industry with 3,500,000 students enrolled every year. Those numbers are for the United States only!
I have developed what I would call a very personal teaching style, so have my reservations about the effectiveness of distance learning. In my classes, I work hard to make a point of meeting my students on an appropriate personal level. I strive to learn what brings a particular student into my class, where they are planning to take their education, and what their professional goals are. I spend a great deal of time writing thoughtful comments on top of quizzes, exams, and other assignments. I believe that this makes my students more comfortable in coming to me for help or class concerns or whatever is on their mind. I also think that having a professor that students feel is truly interested in their development makes them more likely to participate and work hard for themselves. Obviously, in a distance-learning class, the opportunity for this level of personal interaction is far less. A professor can still write thoughtful comments on assignments, but I fear that these lose some value when you have not spent time with an instructor personally. An on-line course is as good as the preparation an instructor puts into it, in terms of designing challenging assignments and linking stimulating course materials, but I fear that there is less room for flexibility in distance education, less chance for an instructor to speak and listen to students about their development in the class. Teaching a science course adds other concerns to this list. How can I efficiently administer and proctor on-line exams? How can I incorporate laboratory components in an on-line format? Perhaps I am old-fashioned in this regard and am eager to have my mind changed by courses like this one! However, I valued the face-to-face interaction opportunities I had with the faculty at my undergraduate institution above all else in my educational career.
Along with the trepidation I have for on-line teaching and learning, I can see some clear advantages of the practice as well. First and foremost, since the class is on-line, there is no need to come to campus. In my environmental science classes we discuss a great deal about our own personal carbon footprints----taking on-line courses cuts down the need for gas, traffic, time to commute; there are obvious environmental and financial benefits to increasing the number of courses we take and teach on-line. Not to mention all the paper we would save by not printing everything out!
Finally, I should say something about my favorite teachers in the past. Since I have been blessed by having the opportunity to learn from many wonderful teachers, it is impossible for me to single one out as truly the “best”. However, my undergraduate botany and geology professor comes to mind. I remember this professor as being very clear about course expectation and organized. We received a list of expectation and due dates at the beginning of the semester, and these did not change. Clarity in this respect is vital, in my opinion, to developing trust between an instructor and students and fostering a productive learning environment. In addition, this professor was very personable. In his classes, you always felt respected by him and knew that if you worked hard, he would bend over backwards to help you in any way that he could. Again, I benefitted greatly from this feeling of mutual respect and concern for my personal development. This teaching style is one I have tried to emulate as I feel, more often than not, it encourages students to work hard.
In conclusion, I am excited and eager to take this course. Obviously, I have a lot to learn about distance learning and all of its opportunities. I hope that this course (and others after this one) will help alleviate some of my concerns about how this practice works and that in the near future I will be designing and teaching my own on-line sections of biology here at CoD.
A response from one of my classmates
Hello, David! Nice to see a fellow biology teacher in this class :^)
And we have something else in common--I, too, began my college experience with the intention of pursuing a life in research, in my case, in genetics. I completed a MS in genetics, and was in my first year of my PhD program when I finally gave in to what had become obvious to me and everyone else around me--research was *not* my strong point, and I really loved the teaching I was doing. My teaching assistantship had originally simply been the means to support my research development, but it had become the center of my academic life. I've never regretted the decision to change directions in the middle of the river, so to speak. I ended up leaving the PhD program in genetics and earning a second MS in cell biology, focused on teaching. Other than the great enjoyment I got from the teaching activities, a side benefit was the extra time to explore some great coursework of my own. My understanding (and the foundation of knowledge supporting my teaching) was broadened and strengthened by the courses I took in History of Science, and in paleontology and anthropology.
I understand your trepidation concerning on-line education. I imagine all of us shared a lot of those concerns. The experience between you and your students is different when you are teaching on-line, but it need not be cold and distant. If you're on top of things, you actually spend more individual time with each student. Be ready for this--CoD did us no favors by arbitrarily imposing that new enrollment size on our Internet courses. But there are methods you can use in your on-line courses that will foster personal communication between you and your students.
I'm a pretty traditional "lecture and chalk board" teacher, and adapting to the on-line format was a wrench for me--giving up those lecture hours was very hard. Because I developed my course pretty much alone, without a lot of guidance or mentoring, I developed it the way I wanted to, rather than according to someone's idea of how an Internet course should be designed. And I salved my lecture needs by writing a *lot* of content material for the course, as opposed to relying on the text alone. The Internet content of my course has close to 200 pages of stuff. The essays I wrote allowed me to express things the ways I wanted them expressed, and to emphasize the things I felt were most significant for my students. These essays are my very personal stamp on the content in my course.
The problems of labs and exams are tough ones. My approach to the labs was to utilize a combination of simulation labs and "kitchen" labs, but there are compromises that are a bit uncomfortable. For instance, there's obviously no microscope work associated with the on-line Bio class (one big reason I wouldn't consider developing an on-line version of the 1151 course). And no real chemistry applications. Some people who teach on-line science classes actually require that students come to the college to do the labs.
For exams, I decided to think a bit sideways. One tactic is to insist that students arrange for proctored exam settings in their local environments, but I really dislike that option. So I thought a while about how I could teach a course without actually giving traditional exams. My solution was to assign what I call "exam projects." These are large projects combining content requirements, critical thinking and reasoning. Some of them are multi-part, and take several weeks to complete. They result in a lot of grading time, but I feel they have been very successful, and I don't think I've sacrificed any of the "rigor" we are always concerned about.
If you'd like to drop by my office some morning, I'd be happy to show you some of my course. I'm proud of it, though I'm hoping I'm going to learn some things in this class which will enable me to make it better.
And we have something else in common--I, too, began my college experience with the intention of pursuing a life in research, in my case, in genetics. I completed a MS in genetics, and was in my first year of my PhD program when I finally gave in to what had become obvious to me and everyone else around me--research was *not* my strong point, and I really loved the teaching I was doing. My teaching assistantship had originally simply been the means to support my research development, but it had become the center of my academic life. I've never regretted the decision to change directions in the middle of the river, so to speak. I ended up leaving the PhD program in genetics and earning a second MS in cell biology, focused on teaching. Other than the great enjoyment I got from the teaching activities, a side benefit was the extra time to explore some great coursework of my own. My understanding (and the foundation of knowledge supporting my teaching) was broadened and strengthened by the courses I took in History of Science, and in paleontology and anthropology.
I understand your trepidation concerning on-line education. I imagine all of us shared a lot of those concerns. The experience between you and your students is different when you are teaching on-line, but it need not be cold and distant. If you're on top of things, you actually spend more individual time with each student. Be ready for this--CoD did us no favors by arbitrarily imposing that new enrollment size on our Internet courses. But there are methods you can use in your on-line courses that will foster personal communication between you and your students.
I'm a pretty traditional "lecture and chalk board" teacher, and adapting to the on-line format was a wrench for me--giving up those lecture hours was very hard. Because I developed my course pretty much alone, without a lot of guidance or mentoring, I developed it the way I wanted to, rather than according to someone's idea of how an Internet course should be designed. And I salved my lecture needs by writing a *lot* of content material for the course, as opposed to relying on the text alone. The Internet content of my course has close to 200 pages of stuff. The essays I wrote allowed me to express things the ways I wanted them expressed, and to emphasize the things I felt were most significant for my students. These essays are my very personal stamp on the content in my course.
The problems of labs and exams are tough ones. My approach to the labs was to utilize a combination of simulation labs and "kitchen" labs, but there are compromises that are a bit uncomfortable. For instance, there's obviously no microscope work associated with the on-line Bio class (one big reason I wouldn't consider developing an on-line version of the 1151 course). And no real chemistry applications. Some people who teach on-line science classes actually require that students come to the college to do the labs.
For exams, I decided to think a bit sideways. One tactic is to insist that students arrange for proctored exam settings in their local environments, but I really dislike that option. So I thought a while about how I could teach a course without actually giving traditional exams. My solution was to assign what I call "exam projects." These are large projects combining content requirements, critical thinking and reasoning. Some of them are multi-part, and take several weeks to complete. They result in a lot of grading time, but I feel they have been very successful, and I don't think I've sacrificed any of the "rigor" we are always concerned about.
If you'd like to drop by my office some morning, I'd be happy to show you some of my course. I'm proud of it, though I'm hoping I'm going to learn some things in this class which will enable me to make it better.
Another response from another classmate
David, It is nice to get acquainted by way of this on-line community. I found myself smiling when I read your mention of the differences, and challenges, you found in teaching at the secondary and post-secondary levels. The challenges I faced when I walked into a class of eigth graders, after having spent years training in a corporate setting, may not have been the challenges you experienced, but I can imagine we both were presented with the opportunity to stretch and grow. As I read your introduction, and those of others, I found myself thinking how fortunate it is to be in your company. Diverse knowledge and experience, coupled with the drive that causes a person to continue studying (I am a perpetual student, at heart) and help others in their studies, is valuable beyond measure. Like you, I prefer classes where I can come to know the student and his/her needs well, and I imagine that is best accomplished when I can see the student's face and overall body language, and see how they interact with others. At the same time, I imagine that on-line instruction, peppered with engrossing multi-media content, might greatly increase the ability of many people to learn whereas it might not otherwise be easy for them to do so. My eighth graders (and administrators also?) seemed genuinely shocked to have a religious education instructor who "packed" multi-media equipment and showed Youtube videos. I learned that part of what I was doing was beneficial when I saw they were engrossed in what was playing on that monitor and they later remembered that information better than some of my lectures. At the same time, however, I suspected there must be better ways, educated ways, better practices...to do what I was trying to do. I share your intrepedation that comes with not having a lot of experience with on-line teaching, and I share your enthusiasm. Again, it is nice knowing you and knowing where you are coming from.
My E-portfolio (this website is up!)
I’m feeling pretty proud of myself right now, because I’ve got my very own website and soon-to-be electronic portfolio set up! Just kidding—the process of creating it could not have been more simple so I really not that proud of myself at all. I am excited at the prospect of compiling evidence of my development as a teacher capable of creating a distance learning course on-line. This free weebly website looks professional enough, so it should serve as a good place for future employers/supervisors of mine to go if they want to see examples of my work. That is what I see as the biggest advantage of creating this on-line portfolio---basically it will serve well as a digital warehouse containing exactly the types of documents, videos, etc that a potential employer will want me to create for an on-line class. Another advantage of our on-line “warehouse” that I can see is that it will allow for ease of personal reflection. By compiling everything that learn how to create in this course (or potentially the 5 courses that lead to the TOUT certificate), it will be very simple to review our personal development in distance education. I’m already interested to see how my opinion of my own introduction changes throughout this semester, let alone next year. The e-portfolio is a diary of sorts, I guess, where we will write all our thoughts and showcase our abilities as they relate to distance learning.
My major concern thus far concerning the e-portfolio is what the size of the final website will look like. I was surprised how much space simply posting my introduction and 2 comments from my colleagues took up. At the end of the semester, I’m sure the website will be packed full with information on many different pages. I can only imagine how bulky it will be if I choose to complete the TOUT certificate and am posting 5 semesters worth of things to it. If this website is really to serve as a portfolio of our work, as in a good place for supervisors to go to and easily see example of what we do, I imagine that the website will need to be stream-lined a little for ease of viewing. Having said that, I have not completely explored the options on the weebly website yet, so perhaps there are some ways to compartmentalize information so that specific documents are easily to find and navigate to.
My major concern thus far concerning the e-portfolio is what the size of the final website will look like. I was surprised how much space simply posting my introduction and 2 comments from my colleagues took up. At the end of the semester, I’m sure the website will be packed full with information on many different pages. I can only imagine how bulky it will be if I choose to complete the TOUT certificate and am posting 5 semesters worth of things to it. If this website is really to serve as a portfolio of our work, as in a good place for supervisors to go to and easily see example of what we do, I imagine that the website will need to be stream-lined a little for ease of viewing. Having said that, I have not completely explored the options on the weebly website yet, so perhaps there are some ways to compartmentalize information so that specific documents are easily to find and navigate to.