Monday, January 31, 2011

From WHY to HOW: Dickie Selfe's "Techno-Pedagogical Explorations: Toward Sustainable Technology-Rich Instruction

I've been trying to determine what it is that sets Dickie Self's study "Techno-Pedagogical Explorations: Towards Sustainable Technology-Rich Instruction" apart from a large majority of the work done on the intersections between technology and composition. I think I've hit on it: while other scholars expend considerable energy explaining WHY composition instructors should consider implementing more technology in their classrooms and assignments, and offering example assignments as a second-thought, Selfe begins his study by acknowledging his audience has already accepted this pedagogical need. Whether or not this warrant is successful is difficult to say, but Selfe does offer a great deal of extremely interesting and practical suggestions for putting the theory into practice. In short, Selfe tells us HOW to approach "technology-rich" curricula in very specific and thorough terms.

The study is full of helpful material; but i'm most interested in Selfe's discussion of the experimental nature of "techno-pedagogy" and his realization of the need for "sustainability."

"All Technology-Rich Pedagogy
Is Experimental"

Selfe warns us about the "experimental" nature of "technology-rich pedagogy" by exhaustively listing the multitude of dynamic factors involved:

The fact is that the interface or interfaces that we use, students' lives, access levels, the underlying networks, people's placements on the technological learning curve, the material conditions that surround, the class and students, the curriculum, and everyone's expectations are all unstable and change term by term, sometimes even class session by class session. (18)

Composition teachers, Selfe asserts, must be constantly aware that teaching with technology will always be "experimental" on some level and shape their pedagogy and classroom practices accordingly, often by involving students into the dialogue of the experiment.


"Commit Yourself to Developing
Locally Sustainable Teaching Practices"


This student involvement is inherently connected to Self's suggestion that composition teachers "commit yourself to developing locally sustainable teaching practices" (20). Such sustainability emerges from a public awareness of objective (either specific assignment objective or course objective) shared between student and instructor. Sustainability can be realized, then, by instructors who "apply a structured use of the technology to that objective, watch how the community of students reacts to your approach, and let them help you redesign the approach to better accomplish the objective next time" (20).

I'm attracted to the apparent ease with which Selfe is able to experiment with his classes and empower students to help him revise curricula that is ineffectual. The application of such a pedagogical attitude is also enormously comforting to those faced with incorporating technology-rich media and assignments into an English course for the first time. That this type of instruction can be experimental and is always evolving to meet students' needs and course objectives takes some of the pressure off.

At the same time, as a relatively inexperienced composition instructor, I get the feeling that "experimental" equates "unprepared." I do modify the curricula and schedule of a course I'm teaching based on student feedback at times, but not nearly enough to call it an "experiment." Anyone else feeling this? I also wonder how status and experience enable teachers to be more experimental?


1 comment:

  1. Another difference is that Selfe isn't really advocating complex multimodal assignments so much as using new technologies pedagogically, like the way we are using this blog, Rather than arguing that we all should include high stakes multimodal composition, which he doesn't rule out, he seems more focused on using technology to teach what we would teach anyway.

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