Unlearning Classroom Geography
As a faculty member in the 21st century preparing students for the 21st century, I need to unlearn — and help students unlearn — the definition of classroom community. Because my students and I live in a world that allows us to interact with others in a global context, we are not limited by the four walls that make up our assigned classroom.
This is not a new revelation for me. Even before the Internet, I involved students in service learning projects during which they needed to interact with members of the community. Although we were effectively limited to our geographic area, we were no longer limited by the classroom walls.
In the late 1990s, I was one of the first three professors to offer an on-line course at Kirtland Community College in Roscommon, Michigan where I also developed a strategy for bringing guest speakers into the on-line classroom. Although most of the students remained in the same geographic area and most-if not all-were simultaneously taking classes at Kirtland, we were able to invite in someone to interact with us who did not live in our geographic region.
Although my unlearning about the confines of the classroom began in the 1990s, unlearning is a continuous process. Learning to bring a guest lecturer into the on-line classroom was exciting in the 1990s and I even presented the concept at a state-wide conference. However, having one outside speaker became something to unlearn as well.
Today, my students and I are even less confined to the four walls of the Liberal Arts building at Schoolcraft College where I teach most of my classes. Initially, I began to post student portfolios and other assignments on-line. Because of advances in technology, my introductory writing students last semester were able to design websites themselves — for free — where they created portfolios on which they could easily obtain feedback.
Currently, my students are participating in the #FutureEd initiative where they are interacting on a global scale. Not only are they posting materials on the Ocelot Scholars website, but they are interacting with colleagues through the “History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education” MOOC as well as through the #FutureEd Roundtables being hosted by the Liberal Arts Network for Development, blogs published by HASTA, commenting on articles published in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside HigherEd. Other venues for interaction are being pursued.
Unlearning the geography of the classroom is not an easy task and I have been unlearning it for more than two decades; longer than some of my students have been alive. Helping students learn that they are not confined by the geography of the four classroom walls is now the challenge. Although some students are very excited to jump into the world of 21st century possibilities, others remain hesitant — and sometimes overtly resistant — to venturing outside the confines of the classroom. But, in the spirit of #FutureEd and solid pedagogy, we can unlearn together as we create a new paradigm for education.
- –Steven L. Berg, PhD
Photo Caption: Helen Glasner and Her Students, PS 28 in Detroit, Fall 1934. Ms. Glasner is Dr. Berg’s cousin.
This reflection was written as an assignment in the “History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education” MOOC. It has been cross posted at Ocelot Scholars.
sam hays
The Coursera course I am taking “Imagining Other Earths” has many gamers who are “world builders.” Here is what one wrote. This thinking and creativity is really going beyond the four walls! “If you’re interested in world-building, I recommend Hal Clement’s books – particularly Mission of Gravity. He builds unusual worlds and follows through with hard science on what it would be like to live there (too bad his characters aren’t generally on par with his worlds). The world in Mission of Gravity is huge – hundreds of gravities pull at the poles, but spinning so fast that equatorial gravity is only a couple of gees – the world is then disk-shaped. So humans can only survive with difficulty at the equator but they need to retrieve something crashed near the pole, so they hire local help; the inhabitants look like small armored caterpillars with medieval-level technology. The accounts of sea voyages through increasing gravity regions stand out.”