pedagogy

Our first week on Williams’s Paterson we began by constructing a question gallery. First, come up with a question about some key detail of the poem. Second, come up with a question about some formal element of the poem. Third, come up with a question about a larger question raised by the poem. Once the questions have been pinned to the wall, used colored post-its to annotate, respond to, and further question the questions.

Wildly over the top, but charming and fascinating: http://bit.ly/Oijddm. ModPo will change the world, she says. I'm heartened by what she says about class, and by this: “Granting access to knowledge to everyone, anywhere in the world, no matter their level of education, or motives for learning, is downright revolutionary” and “I’d call it one of the greatest humanitarian efforts we’ve seen. So when class starts just a few hours from now, Indeed my world will change forever.”

[From a commentary published in Psychology Today:]

Yes it's true I have studied modern poetry before — in the normal small-class setting. Cappucinos and berets optional.   At Bennington, at Boston University and Breadloaf. But I've never taken a course taught by a UPenn professor, with a class size of 28,000. And counting.

 The class I am about to take, it starts on Monday, is one that is offered by Coursera. And what is Coursera? Coursera is the new world baby. It's an online college (kind of) offering free classes to anyone anywhere. (coursera.com) Classes taught at Stanford, Duke, and obviously UPenn. Top of the line. FOR FREE. That's right. The best things in life are free. If only Abbie Hoffman were still alive to see this. He'd be grinning ear to bearded ear. So would Walt Whitman for that matter. I guess you can tell I'm excited.

I'm not the only one champing at the bit for Coursera’s Modern Poetry class (or ModPo as dubbed by its professor, Al Filreis). Turns out there are over 3000 of us tweeting on Twitter, and getting responses from our teacher! And he's stoked too. A life of the mind has never seemed so connected to the world. I get to read Emily Dickinson and yes Walt Whitman and even John Cage and I get to write essays and takes quizzes and if it all goes well I will get a certificate of completion. It's too soon to say but I'm saying it anyway. This may be the solution for anyone who wants a do-over on choosing a major, or has finally found the time to dig into something they love but could never fit into a “required” courseload, or it may be the solution for those of us who never wanted college to end. Maybe the answer is never finish. Never stop learning. Turn your life into a growing patchwork quilt of classes taken, certificates earned. And who knows? Maybe Coursera will find a way to give out degrees. Crazy? So is talking to your iPhone and getting a response.

[read the rest of the article]

A week before the 10-week ModPo course begins (current enrollment, as of this moment: 28,000 people worldwide) several thousand of those in the course are already talking in a Facebook group and on Twitter. We were discussing a poem by Emily Dickinson. People began saying things about the poem that in all my years of reading and teaching it I hadn't thought of. Then I posted this, above (apologies for the enthusiasm).

New article about MOOCs (the “massively open online courses” that have become all the rage this spring and summer — of which I am myself teaching one): link.

A 2008 publication, Cover without a Record, was created by students and faculty who were part of an experimental year-long seminar co-sponsored by the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) here at Penn. Cover without a Record works with — plays off, as it were — the then-current Christian Marclay exhibit at the ICA.

A brilliant former student, now pondering a career as a teacher, asks a few questions. I hope he will forgive me the pithy responses.

What do you think is the purpose of education?

Not to teach but to enable learning. That will sometimes entail teaching, but mostly will entail other modes. These other modes are best effected in small groups (either in person or virtual, but ideally small in number). These other modes should probably not be put into practice in a classroom. Maybe, to take one possible example, in an old house.

Why do you think it is important to teach?

Not “important to teach,” but important to be part of organizations dedicated to enabling learning. The reasons for that are obvious, I hope. Learners often (although not always) benefit from guidance when they deal with materials and with problems new to them. They also benefit from guidance when the environment (outside schools — e.g. stressed or nonfunctioning families, war-torn or poverty-stricken communities, etc.) is not otherwise conducive to thought.

What strategies or methods do you think are effective?

Leading discussions of problems and materials enables learning and application of lessons to other contexts and situations. Lecturing enables consumption, reinforcement of subject discipline, belief in the authority of the lecturer, and silos of intellection.

In June 1999 I and a hundred or so others (teachers, poets, poet-teachers) gathered at Bard College for a conference on the possible connection between experimental poetry and experimental pedagogy, hosted by Joan Retallack among others. There were six or seven of us from the Kelly Writers House at the conference, and on the last morning of the three-day confab (there on the slopes leading down to the eastern side of the Catskills-region Hudson River, it did at times feel like summer camp), we presented about the Writers House itself as an alternative learning community focused on poetics.

Conference done. Then we promised ourselves we’d do some kind of followup in Philadelphia, and indeed did so in early 2001. Joan Retallack came down from Bard, reading some of her own poetry that seemed relevant to the theme (alt-poetry, alt-pedagogy), and then Kerry Sherin, KWH’s director at the time, described a transition to the next and longer part of the program: a discussion, as a follow-up to Bard, about specific pedagogical issues and practices. There were about forty of us in the room there at the Writers House, in addition to about thirty who were tuning in by live webcast. Louis Cabri, for instance, was then in Calgary — and participated by posing some questions.

Not long ago Jenny Lesser converted the old RealVideo-format recordings into audio-only mp3, which of course these days is a much more usable, portable mode.

Here's Kerry Sherin setting up the discussion, by, in part, remembering the Bard conference.
Here's 9 minutes or so on experiential learning.
Here's a discussion of what makes it difficult to teach experimental writing.
And here's a link to the whole 2-hour audio mp3, and, for your video fans and users, still, of the Real player, here's a link to the streaming video.