A Pedagogy of Choice

I have always felt excitement at the beginning of a new academic year or semester. When I was a kid, I loved going back-to-school shopping for clothes, folders and other supplies. After bringing home my goodies, I spent the rest of the night organizing my new Trapper Keeper with paper and dividers carefully written out to correspond to my new classes. I wrote my schedule with times and room numbers on the front page, so I wouldn’t get lost in the hallways.

I have approached teaching with the same excitement. It’s a reset and an adventure with every new class. Much like the organization of my Trapper Keeper, I organize my classes in Canvas. I carefully design each assignment while scaffolding to the next to build on concepts and content. I build overview pages for each module and carefully assign open, due and close dates that allow students enough time to work on their weekly projects. I pay attention to the design of each assignment and page so that students know what to expect.

I am organized. Maybe too organized. Too rigid in my expectations, because not all people are like me.

I have always loved education, and with each new class, I learn new things -- even now, my students teach me. But unlike my younger years in school, I now have to pay attention to the end-of-course student evaluations of my classes and my teaching. In “normal” years, they were mostly positive reviews, except for an outlier who told me what a horrible person I was.

Despite my hard work, my organization, my design this past semester, some students ranked me much lower than previous semesters, and I cried. I admit it. But it forced me to really look at my course design and my expectations for students, especially given our current situation. I tried to approach the fall with grace and a high level of leniency toward my students, but I don’t think I achieved my goal.

I spent hundreds of hours in my courses for the semester, which (of course) does not count the numerous videos I created, hundreds of emails and hours upon hours of Zoom sessions -- nor my face-to-face classes with students for my five sections. In short, teaching online during a pandemic is no joke. It takes fortitude. It takes organization. But I am learning that it also takes flexibility and a willingness to move beyond the boxes that I create for myself and my students.

A Rumination

I have not felt the same excitement this year as I have in the past. COVID-19 is affecting me and my students. Should I chalk these evaluations up to their negative feelings toward online and hybrid courses that they were not expecting to take? To the pandemic itself? Perhaps, but I think that I need to rethink my own pedagogy and ruminate on their rankings and words.

I have been reading about critical digital pedagogy and reflecting on my own authority in the classroom both physically and in Canvas. I believe that my students are telling me I am too teacher-focused in my classes, although they don’t use those words. Through my rigid organization and list of requirements for assignments -- which I thought would help them -- I have somehow forgotten the joy and excitement of education. How do I teach my students the subject matter, help them to achieve the learning outcomes as required and still help them feel heard, respected and excited about learning?

According to Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel in “Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Definition,” critical digital pedagogy focuses on equality and a distribution of power, is multivoiced and collaborative, and favors the human over technology. Those ideas resonate with me, but how do I accomplish all this in practice? How do I turn my hybrid and asynchronous classes into a space where students are not just repositories for information? How do I help them find their own joy in seeking out knowledge? How can I create a mostly online course where they feel the humanity of learning and I feel the humanity of teaching?

My classes began recently, and I still don’t feel the excitement and joy that I have in past years, but I have reworked my classes yet again, and I am hopeful. I will always try to be hopeful.

For the spring, I have redesigned my courses using a pedagogy of choice. Choice in the assignments they complete. Choice in the topics they speak and write about. Choice in extra-credit assignments. Choice to do the minimum or go beyond. Choice to come to class or meet me weekly in my Zoom office hours, especially if they are ill or in quarantine.

I have built in late due dates but will work with students. I will include surveys at the beginning and middle of the semester, checking in with them and asking for feedback so I can change what isn’t working and keep what does.

I am hoping that by working choices into each assignment, students will feel more agency. Of course, I know that I am still making the overarching choices, but I am striving for a more student-centered learning experience.

I need to find the joy and excitement of a new semester, a new class and new students again. I need that to feel human and energized. I will try to not take the end-of-course evaluations personally, but I will use them as a tool to reimagine my courses every semester. I hope students will respond positively to this pedagogy of choice. But if they don’t, I will again reflect on their feedback, and I will try something new next semester.