I've spent a fair amount of time the past few weeks preparing the materials for a new online course I will teach this spring (PS 301-State and Local government). While I have taught the course numerous times as a face-to-face section, imagining it in the online realm was at first something of a challenge.
I've always taught it with a requirement for a high degree of student political involvement; we've attended city council meetings and planning commission hearings, gone to county court to listen to voir dire, and required students to do community service at local agencies. Additionally, my classes typically included a handful of guest lectures by local and state representatives; these were persons I felt were in the best position to convey the realities of state and local politics to my students.
Introducing the world wide web into my thought processes, and spending lots of "google-time," I've discovered that I really don't have to change the way I orient my course. Students can watch taped meetings, can download agendas and minutes and can read all manner of source documents. Of course, they can still be required to do some of the same observation activities on their own. As always, I'll require them to complete writing assignments to help them think through how the material in their textbook relates to the experiences and observations.
I'm actually getting excited about the prospect. I'm eager to hear how my students feel about these observations and experiences, and I'm curious to find out how both their learning and their engagement with the subject matter is impacted by the format.
As more of the faculty consider integrating dynamic web content into their courses--whether in fully online sections or more traditional face-to-face ones--it will provide us with important opportunities to examine our pedagogies and the biases we bring to the learning process. As always, it is especially good, I think, if these ideas are shared with colleagues and refined. And so I'm hoping to schedule a few special meetings to facilitate such conversations in the next few months.