Celebrate Pedagogical Tinkering

This week, I have engaged in conversations about the many ways which faculty are teaching and providing support this term. I would like to share several recent articles, which may help us "celebrate pedagogical tinkering," a phrase derived from the first article shared, entitled "Ed Tech Mania is Back" by Reich in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. The author reminds us that human development is a long, slow, maddening process - "the hardest problems in higher ed won't be disrupted away, the brightest futures will come from collaborative human effort, rather than tech change." The author shares the three stances faculty can take toward the role of tech in teaching - "charismatic, skeptic or practical (tinkering)."

The author connects these tech ideas to a major topic discussed last spring and now as we approach mid-terms, has resurfaced, i.e., online proctoring exams. Reich states, "the fastest growing pandemic ed tech might be exam-proctoring software, a truly insidious development. Remote-proctoring software has dark origins in the development of malware to secretly control computers."

The topic of remote proctoring has recently been addressed by Eyler's (2018) science of learning blog, which is expanded upon in his book, How Humans Learn: The science and stories behind effective college teaching. In the blog, he states that proctoring software adds significantly to a student’s extraneous cognitive load, which is called “extraneous” because it has nothing to do with the actual academic work. Students have to keep in mind if their eyes are looking in the right place; if they didn’t move their head too much; how to assure the instructor that they are not cheating, etc. Ultimately, Eyler suggests that our major goal of determining what students know and can do will not actually be measured when using proctoring software as we may be only measuring a student’s ability to manage cognitive load in the context of artificially induced high stress.

If you were considering online exam proctoring and would like to explore other options, I shared several methods for authentic assessments in an earlier blog (April 2020): Alternatives to Proctored Exams by Rutgers University. “We had two goals for this approach, first, to discourage the use of remote-proctored exams, unless absolutely necessary (for the fairness-related and technical reasons listed in the document); and, second, to provide alternatives, including alternatives that would work for traditionally computational exams in quantitative courses."

Reich, J. (2020, October). Ed Tech mania is back. Chronicle of Higher Education.

Eyler, J. (2018). How humans learn: The science and stories behind effective college teaching. Morgantown : West Virginia University Press.