Spring08: all homework, no class (= GOOD)

It's the first official day of classes today, but I always start my online classes at least a week early... so I am not really caught up in a "first day of school" frenzy today. Lots of students have been checking in, starting their blogs, all is going well. There are a lot of things on my mind, though, and I had a hard time deciding what to post about today. Finally, I decided to say something about HOMEWORK. On the Latin-Teach listserv that I read, there's been a very lively and intense discussion about homework and the difference between high school and college. The discussion has been very informative - unfortunately, it's taking place using a totally archaic software system which does not allow me to link to any of the posts. To get to the gist of it, I'm going to quote here from a contribution by a teacher I really respect, who summed up very succinctly the same conclusion I had reached based on reading the thread:

A High School Latin Teacher in Georgia Writes: ... The working assumption in college is that the majority of learning will take place outside of class, independent of the teacher. Not so in most schools. Public schools are regulated by hours per day and days per year. Here in GA it's 180 days, and in my school system 6:40 each day. I have each of my classes for 52 minutes each day, five days a week. This is enough time for the teaching/learning to happen that we are attempting. My grades are to reflect the learning that they are doing. Certainly outside reading and reviewing can be useful, and those who do that often benefit. I will not grade them for it separately though (HW grades). If they are doing beneficial review and reading, it shows up in their grades anyway. ...

This seems to me a very reasonable explanation for an increasingly common high school teaching strategy, which is to maximize classroom effectiveness, while minimizing or even eliminating homework. If I were teaching in a classroom in high school, I would probably be pursuing a similar strategy.
At the same time, I think I would be very frustrated with a scenario that is all classroom, no homework... simply because the classroom seems to me always an overly teacher-centric space, without room for everybody to speak up, participate fully, and get lots and lots of feedback about their work.

I am much happier with a completely inverted scenario: in my online courses, there is NO class, and it is ALL HOMEWORK, all the time. That is something that works great for the students, and great for me.

For the students, yes, it puts a very big burden on them indeed. In college, though, I think that is how it should be! When I taught in the classroom, there were always students there, of course, physically there, in the room... but they were doing nothing. Of course, they thought they were doing something: they were attending class, after all. But they weren't really doing anything... they might (MIGHT) have been listening. The only thing I knew for sure, though, was that they were warming a chair. Warming a chair does not mean creating new synapses!

For me, the "all homework, no class" model is a burden, too, but a challenging and exciting one. I work harder than I ever did teaching in the classroom, but it is not about lecturing or typical classroom teaching. Rather, I have to figure out how to make sure the students are ready to learn, that they have what they need to learn. That means creating assignments, building websites, finding resources, and giving feedback, while linking up students to give feedback to each other. Lots and lots and lots of feedback.

In the classroom, I couldn't really give feedback... because I couldn't really see how or what the students were learning. I was a great entertainer in the classroom, and perhaps even a source of knowledge (I am indeed an overeducated font of all kinds of knowledge, and a would-be stand-up comedian, as so many teachers are). But I don't think I was able to do a good job as a teacher in the classroom, at least not in the way my understanding of teaching has now evolved.

So, reading a discussion about the differences between high school and college homework expectations really helped me to crystalize a new mantra for my online teaching: all homework, no class. Or I guess we could make it a Marxist pun: End the class struggle! Homework-ers of the world, unite!

:-)