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Jesse Stommel was the keynote speaker at the Second Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium. 聽About 50 CU faculty and staff representing more than one CU campus attended his talk, "Rewriting the Syllabus: Examining New Hybrid and Online Pedagogies."

ASSETT Director Michele Jackson led an introduction about what it means to teach with technology. 聽She thanked the audience and聽said, "None of what we do would work without you. 聽Thank you for being engaged. 聽Thank you for being part of our community."

CU Boulder Associate Professor of English R L Widmann introduced Stommel.

Stommel began his talk with open ended questions for the audience: 'Why do we use technology? 聽How should we handle technology?' 聽He encouraged the audience to think聽critically about technology.聽 Stommel launched an interactive activity, inviting the audience to shout out what came to their minds when it came to 'chalkboard pedagogy' versus 'digital pedagogy.' 聽Stommel captured the audience's ideas on two white boards.

Stommel first asked the audience, "What do we associate with chalkboards?" 聽The audience brainstormed the words: "Dust, flexibility, reliable, erasable, immediacy, not password protected, in the moment, slow technology, interactive, physical, bold, and temporary." 聽One faculty member mentioned that, with such live learning, you can see the "aha聽moment happen or not happen"聽in students' eyes. 聽One professor said she preferred the flexibility to draw arrows on the board to connect different ideas with each other. 聽At the same time, the audience also acknowledged how potentially intimidating and vulnerable live writing on a chalkboard can be, especially when inviting students to interact.

Next, Stommel asked audience members, "What has been effective about digital pedagogy as a teacher or a learner?" 聽The dry erase board brainstorm that ensued included the ideas, "Long lasting, share-able, unreliable, expensive, 24/7, scale-able, searchable, compute-able, manageable, pre-planned, pre-scripted, improvisational, asynchronous, as needed, spell check enabled, reliable, and archive-able." 聽One audience member said that the digital space can open up more opportunities for students with disabilities and even for students who have to stay home sick.

Considering an Interactive Syllabus

Then, Stommel led a discussion about online learning, first detailing the growth that is already taking place in online courses at post secondary institutions. 聽Stommel recommended professors put as much consideration into setting up their online classes as they would any other class. 聽He聽encouraged the audience to involve their students in the evolution of a course's curriculum, and he quoted Dave Carnier in saying, "Curriculum...is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process..." 聽 He used聽a聽jazz metaphor of improvisation: "The joy in the song is when you break from the melody...A syllabus is something you create in advance, but we're open to improvisations." 聽He encouraged faculty to be open to incorporating students' needs and interests into the syllabus. 聽Stommel suggested that professors could even invite students to co-author the syllabus. 聽The group discussed actually putting a syllabus into a Google Drive document open to students to contribute. 聽One audience member suggested giving students standards and asking them how they would like the standards taught throughout the聽semester: what kinds of homework at which points in the semester--collaborative, small projects or big projects? 聽Stommel agreed, saying, "Teachers need to talk less and listen more."

Stommel stressed the importance of forming an online community with students and remembering that they are real people. 聽He聽touched on the nuts and bolts of actually planning an online course. 聽Stommel addressed the challenges that professors encounter in learning to use online learning management systems, saying, "When we teach online, we have聽to build both the course and the classroom..." 聽The group even discussed students taking collaborative notes together during a lecture on a Google Drive document. 聽Stommel said that, "More and more, learning is less about critical thinking and more about critical contribution."

An audience member suggested the idea of聽online learning as a more affordable alternative to the traditional university model, and the discussion turned toward online learning as a mechanism to help "higher education to survive." 聽Stommel聽stressed that professors should remember the principle that, "Learning is emergent...Educators at every level must begin by聽listening to聽and trusting students...The teacher聽stands to learn more from students about online learning than we could ever teach."

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After Stommel's talk, Religious Studies Professor Holly Gayley received聽the 2013-2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award. Then,聽audience members were invited to聽browse hers and other faculty seminar participants' demonstrations of use of technology in teaching. 聽These faculty participated in both the Teaching with Technology Faculty Seminar and the Hybrid and Online Course Design Seminar.