Adaptive Learning

[A note about the photo: three of the students in this photo, behind Prof. May's (Rosie), became professors of communication including Dayna Kloeber, Roxan Arntson (Alexander), and Tenisha Baca. Two others are professional artist in performance. I have a group photo of the men too.]

Changing and adapting one's knowledge and skills when making complex decisions about teaching is tough.  We are being asked to learn new concepts and develop new abilities to use situation-specific and flexible teaching methods to support diversity in student learning. How? First, I've discovered through my work as a communication studies scholar is to use personal reflection and conscious deliberation. I journal. My journal is private. I use it to think through successes. I try not to dwell on failures because then I am depressed. I am my toughest critic and there is never a perfect class. If I focus on the failures, I will quit teaching. This could be because I already struggle with depression, but living in my weaknesses does not make me stronger.  Next, I think through what went well and apply theory(ies) on why or how the success worked so I can/could repeat the same success. I think through what experts call the "adaptive processes" (figure 1). 

In this diagram I work through understanding the context of the class/course. What do I want the students to be able to do by the end of the semester? What does the field expect? What is the research in teaching this subject say? Next, I think through the student(s) starting point. What knowledge to they enter the course with? What are their abilities? Do they know their skills? What are the stories they tell about teachers' expectations for this course? Are the expectations too high, too low, too easy, too hard? Thirdly, I look at what other teachers of the subject did/do. I read their syllabi, lesson plans, notes, and get an overview of other experts teaching the same subject to see how they tackled the question/challenge. Then I return to step one to iterate and adapt, zoom-in and define. The fifth step for me is to then apply what I discovered to my specific context, my specific course, and specific students to create case models (benchmarks), rubrics, goals, and even create role-modeling. This might take a while, because as I do this I iterate and adapt, zoom-in and define.

After doing the course for awhile I then address "sustainability". We teach 5+ courses. We are not like the professors at Brown University or Emerson College or Colorado College where the course is offered every fourth year to a select group of students. We do not have a cohort of students that I get to improve as they move from novice to expert through a few semesters. I need my "bag of tricks" to be sustainable and yet not bore me. Can I keep this up? From semester to semester how much emotional work do I need to do to prepare for the course? How much re-modeling, or can I create elements that are repeatable? Formulas, templates, exercises, activities that can be sustainable from year to year over the next five years.  When I think through this step of course design I consider where the course fits with the other courses the students take. Where is this course in their journey in the major/department, degree, or even their life?  As I answer this question I adapt, cut, shape and zoom-in.

Finally, I take the course into the field. I deploy the course, as a whole, and present it as a whole to another teacher. Can they do it? Does the course work because of how I designed the course, or does it work because of me?

With Public Speaking I went through these stages. A few years ago at the National Communication Association I took my packaged course and field tested it in a short-course with two non-GCC colleagues (one from Northern California, and the other from the Mid-West). Other Public Speaking teachers found that the way I built/designed the real-world focused course, with the templates, structures course design, and assessments, positively impacted the students.  The students were far more successful at informative and persuasive speaking with a higher quality than other course designs. For example, the students, when they went through the designed course, won more speech tournaments, nationally and internationally. Many of the students I taught liked the course design. Many of them became teachers (Kristina Gergus, Tenisha Baca (GCC), Roxan Alexander-Arntson (GCC), Dayna Kloeber (ASU), Jennifer Sweeney (ASU), Kermit Brown (ASU), and many more).

Now I am trying to follow the same method for Interpersonal Communication (COM110). Ugh!

Classes I found difficult to sustain: Forensics (COM281), Small Group (COM230) and Oral Interpretation (COM241). I stopped teaching these courses because I was teaching 5+ sections of courses, and over 4 preps each semester. Each year, I had 6-7 different preps. I never had time to dive deep, reflect, plan, analyze course lessons, or innovate. I quickly burned out in 2010-2011.  I asked for less preparations. My chair decided to focus on Public Speaking and Interpersonal Communication. I did only those courses for a few years, giving me the time to deep dive into the course designs.

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