Put it Out There: Publicly-Performed Course Work

Engaging strangers on Twitter. Teaching an adult-education session in a church. Blogging an interview with a high-profile scholar. When learners accomplish their course work by means of public performance, ed the common student refrain, capsule “What will I do with this stuff?” becomes “Let’s examine what I’ve done with this stuff!”

Publicly-Performed Course Work:

Jennifer Shepherd writes this week about “being heard,” particularly outside the classroom and in pluralistic contexts. She imagines replacing the Verizon field-tester (from the well-known “Can-you-hear-me-now” commercials) with

a pastor in active ministry, a recent seminary graduate, or a first year student in our classes who is passionate about connecting with and communicating a message to the world around him/her and will be genuinely asking the question “Can you hear me now?”

In a later post, I would like to go at the large question of how seminary and religious-studies students are prepared to “translate” the methods and materials of their course work for interested outsiders. For today, though, I am simply interested in course assignments that involve public practice or teaching of the course-related materials and methods. This course work is “Janus-faced”: the learner looks into the course for the skills and knowledge gained in course work, and looks outward in search of a practical context or audience for her performance.

Public Work Course Capstones:

Last year in “Introduction to the Old Testament” (online), I assigned my students an end-of-term “public work” project. Using this rubric as a guide, each student developed and accomplished an assignment to be performed outside of our learning space, out in the world. They created their public-work projects in small groups by stages:

1. Small groups brainstorm ideas, and peer-reviewed one another’s efforts.

2. Learners “storyboarded” a detailed plan, and peer-reviewed one another’s efforts.

3. Learners accomplished their public work project.

4. Learners reported back to their small groups.

Many of the students, being in congregational ministries, created adult-ed sessions or series for their project. Only a few chose sermons. One student developed a kind of “scavenger hunt event” in which he planted clues around campus that taught by stages and led to other clues.

Twitter Chats:

Twitter Chats are a popular way for like-minded professionals to share ideas and get to know one another. Educators are particularly fond of Twitter Chats, as the number and variety of Ed-related Chats shows. Used as part of a course (online or face-to-face), Twitter Chats provide an opportunity for students to discuss course-related topics in a public space. I hosted weekly Twitter Chats for one semester of my “Introduction to the Old Testament” course (online), and it worked well. Because Twitter is a public space, the boundary of our Chat group was naturally permeable: we enjoyed the unexpected participation of Hebrew Bible instructors and enthusiasts from all over the U.S. and even overseas. This prompted my learners to have to “translate” some of our usual course “shorthand” (words and phrases from lectures and discussions) for the benefit of these “outsiders”…who could then contribute to those course concepts their own distinctive perspectives.

Distributed Course Work:

Especially intriguing to me are those courses wherein all (or most) of the work is accomplished openly on the Internet. This might happen in a traditionally-structured course that just happens to be built on, say, a WordPress blog (rather than a closed learning management system like Moodle). Or, it might be part of a loosely-constructed, “distributed” learning event like MOOCMOOC (a MOOC about MOOCs by the fine folks at Hybrid Pedagogy) or one patterned after Dave Cormier’s “rhizomatic learning.” In these latter models of open online learning, the learner may be responsible even for creating and curating the online space in which she accomplishes her public work.

Issues in Public Work:

When learners are invited or required to accomplish public work, some issues are going to recur: What about the learner’s privacy? What if they do things that reflect poorly on the teaching institution? How does FERPA fit into this? How will a learner’s work be interpreted by future employers (or current Bishops)?

All I would say about these issues for now is that they should be investigated one at a time, not simply run away from as one flees a mob. For example, FERPA deals primarily with records (like grades, transcripts, and directory information)…its applicability to activities or performances is not always clear. Concerns about employment have long been, and continue to be, discussed by academic bloggers.

For my part, I am always happy to allow (even encourage) learners to work pseudonymously online. Readers likely to distrust a pseudonymous voice as such are fewer these days than once was the case (thankfully). Learners using a (recognizable-to-the-class) pseudonym are free to push boundaries and experiment without fear that their work will become part of their “permanent record,” and if they choose, they can always associate the work with their real name…later.

What is your own experience with publicly-performed course work? Do you have links to other examples? What concerns have I not addressed, or what might you offer on the concerns that I do list?

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