Pre-Proposal

About a year and a half ago, I taught a summer English 111 class. It was an intense five week course where we had to spend tons of time together four days a week. During this same time-frame, I had just finished a year of working with at-risk youth. The methods I had learned to reach my teens, which involved expressing compassion, being upbeat and energetic, and having a sense of humor, naturally showed up in my English class. Some of my teaching methods evolved for my college students and I began incorporating a lot more media to help engage my students. I had also become a lot more open to allowing my sense of humor to guide my lectures and relational style. At the end of that summer course, several of my students commented that this class had been the best English class they had ever taken. I was a tad flabbergasted because it was only the beginning of my fourth year of teaching; how was it that in all the years of schooling these individuals had experienced, there was not one English class that exceeded my class? I was puzzled. It definitely wasn’t because I was the greatest teacher. The art of teaching is just that, an art. You only get better through time. There was something more to it, something I needed to understand. This was perhaps the inception of my quest regarding humor. I have come to regard two traits in teachers that set them apart from others in remarkable ways; those two traits are passion and humor. My desire in my research is to explore both, but particularly humor.

My initial question for my project will be how humor has been identified in pedagogy and as a teaching strategy up to this point. This will be the basis of conceptualizing the role humor plays and how relevant or not relevant it is. If I am correct in my assumption and the research I have already done, humor will reveal a strong place in thriving classrooms. Some of the books I will consult include The Laughing Classroom, A Funny Thing about Teaching, Teaching Content Outrageously, Using Humor to Maximize Learning, License to Laugh, Professors are from Mars, Students are from Snickers, Breaking Up [at] Totality, and Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire. Once I can establish humor’s role and capabilities, I will move into a line of questioning about the possibility of transferring humor from face to face classes into an online environment. This is where the heart of my research resides and where the greatest gap in literature exists. Education has been moving more towards the use of online tools and even online classes, but little exists about the qualities a teacher must embody to create the most productive online experience. There are a lot of “how to” books concerning pedagogical choices and in some manner relating to students, but the characteristics that define influential instructors, such as passion or humor, have been left out of the conversation. This is the gap I want to explore and in some way fill.

The design of my research will be mixed methods. I already have a survey instrument I want to use and will continue to tweak as the semesters continue. I plan to move into some focus groups with students and faculty alike to explore possible avenues of online learning. I also want to do some interviews once I have established the greatest needs in the arena of humor. I would like to collect best practices from experienced instructors who have consistently taught online. I know I need to address a greater audience of instructors and students alike to collect the data necessary so I can compile a resource for using humor in online spaces.

What's Driving Me...

This week, above all my other weeks this semester, has drawn me to reflect on why I even teach. When the students deliver numerous excuses, fellow faculty members critique your classroom from afar, and others just add to the rant of disgruntled humanity, I desire to run...to hide from all I once held dear. I love teaching. I have loved it for many years now, well many for me. In the last few years I've found my teaching style transforming, remixing, and evolving. I began wondering what made the difference, what created a teacher with excellent skill and mastery? How do you develop motivation in people that often lack such? How do you reach inside a student and engage her desire to delve into knowledge, to gain expertise? These questions left me unsettled me. I wanted more from my classrooms. I saw students come from classes that sucked out the very essence of their life. Had we created a manufactured boredom? Too many students embodied this persona and then would compliment my teaching style, which I knew was so young and immature. There was no way an experienced teacher of ten plus years couldn't beat me in knowledge and classroom management, but students were drawn to my class. I suppose that is where my intrigue began. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what made an instructor able to influence and inspire, rather than just talk or even instruct. My research is often the quest of personal desire to understand what drives people, what makes them tick. I suppose it is partly selfish in nature because I want to be able to embody the characteristics that allow my students the greatest afforded opportunity possible to do and be more than they first aspired to be. Which leads me to the next realization, my research is often idealogically driven because I believe a means is possible and can be found to push students to even greater heights of understanding. But is it political? Perhaps it is...if there are indeed particular ways of inhabiting or being that allow instructors to propel students forward, then perhaps instructors need to seek these ways. I do not believe in a cookie cutter mold that people can fit into, but I do suggest particular characteristics, which there are plenty to pick from, allow instructors to be more effective.

The Creative Process

It's funny how projects really get their beginnings, usually in the midst of a search without results, and thus a gap is revealed and a project born. My fascination with humor found its inception in just that--a gap. Of course, admittedly, I began my search to prove how "right" I was and that what I have experienced as an instructor could be transferred to others. In retrospect, it seems almost haughty--as if in my first five years of teaching I could be any sort of iconic figure. Let's get real... :) My major project still entails humor, but it has definitely taken on a life of its own. I am curious to see where it will take me next.

This last Friday, as I listened to our guest speakers, I was profoundly affected by the ways we could endeavor to conceptualize rhetoric and its potential within a digital environment. It opened a door I hadn't even seen clearly. Now, I find myself in the midst of a new project for my theory class that has so captured my imagination that I have a hard time even focusing on other demands of my time. I just want to create. It makes me think of that crazy movie, "Flubber". The professor gets so taken by his project that he loses all track of time and even life around him. When I enter a project I am captivated by, I find myself exactly the same. I can spend almost unending hours working on it. I will skip meals, sleep, and other opportunities just to work on my project. In writing, we often talk about the concept of a muse and being hit by creative moments. I wonder how millennials will channel creative energy? How will they name their muse? With so much computer mediated creative power at our finger tips, I fathom that the shape our "muses" take will differ but the same captivating energy will endure.

Facing Unknowns

Where do our professional and personal lives collide? Is it in the moment we face that online space and "real" space, the kind we live and breathe, are really somehow both part of us? Or is it looking into the eyes of those without priviledge, the other, that our concept of objectivity becomes blurred? Maybe it is when we sit alone, remembering the words uttered by the suffering and burdened, that we no longer know how to separate our worlds? Perhaps they were never separate in the first place.

Something in us changes when we observe, even partake, in the pain of those around us. I experienced that today as I sat with a friend whose husband's life hangs in the balance. Listening to the questions, probing whether anything holds truth, if anything can remain. I can hear the voice of the suffering, "I don't know if a god exists, if karma actually takes place, or if a good person receives good things and a bad person receives bad things....I just don't know anymore..." Those words echo in my head as surely as they resound in her heart. Suffering changes people; it's almost a rite of passage. It leads us to a deeper quest of meaning and truth. And isn't that what brings us to this very class--searching for pieces, even snip-its of meaning. That's why we research--we want to know something more and find meaning, even if it is only meaning enough to lead us to our next question. We need our questions because without them we would be lost.

Let's Talk Questions...

I was intrigued by the reading about online composition and also about sustaining multimodal teaching. Both of these texts reach into the heart of what I grapple with as an instructor. How do I help my students learn the skills they will desperately need to live successful lives, and not success in the sense of monetary means or happiness, but being able to navigate the multiple avenues that will be presented to them every single day of their lives. With that said, I have several lines of thought running through my head.

At an undergraduate level, how do I mentor students and priviledge them as peers or co-authors when their skill level is highly under-developed?

It was mentioned that we need to disrupt the privileging of print. How do I encourage students to think about this concept critically? Also, how is the field beginning to shape around this idea? Is it decades away in being recognized or experienced?

Let the Games Begin...

I must admit, going to the Games Lab is truly a moment to relax. The colors of the room are very child friendly, which seems rather appropriate to make the participants feel comfortable in a research arena. In one of my previous jobs, we discussed the concept of ambiance and what effect that had on how open people are and what they will disclose. A lot of the research we consulted suggested that creating a comfortable and safe environment with things people of a particular community (i.e. teens) could relate to helped facillitate an open sense of communication. Having used some of the games, I could see how rich the research environment and potential for learning could be and possibly is. When you bring people into their environment and allow them open space to talk, it opens up a lot of potential for genuine honesty. Since the game lab has a face to face element, it seems less abstract than the a computer mediated environment.

Considering Online Research...

Online spaces are just that--online. At least that is what my students remarked. If you don't want someone to read it, then you shouldn't post it for everyone to read it. As someone who takes the concepts of research seriously, I am inclined to argue we should get some level of consent and consider our ethical obligation as researchers. Although the online world has enormous potential for exploring different ideas and questions, there does seem to be the underlying notion that many people, particularly those marginalized, who would get left out of the research if our aim was primarily online. Many of the students I teach are not people who spend a lot of time online, and when they do, it isn't always very productive. Many of the people I invest so much of my time in would be the very people left out of the research pool.

The overall benefits of viritual research are definitely in the expense aspect, it would be much lower because people are readily available. Getting participants would not be nearly as difficult as in person. It also is very free because there are no absolute laws in cyberspace. Even though we hope researchers are ethical, online spaces make entering communities, observing, and drawing conclusions far more open than face to face scenarios lend themselves. Many of the participants online may not even know they are being observed or researched. The downfalls really are inherent in the access issues, the inability of knowing the face behind the apparent name, and how serious the people being researched really are.

Although Thurlow and McKay seemed somewhat positive about online scholarship, I'm not convinced students value online research as much as we would like them to. I was rather surprised to find that my students felt a lot of online surveys were just a waste of time and that people didn't take them seriously. This article was also somewhat dated because it referred to cell phone use as being rather low. I think most of my students if not all of them use cell phones on a constant basis and may not get online at all or rarely. My class actually forces them to get online more often and I have dealt with an enormous learning curve from my students, even those we would normally classify as "tech savvy". I would agree that during the timeframe this article was written, females tended to want the more social end of online environments while males used game and information environments more. I'm not sure this phenomenom exists anymore because I see males and females spending more time on social networking sites than before. I would like to see how these authors tackle current day ideas about technology and virtual worlds, since they have changed so much in the last few years.