Teaching

Knowledge and power are simply two sides of the same question: who decides what knowledge is, and who knows what needs to be decided?
– Lyotard, Jean François.

The Postmodern Condition : A Report on Knowledge,
Theory and History of Literature;V. 10.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Undergraduate Program, Arts and Cultural Studies
I teach courses in arts, digital media arts, and digital storytelling.

Dance and Performance Studies
I previously taught courses in dance, music, and world performance traditions, including Dance Across World Cultures, Fine Arts Appreciation, and Regional Dances of Mexico. I continue to teach advanced studies in dance and the performing arts. I currently teach Digital Media Arts and Technologies at the graduate level, for an advanced certificate in Emerging Media Arts and Technologies.

Master of Arts in Learning and Emerging Technologies (MALET)
I teach graduate courses in the MALET program and advise MALET students.  I am responsible for the Advanced Design Seminar, which is the culminating core course in the required program courses, (research or capstone) Proposal Seminar, Final (research or capstone) Project, and various electives. I also teach the core course Social and Ethical Issues in the Digital Age, and the certificate course Digital Media Arts and Technologies.

Master of Arts Final Project
Required graduate course in the Master of Arts in Learning and Emerging Technologies and Master of Arts in Adult Learning. Final master’s thesis or capstone supervision. Description: As the concluding course in the Master of Arts program the student will prepare a Final Project based on this general final project learning contract and the Final Project Proposal (FPP) which is on file in the Graduate Studies Office. The master’s level final project is a self-directed, integrative and culminating educational activity.  It has multiple purposes:  (1) Demonstration of a nuanced comprehension of a complex body of knowledge at the forefront of the student’s field of study along with the ability to critically evaluate current scholarship. (2) • Exhibition of the student’s creativity and originality in applying knowledge to a research question or problem.  (3) Demonstration of the student’s facility in using established inquiry techniques in creating and interpreting new knowledge.

Proposal Seminar
Required graduate seminar in the Master of Arts in Learning and Emerging Technologies. This is the first of two required courses leading to the completion of  the final Master’s project for the Master of Arts in Learning and Emerging Technologies (MA.LET). In this first course, students will select a topic, complete a comprehensive literature review of the research and scholarly work related to their project,  and develop a detailed academic proposal for either a capstone project or a research thesis. If human subjects will be used in the research, students will also submit a formal IRB request.

Advanced Design Seminar Official course description:
In this final core course students will continue to deepen their knowledge of theories and practices pertaining to instructional design and emerging technologies. Students will create a body of work that reflects the ability to integrate theory and skills of design and development, learning principles, and assessment methods. This knowledge and skill will be demonstrated in the creation of a comprehensive multimedia project for their ePortfolio or their professional work environment. This project should demonstrate the student’s growth as a specialist in emerging technologies as well as incorporate their own past skills, knowledge, and/or interests on their chosen topic. Personal reflection will be used to self-evaluate one’s own evidence of learning and to make deeper connections between the concepts learned in the other courses.

Digital Tools for Teaching and Learning
Educators today have access to an overwhelming number of technologies that offer powerful capabilities for creating high-quality digital learning tools.  This course will examine and identify effective digital tools to impact student engagement, meaning-making and improve learner outcomesfor individuals with different backgrounds, learning styles, abilities, and disabilities in widely varied learning context. In addition, digital tools and strategies selected will be assessed in relation to their alignment with the ISTE standards for teachers.

Metaliteracy MOOC: Metacognitive Analysis
I was a facilitator of the Metaliteracy MOOC, an open learning experience that emerges from the research of Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson and the metaliteracy framework they first developed in Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy in College & Research Libraries. I am also supervising the credit bearing graduate component (offered as an elective course course in the MALET program – see below). At the graduate level, students conduct a metacognitive analysis of the MOOC, with the following focus:  (1) evaluation of the efficacy of the learning environment (2) analysis of approaches to assessment, both actual and potential (3) a metacognitive analysis of the student’s learning in the MOOC. They also complete a related research project and literature review.

Digital Media Arts
I offer a course called Studies in Mobile Media on a regular basis, and teach digital media courses, including advanced independent studies on arts and design topics. I tend to teach quite a few capstone courses for graduating seniors. I am the academic supervisor for Center for Distance Learning courses in digital media, including courses in Digital StorytellingDigital Art and DesignMedia Arts, History and Theory of New Media, and Information Design; and communications courses such as Interpersonal Communications and Intercultural Communications.

Studies in Mobile Media Official Course Description
Mobile media are rapidly transforming the way we communicate and have a tremendous impact on the emergent 21st Century lifestyle. In this study the student will explore mobile media as a lifeworld, examining the potential of the medium to influence and shape different fields. The study will be customized to the interests of the student.  Students in the arts may want to explore the potential for the iPad as an electronic portfolio space and new creative medium; in communications, to investigate how the medium may be transforming how we communicate; in media studies, to philosophically examine how mobile media influence the way we live.  Learning activities will include reading related texts, research, writing, exploration of mobile environments, creating a blog to reflect on the learning process, and a culminating project.

Privacy, Security, Freedom
Previously, I taught a wonderful course called Privacy, Security, Freedom:  Social Concerns for the 21st Century (for about 8 years).  It is a sociological and philosophical exploration of the questions of privacy, security and freedom in the 21st Century in the context of both the theory and practical, policy-oriented aspects of these social concerns.  Students analyze and debate the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act and other national policies in their academic discussion. This course has a strong emphasis on the impact of emerging media and technologies (both positive and negative) on citizen autonomy and civil liberties. Past students have included active military information or intelligence officers; counterterrorism agents; law enforcement professionals; and high profile policy influencers – working alongside general education students taking the course for breadth of knowledge and/or personal interest. I recently handed off the course to the highly capable care of Ehsan Zaffar, an attorney specializing in civil rights, national security and emergency management issues. Ehsan serves as an advisor on civil rights and civil liberties issues at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington D.C.  You can follow Ehsan on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Ezaffar.

Teaching Philosophy
My philosophy of education is one that combines a learner-centered, project-based, social constructivist approach to learning with authentic learning activities, and a commitment to student mentoring. Theorists influencing my philosophy include Maxine Greene, (Landscapes of Learning, Dialectic of Freedom); George Leonard, (Education and Ecstasy) Howard Gardner (Multiple intelligences; Creating Minds); Arnold Modell, (Imagination And The Meaningful Brain); Graham Gibbs, (Improving the quality of student learning through course design); Ference Marton and Roger Saljo, (on surface and deep approaches to learning in “On qualitative differences in learning: Outcome and process”); Lev Vygotsky (Mind in Society); and James Zull, (The Art of Changing the Brain : Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning). I studied continental philosophy, critical theory, and postmodern theorists such as Lyotard and Foucault at the doctoral level, and incorporate both critical inquiry and postmodern perspectives into my teaching.

‘Our’ problem is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own ‘semiotic technologies’ for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real’ world, one that can be partially shared and friendly to earth-wide projects of finite freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and with limited happiness.
–Haraway, Donna Jeanne.
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women : The Reinvention of Nature
New York: Routledge, 1991.

Works Cited
Gardner, Howard. 1983. Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, Howard. 1993. Creating minds: an anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York: BasicBooks.
Gardner, Howard. 1999. Intelligence reframed: multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Gibbs, Graham. “Improving the quality of student learning through course design.” Learning to effect (1992): 149-165.
Greene, Maxine. 1978. Landscapes of learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
Greene, Maxine. 1988. The dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Leonard, George Burr. 1979. Education and ecstasy. New York: Dell.
Lyotard, Jean-François, Geoffrey Bennington, and Brian Massumi. 1984. The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Marton, Ference,  and Saljo, Roger. 1976.  “On qualitative differences in learning: Outcome and process.” British Journal of Educational Psychology 46: 4-11.
Modell, Arnold H. 2003. Imagination and the meaningful brain. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10173553.
Vygotskiĭ, L. S., and Michael Cole. 1978. Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Zull, James E. 2002. The art of changing the brain: enriching teaching by exploring the biology of learning. Sterling, Va: Stylus Pub.