Skip to main content

Storytelling from SMEs

So I'm sure you've seen the recent emails about the upcoming CAE "Storytelling in Psychology" event given by Dr. Sandy Siegel. Sandy is one of our best SMEs (she’s in the MACC program) and she is a force in the classroom because of her storytelling skills. I think instructors’ personal/professional stories and vignettes have a lot of power to give a course relevance and heart, especially in a blended or online format with limited or no F2F interaction, and so I’ve been thinking about getting Sandy to audiorecord some brief stories for the courses she SMEs, either as an introductory “tone-setter” or as a springboard for a ‘what would you do?’-type assignment. Thing is, SMEs are rarely the sole instructors on their courses, and I’m thinking that whoever the other section instructors are may not want someone else’s voice (or video) built in, as for that term it is “their” course, not the SME’s. (In a past corporate job of mine we created situation-specific ‘Expert Video’ clips that learners could view to help them make a task decision, but in that case there was no one person who was “the instructor” because these were self-contained job training tutorials, not academic courses.) Has anyone incorporated SME voice/video into their courses? Did you identify who it was? Does anyone else think the section instructors would care? I like Tracy's idea of presenting it as an element that the section instructor can modify or leave in as he/she chooses, as long as it's included by default, and its instructional value is obvious.

Comments

  1. I must admit, I do not know a lot about storytelling in the classroom. I think that it is a great idea if ti works. I am concerned that it may not "fit" the teaching style of the other instructors teaching the course. That said, if we incorporate the story as part of the content, just as we would with a video or article, then it becomes part fo the course. It would be coincidence that the content is from an instructor or SME at the Chicago school. So, if we treat it as part of the content then the faculty teaching it really would not have much to say about it except as content. At least that is my two cents!
    Mark

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

basic html tables

Hey all, I figure that I would expose you guys to the basics of creating tables in html. There are many ways to do this. The wysiwyg way of constructing a table would be to use the built-in eCollege table wizard, or to build a table in in MS Office or Dreamweaver. These methods offer limited customization, as is the nature of visual editors. In order to really customize every aspect of the table, you must have a working knowledge of the html used to create the table. The basic elements of a table are as follows: <table border="1"> <tr> <td>row 1, cell 1</td> <td>row 1, cell 2</td> </tr> <tr> <td>row 2, cell 1</td> <td>row 2, cell 2</td> </tr> </table> This is what the code for a basic table with a border looks like. And this is what that table would look like: row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2 row 2, cell 1 row 2, cell 2 The elements include table rows <tr> and table

SME Relationship-Building: Tips of the Week

A couple of things came to mind during some recent SME conversations that I want to share. You may be already doing these things, but I think it helps to put them down here for all of us to think about and discuss... Given our mandate from Nancy Davis to consult to our SMEs on pedagogical issues related to learning outcomes, FOs, etc., it's likely that we'll run into SMEs who are not used to spelling out their instructional rationales and strategies as specifically as we're asking them to, even if they are at some level "good teachers." I try to motivate them by noting that the coursemap is now viewed as much of a ‘document of record’ as the Prospectus and Syllabus are – so it needs to show the rigor and clarity of outcomes of a 'premier' e-learning experience. And if a SME's LO/FO/assignment connections aren't as Bloom-worthy as they need to be, let's communicate to him or her that "my job is to help your expertise shine through"

Encouraging student voice and video comments

Hey team, Won and I are at the Sloan-C Emerging Technology conference (#et4online), and I wanted to share some ideas with you all regarding the utilization of audio and video features in our discussion boards.  The presenter who inspired this post is Michelle Pacansky-Brock who wrote an ebook about VoiceThread. Her institution bought a site license so that students could make comments on VT via phone, ensuring that technology wouldn't be a barrier to student participation. My thoughts are that our online and most blended students have both computers with webcams/microphones and smartphones. I think that in Canvas we don't need to rely so much on VT to facilitate an audio/visual discussion, as these features are integrated into the learning platform. Michelle conducted research in her classes via surveys and discovered that when she as an instructor left voice and video comments, 97% of the students appreciated such comments. However, 75% of the students were unwilling