It’s challenging to address #whyIteach as an instructional technologist (and apostate librarian). I feel like I have to justify “what I teach” and “how I teach” before I even can approach the question of why.

Mostly, in my roles, I teach faculty members. (Sometimes they ask me to teach their students, but that’s been uncommon for a long while.)  This provides a remarkable clarity of context. My learners have brought their own goals to our interaction, more explicitly than the average student in school has. They are looking to make their teaching “better” – where better is a nebulous concept including both “more like my peers” and “in my own style”, where I might be involved in interpreting the main goals of the class or in streamlining a process so the faculty member can catch a few more minutes of sleep after grading.

Image by Krista Moroder, originally found through http://www.teachthought.com/technology/think-pedagogy-first-technology-second/

I’ve taught a lot of workshops, but most of my instruction is one-on-one. Working directly with the faculty member helps me explore her goals, which helps me find the right solution and teach more clearly the parts of it which she needs to understand. We can change quickly if his needs don’t match my plans, and it’s a little safer for us both to be vulnerable in the limits of our knowledge away from our colleagues’ observations.

This, in the end, is what I love about my job. I get to help other people pursue their passions. I get to help them reach their goals, whether lofty or light. And I know that in so doing, I’ve contributed indirectly to the core mission of the college.

I took this picture as part of TDC 986. It’s not precisely #whyIteach but it is a quick professional biography. It was web coding in the early ’90s which drew me into library science, and library science which led to instructional technology, and instructional technology which led to instructional design, all the while in a context of the liberal arts.

If you’re still thinking about ways to make your “why”, a book spine essay might be an interesting way to go.

I just sent a message to my colleagues in my local Connected Courses cohort, and I thought I might copy a chunk of it publicly. I thought it might help people if I laid out some thoughts about getting a blog set up. Not that there’s a lot here that isn’t already in the pre-course Blog Talk and Getting Started documentation, but I wanted to put my spin on it for folks who know me. I’ve heard from a couple of people who are doing face-to-face cohorts, so I’d love to know how much this look like what you’re doing.

Some media was added in the transition from email to blog…

 Wait, did you say Blog?

Hi, I’m Joe, and I’m a serial MOOC dropout. If we count the MOOC’s ancestors in “free online workshops”, I’ve probably registered for 8 or more of the things, and never completed a one. This is on me, of course – I decided that the work involved in the course wasn’t creating my desired payoff, and I quit.

But, like Ferris Bueller’s attendance record, it’s also a function of the system. Courses with hyper-strict schedules punish those who get behind. MOOC message boards don’t provide a lot of incentive for participation, especially for those of us who remember mailing lists and Usenet groups where repeating a question was the mark of a newbie from the Eternal September.

I’ve had some interesting discussions, by the way, about the differences between message boards and blogs. Message boards reinforce participation in a group enterprise; blogs reinforce the individual’s ownership of their thoughts. Pedagogically, you might want either one, but I will argue that message boards don’t scale well for active participants. Maybe they work better for lurkers, but the slide from lurker to non-participant is far too easy for me.

Compare and contrast with Connected Courses’ focus on personally owned blogs. I published on Thursday and woke up to comments on Friday. People had actually taken the time out of their lives to come over to my space, read my thoughts, and say something constructive about them. The reward was immediate and significant. I felt – I feel – like part of something bigger than myself, something bigger than a Venture Capitalist’s first taste for free.

This kind of community takes nurturing. It won’t just happen on its own. I am going to commit myself here to a commenting discipline which I think will help. For every comment I get here, I’m going to dip into the blog flow and comment on another recent post. I’m going to try to pay forward the joy of having a stranger give your ideas serious consideration.

I don’t claim that this makes me a big hero; paying attention to one another’s blogs is, after all, part of the point of a connected course. I’m mostly saying that I know myself this well. If I put the focus on my learning, my network, then I’ll engage, somewhat selfishly, with a small number of participants. At least this discipline will cause me to step into the blog flow with the goal of touching base with new folks. I think it will also change my reading, as I start with a goal of encouraging others as much as developing my own thought.

So… here’s where you get some stranger some encouragement, by telling me what you think: