Connections Conference 2005

FirstClass (FRED): Two Perspectives

Rachel Howison, Language Studies

Plan1. Academic Needs2. The Net Generation’s Needs3. Structuring the Course4. The course is FirstClass

(Communications) – look at the space5. Extra Benefits for Students6. Renovations and Additions

I didn't merely affix FirstClass onto my course as a decorative, entertaining feature; FirstClass influenced the way I structured my course.

Academic Needs: Fostering Academic Argument

“To feel comfortable with debate changes your relationship with education and just about everything else. It transforms you from a passive and bored receptacle of another’s wisdom into a participant; into someone who is neither scared by, nor indifferent to, the society around them but actively involved in its interpretation and transformation.”

“It is – or at least it should be – restless, unsettled, always moving forward.”

(Alastair Bonnett, How to Argue: A Student’s Guide)

Academic Needs1. Writing is an integral part of this Literature course2. Students must become proficient at:

-critically examining texts and at skilfully -creating their own informed and analytical writing

3. Students must practice writing as much as possible (repetition) 4. Immediate, interactive writing produced within tight time-frames5. FirstClass is the ideal medium for this kind of work because it

facilitates production and exchange

6. FirstClass fosters quality communication, enables students to improve their analytical writing skills in a mere 14 weeks

7. FirstClass invented a brilliant oxymoron: the noisy silent classroom

The Net Generation• Familiar with the current electronic world• “More than half of Canadian kids (56 per

cent) use the Internet for instant messaging (IM), and 27 per cent use it every day, or almost every day” (Young Canadians in a Wired World: The Students' View 2001).

• 70% use on-line chat• 90% use Internet

DCODE

IT and the Net Generation• “IT is essential”• IT and Net Gen “symbiotic relationship”• “increasing value as a communications tool”• “hands-on, let’s build it approach” • “Discussions, notes, and other in-classroom

events can be captured and disseminated for further study.”

• “Learning can happen informally.”

Educating the Net Generation “Learning Spaces.” Malcolm Brown, Dartmouth College, 2005

Structuring the Course

Applied Degree Literature

Lecture1 ½ hours

Discussion Board1 hour

Tutorial1 ½ hours

FRED holds the course together, organizing material, facilitating discussion and extending the learning

environment.

View the Applied Degree Literature Conference On FirstClass

Extra Benefits

• Access to information• Organized• Support System: automatically saves

Renovations and AdditionsMalleable! Easy to renovate.• Assign Summative Activity: Personal academic

web pages• Publish to the web• Use the IM feature (assign weekly questions)• Integrate testing• Integrate an Editing Assignment (writing as

process, FRED great tool for offering revisions)• Integrate sound (spoken word)• Establish a ‘Secondary Research’ conference