{"id":65452,"date":"2013-05-20T21:40:51","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T01:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=65452"},"modified":"2018-04-06T16:09:21","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T20:09:21","slug":"may-conference-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2013\/05\/20\/may-conference-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"“MOOC” master discusses new teaching approach with Bates faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Al

Al Filreis, a Bates parent who holds several teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, was this year’s featured speaker for Bates’ annual May Conference on teaching, learning and scholarship. Photo by Marc Glass\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n

One day each May, members of the Bates faculty and staff gather for a day to discuss teaching, learning and scholarship. Taking place in Short Term since 2006, the May Conference has grown from a morning-only session to a full day featuring guest speakers, panel presentations, lively discussions and hands-on pedagogy workshops.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s conference focused on \u201cTeaching Transformation(s),\u201d and featured Al Filreis, Kelly Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, as its keynote speaker.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Chronicle of Higher Education has named Filreis one of 2013\u2019s \u201cTen Tech Innovators\u201d for his belief that massively open online courses (MOOCs) can bring the humanities to the masses.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s more than a belief. He seems to have done it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last fall, 36,000 students registered for ModPo, Filreis\u2019s online modern poetry class taught through Coursera, an education company that provides the platform for universities to offer online courses for anyone to take, for free.\u00a0Students of all ages logged in from computers in South Africa, Greece, Pakistan, and Brazil, among many other countries, to create a worldwide community of learners.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the huge numbers and the digital medium, Filreis was determined to make his a course a personal experience. \u201cHow else can you teach poetry?\u201d he asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

ModPo included sessions in which Filreis and his teaching assistants listened to poems, whenever possible from recordings by the poets themselves, and led their far-flung students in \u201cclose readings\u201d of the work, digging deeply for meaning by slow, careful analysis of the text, with a focus on literary technique, sound, symbolism, varying ways of interpreting certain figures of speech, and more. The online discussion board was energetic; students read and critiqued one another\u2019s essays; there were weekly call-in sessions as well as live webcasts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most active core of students \u2014 about 14 percent of those enrolled \u2014 got to know one another through these online connections, and a number of them created study groups to take the learning one step further. \u201cA group of nonagenarians in a New Jersey retirement community took the course together,\u201d Filreis said, \u201cand met each week to read and discuss the poems.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt got out of control in the best possible way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 10-week course, there were one million views of the posts, and a ModPo Facebook group begun by one of the online students now has more than 3,100 members.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading poetry is a personal endeavor, and some students began to share their their stories, as classmates will. Jobs lost, serious illness, hopes and dreams. Some have made major career decisions as a result of ModPo; a number continue to stay in touch with their professor, not unusual in academe.<\/span><\/p>\n

One profoundly autistic young man literally spoke his first words at the final meeting of the course, reciting his two-word poem, \u201cNot impossible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Filreis will teach ModPo online again in the fall.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to being a university professor and tech innovator, Filreis is a Bates parent. He is clear that MOOCs \u2014 even one like ModPo \u2014 can never replicate the experience his daughter is having at Bates. \u201cShe loves it here,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he sees a different kind of value to ModPo. \u201cThousands of people are reading and talking about poetry. It\u2019s outreach,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillory Oakes, director of the Bates Learning Commons as well as director of writing, said, \u201cThis year’s May Conference was a great opportunity for Bates faculty to discuss the tremendous pedagogical potential of the digital environment\u2014and to share their thoughts on the MOOCs’ current limitations for replicating the liberal arts experience. Faculty seem intrigued by the possibilities for enhancing the values of a liberal arts education and extending the Bates mission, at the same time that they are adamant that we put neither of those (liberal arts values and the Bates mission) at risk as we move forward.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Al Filreis of the University of Pennsylvania spoke about his belief that massively open online courses (MOOCs) can bring the humanities to the masses \u2014 and his belief that the kinds of courses Bates offers cannot and should not be replaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":65454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65452"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65617,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65452\/revisions\/65617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}