Project Summary

Since the Fall of 2001, I have been teaching Science Fiction as an online course. The course, offered through BMCC online, is an entirely asynchronous, distance learning class. Except for one introductory face-to-face session, all the work of the course is conducted through the Blackboard course management system over the internet. The bulk of the course work is carried out on the discussion board. Students read every post, post their own thoughts and ideas, respond to others, and reply to other students' responses to them. In looking at the course for my project, I started with a group of related questions: How does asynchronous discussion, in an online literature class, affect students' appreciation and understanding of personal and philosophical issues? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of discussion? What kinds of benefits for the researcher are there in this kind of discussion? And what are the implications for pedagogy? How do we connect online teaching to face-to-face teaching, and how do we adjust face-to-face pedagogy to make it work in the online setting? In discussions with my VKP colleagues, and from feedback on earlier versions of this poster, I realized that the best way to address these questions was by focusing on the one most unusual, least documented finding I had noticed. As I studied and coded the Discussion Board postings and survey responses of the students, I noticed a much higher degree of involvement in the discussions than I had seen in face-to-face courses. I also noticed that students were more prone to "topic drift," or digression in asynchronous discussion, but that these digressions were often productive, rather than distracting, and needed less managing online. Students were more open to pursuing new lines of thought, and making personal connections. This "casting wider and digging deeper" in asynchronous discussion gave students a stronger foundation for their writing, and an engagement with the subject matter that they reported as being long-lasting and significant.

Course Context

My goals in teaching Science Fiction are two-fold. The first goal is to give students an introduction to the genre of Science Fiction-to teach them how a genre develops and is regarded, the differences between popular and literary genres, and to provide a survey of the history and major trends and themes of this type of literature, the same as in any other literature course. But my second goal is more important to me, and I believe to my students, too. I want this class to let students see the ways in which literature, whatever the genre, is vitally important and relevant to their lives and the ways in which they feel and think. I want them to develop a sense of literature as an engagement with human thoughts, ideas, feelings and passions. I'm trying to get them to see literature as relevant to deep questions and conflicts-to experience the ways in which stories can make us think and feel our own as well as other lives. So what I'm really trying to do with this course is to give students ways to read, and to make connections to what they read. I'm teaching skills, less than content. Not skills of literary analysis or close reading, but skills of connecting to a story and making it important to them. I want them to learn about engaging with literature-about exploring, through what they read personal and philosophical issues that matter to them and all of us. 

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Links

The Borough of Manhattan Community College
The college website.

BMCC VKP Page
The BMCC Campus VKP poster

Science Fiction

Surface of Mercury by Chesley Bonestell (copyright © Bonestell Space Art--used by permission). From The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell, 1952.

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Finding a Researchable Question

With my preliminary observations about my course, I began to look more specifically for a researchable question. I started with a focus on asynchronous discussion as a key learning activity, and a constellation of questions about digression and topic drift within that focus. With help from my VKP colleagues at the 2002 Summer Institute, I chose to focus on one question. "In online asynchronous discussion, what is the connection between 'topic drift' and student learning."

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Key Findings

In asynchronous discussion, students have the space and time to wander from the topic--"digressing" in ways that are not possible within the constraints of a face-to-face class. These digressions, this "topic drift" allows students to make a deeper, more personal connection to the course material. They can engage with the subject at a level which can be significant and long-lasting in their lives outside the classroom. They report this on survey responses, and (as my research is beginning to show) the effects of this "wider and deeper" learning are visible in their papers and other assignments for the class. Of course, there are times when this digression fails, when it becomes a distraction or unproductive, but those times are fewer and less serious in asynchronous discussion. As my research continues, I expect to reach some conclusions about specific ways to structure asynchronous discussion to actually promote productive digression, and ultimately to transfer some of these benefits to the face-to-face environment more...

Early Findings

• Pedagogy--
  Connections and Parallel Adjustments
• Student Learning--
  Casting Wider and Digging Deeper
• Research--
  Persistent Visible Process

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