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"It's all about conversation": Challenges and Concerns of Faculty and Students in the Arts, Humanities, and the Social Sciences about Education at Scale

Published: 05 January 2021 Publication History
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    As colleges and universities continue their commitment to increasing access to higher education through offering education online and at scale, attention on teaching open-ended subjects online and at scale, mainly the arts, humanities, and the social sciences, remains limited. While existing work in scaling open-ended courses primarily focuses on the evaluation and feedback of open-ended assignments, there is a lack of understanding of how to effectively teach open-ended, university-level courses at scale. To better understand the needs of teaching large-scale, open-ended courses online effectively in a university setting, we conducted a mixed-methods study with university instructors and students, using surveys and interviews, and identified five critical pedagogical elements that distinguish the teaching and learning experiences in an open-ended course from that in a non-open-ended course. An overarching theme for the five elements was the need to support students' self-expression. We further uncovered open challenges and opportunities when incorporating the five critical pedagogical elements into large-scale, open-ended courses online in a university setting, and suggested six future research directions: (1) facilitate in-depth conversations, (2) create a studio-friendly environment, (3) adapt to open-ended assessment, (4) scale individual open-ended feedback, (5) establish trust for self-expression, and (6) personalize instruction and harness the benefits of student diversity.

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    cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
    Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 4, Issue CSCW3
    CSCW
    December 2020
    1825 pages
    EISSN:2573-0142
    DOI:10.1145/3446568
    Issue’s Table of Contents
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    Published: 05 January 2021
    Published in PACMHCI Volume 4, Issue CSCW3

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    Author Tags

    1. arts
    2. distance learning
    3. humanities
    4. learning at scale
    5. mooc
    6. online education
    7. open-ended courses
    8. social sciences

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