By R. Glass and M. Spiegelman

Every semester, every one of us has a few good students that we wish we could push (or lead) a little farther, have them go that extra mile, show them to recognize that important question and answer it.  In a traditional classroom setting, it is somewhat difficult and unmanageable.  Often your suggestions (or ideas) are lost or forgotten in the mayhem of the semester.  These questions (comments) are something you might not have time to cover (1) or even think about until someone’s posts trigger the idea (2).  It could be the old ” hey good question- look that up and get back to the class” but then we forget and they never do. By having the student’s blog their assignments, the instructor can individualize follow-up suggestions using the comment feature, on their work (3) (4), (5).  With the comment appearing after the students post, both the student and instructor have a running history and dialog.  Other students may become involved in the discussion (5). 

Students are at home in this environment, they have fun and when they learn something new, they  adapt it to thier space. (6) (7).  

We must realize that the “sage on the stage” model is done and that collaboration is not just between faculty members but among faculty and students.  The student will see first hand the first question we generate when we learn.  It is collaboration between student and faculty member in an environment that extends beyond the classroom.  References / examples

  1. Comment by Richard Glass on Tower of Hanoi overviewA reference made in post about Seagate Technology applying the Towers of Hanoi algorithm for backups as applied to a home user. 
  2. Richard Glass comment Coincidence????? on multiple posts for a calculus 3 assignment where both Kenneth Abbel and Arthur Abbel were cited as leaders in the commonality of computer generated graphics asking were they related.
  3. M. Spiegelmans post on researching the reliability of Wikipedia.
  4. M. Spiegelmans post on About.com.
  5. Receiving RSS Feeds to the Desktop and subsequent follow-ups by Bernie, geshev, Prof. Spiegelman and Richard Glass.
  6. Gary suggesting that he has done an A paper.
  7. Irene, a GLA student writing computer instructions and then using those instructions to better organize her time.