FoolsCap

Some afterthoughts from a conversation M. Karcher and I had during C & W.

M. was trying to find the so what? question for her upcoming presentation and we were batting some ideas around.  She was presenting on the online Snakes on a Plane phenomenon (or maybe phenomena) but hadn’t yet found a way to make it of pedagogical/rhetorical interest.  One question we were both interested in: How to make available a forum for students to use that encouraged the sort of self-sponsored, invested, creative writing that was evidenced by the fan communities around this film?  What made this difficult to answer is also pointed to in the fate of the film itself: New Line, the film’s producing studio, co-opted the fan creations and incorporated fan art, fan writing, fan music etc into their own marketing strategies–and, famously, into the production of the film itself.

Quinn–whose last name, sorry, I don’t have at hand–had by this point joined our little discussion, and he ruled out blogs, since his experience had been that student blogs just become reified as class work–his past students didn’t invest in blogs in a substantive way and the resulting work was little more than a typical reading journal, albeit in a digital medium.

[While I admit the journal-ization of blogs is a very real risk for instructors using them, I still like using them.  Even if the content is little more than reading journal entries, they’re still journals I don’t have to carry to and fro and every week.]

the problem, M. and I decided, was that students cannot escape the institution of the classroom.  Even were we to assure our pupils that we were taking a solely observational role in opening a forum to them, we would still be present as observers, and as Heisenberg teaches us, even an inactive observer changes the nature of that which is observed.  This is important, because what M. and I had suggested was a forum in which students could feel free to offer critique and feedbac on the instructor’s pedagogy, syllabus etc. without fear of reprisal.  Another problem, of course, is the obvious potential for conflicts of interest in such a forum being created by instructors–to be of any value (to students) it seems as though it would have to be student generated.

But the phrase I used to describe the instructor willing to implement such a forum has stuck with me since the conversation: "transparent pedagogy."  I’m not claiming to have coined it, but the idea has been floating around in the back of my mind of late.  What would constitute a transparent pedagogy?  Is it appropriate to incorporate different levels of transparency?  How might different participants in the university–students (both undergrad and grad), instructors, administration–benefit or be harmed by transparent pedagogy?  And, perhaps of more immediate interest as a possible entry for future C&W work (if noone beats me to it), how have students imposed their own forms of transparency via such sites as Rate My Professors?  How do/should instructors make the reasons for their pedagogical choices and their course material apparent to students?

Do we more to gain or to risk by becoming transparent pedagogues?  Feedback, as always, is appreciated.