A few thoughts on Twitter chats as course discussion

One of the exciting and fun experiences of the #openlearning17 cMOOC are the twitter chats. I have not been able to participate in all of them, but the ones that I could make it to were energizing, provocative, and – I don’t want to say full of, but they provided their share of ideas and references. Here we are, in different corners of Virginia, the US, and the world, engaging in an intellectual exchange that can fairly easily fit into our schedules, that requires no travel (not even the 20 minutes that it takes me to get from JMU east campus to JMU west campus on the other side of i-81), and that we can pick up at a later time, read again, add new comments to, and so on.

But.

but…

One of the things that makes the chats exciting is the sheer speed with which tweets keep coming in. To me, this feels a bit like being at a party where everybody is talking; in situations like this, I can’t listen to anybody – I simply don’t understand what they’re saying, even if they’re talking to me. Too much confusion, too much firehose drinking. Tweetdeck is therefore an absolute necessity for me in the chats: One column is reserved for #openlearning17 and one column for responses/threads I am engaged in. Still, my sense is that I am slightly lost and don’t know where the conversation is going. I should check the storifies later on (Where are they, by the way? Can't find them!), but I haven’t done so yet.

Recently, I’ve been reminded of the German word Gespräch and the overtones it has for me. The word refers to a conversation, but a Gespräch is a bit more serious and weighty than most conversations (which we might call Unterhaltungen in German – entertainments). It doesn’t have the competitive aspects of a debate (which we call a Debatte); it is less focused than a discussion (which we call – German is sooooo different from English – a Diskussion).

Gespräch flickr photo by Karsten Spin shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

You say something; I listen. There is some silence while we think and take a sip. I respond at length, going on for a while, with a point that seems off topic at first but turns out to be apposite; you listen. You respond. I ask a follow-up question to better understand what you are saying, and you respond. We’re silent again. I add to what you said. You challenge what I say. I take some time to think about this, then offer a qualification. You do not immediately understand and ask me to explain a point. It turns out we understood a phrase I used in opposite ways and laugh, appreciating the humor of the situation. And so on.

I think a good seminar discussion has the characteristics of such a Gespräch. To me, Twitter chats lack some of these characteristics: there is no silence; there are more statements than questions; it is hard for people to explain themselves at length. We’re on a short ride in a fast machine.

Is the absence of grade inflation a problem?

Grade inflation is commonly seen as a problem. An average grade between B+ and A in an undergraduate class is typically viewed as an indicator that instructional rigor is missing and that grades do not properly reflect student learning (or, rather, the lack of it). To avoid this problem, instructors are frequently admonished by academic departments to aim for an average class grade somewhere in the C-range. I’ve been thinking a bit about this and have a question that requires a bit of backup.

Let me start by stating a couple of rules that I think most people would agree with:

1. Graded assignments should measure students’ knowledge and skills in the subject matter of a class. A more sophisticated–or at least more Benjamin-Bloomsy–version of this rule would state that graded assignments measure whether, and to what extent, students attain the learning objectives that the instructor has set for the class.
2. Learning goals, assignments, and grading criteria should be transparent, so that students know what to do in order to succeed. In other words, instructors should tell students what they want them to learn and how that learning will be evaluated.
3. Readings, class activities, and the like should provide students with opportunities to learn the things that graded assignments evaluate. This implies that assignments should actually test what students can learn in the class.
4. Teaching should generally be effective in that students who participate in the class can learn the skills and knowledge that the class is meant to teach them. This means a number of things. Of course, it implies rule 3: the class should teach what it tests. But it also means that students should receive the support, inside and outside the class, that enables them to be successful. It also means that instruction should be able to address the learning needs of a diverse set of students, giving all the same opportunity to learn.
5. Instructors should continuously improve their teaching.
6. Students should be reasonably motivated to learn. This is connected to rule 4 in that effective instruction should include effective efforts to motivate students to learn.

If all of these rules are followed, or if all these conditions (if we want to think of them as such) are met, I don’t see how we cannot see grades go up over time. In addition, if a letter grade of B indicates that a student has achieved a learning objective, and an A indicates that the student excels in that objective, I don’t see how a course average can be below a B in the long run if all six rules are met.


Assume that a class has an average of a B or a B+ and the instructor is asked to lower the grade to a C. What can the instructor do?