Motivating Students through Authentic Audiences
CFT Acting Director Derek Bruff authored an essay titled “A Social Network Can be a Learning Network” that appears in this week’s special issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education on online learning. In the essay, Derek uses the notion of social pedagogies to frame three educational technologies (social bookmarking, backchannels, and collaborative documents) that can be used to connect students with authentic audiences for their work.
I find that the Internet makes it relatively easy to use a variety of social pedagogies. Whether you’re teaching an online course or a hybrid course or just adding a few bits of online learning to a face-to-face course, you’ll find many online tools that provide a natural way to tap into the motivational effects of social pedagogies to engage your students.
If you’d like to talk with Derek or one of our teaching consultants about the use of social pedagogies in your teaching at Vanderbilt, give us a call (322-7290) to schedule an appointment.
Image: “The Calm after the Show,” Thomas Hawk, Flickr (CC)
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