Communications assistant professors and Elon Center for Advancement in Teaching and Learning Scholars Sang Nam and Phillip Motley presented at the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons 2010 at Georgia Southern University March 9-12.
Both Nam and Motley presented a session titled “Perceptions of E-mail Usage in the Academic Environment” that discussed whether e-mail has enriched student-teacher interactions. They argued that the perception of e-mail as an effective form of interaction should be assessed in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. They discussed assessments that need to me made to determine how much virtual teacher-student interactions have supplanted traditional face-to-face meetings and what effect this has on the educational outcomes of students who engage in that kind of communication.
Motley and Nam also presented a session titled “Student Perceptions of Difficulty and Enjoyment” that centered on how students learning design programs often seem to confuse the concepts of difficulty with enjoyment. When asked what aspects of their courses they find the most difficult to learn—technical issues or aesthetic issues—students consistently reported that it was harder to learn the required technology and easier to learn the aesthetic material.
Nam presented a session titled “Rubrics for Music Disciplines” that focused on the use of rubrics in teaching. Typically, they allow teachers to indicate the criteria they emphasize in teaching, which helps students identify what they need to focus on while studying. In music performance, though, it’s quite challenging to create a generalized rubric since assessment of individual performance can be highly subjective.