This fall I was asked to teach in a Digital Cultures Art History/Visual & Performing Arts class. The students were prepping an assignment that could be a research paper or a research-informed creative project. The professor also mentioned that covering digital archives, digital humanities, and copyright were on the table for her, so I had both a lot of leeway and a lot to cover. As I planned this class, the final plan had a pretty dramatic gear shift in the middle of the session. I don't drive stick. This wasn't my best performance. I got half enthusiasm from the students and half vaguely annoyed reticence. So it was a struggle to get the audience participation element of my lesson plan going.
The first half of class was my usual database jigsaw. I broke the class up by table group to explore some of the databases that would be helpful to them in this class. This is where I ran into my first issue. I've never had a student actively refuse to participate in an activity. Half-ass an activity, sure. But never active refusal. Her feedback for me was that I'd given her a database she wouldn't use, so she didn't see the point of the exercise. My approach in the moment was to encourage her to work with the rest of the table, but that was the first gear grind of the session. Shareouts from the database jigsaw went well, but I was definitely thrown off. The second half of class was my lecture on copyright in visual media. This was really divisive for this class. Some of the students got into it and actively argued over the facts of the cases. But I also got a few active eye rolls (from the same student as above, but also a few others). The ones who participated really participated, and the ones who didn't really didn't. While I didn't entirely stall the car, it felt close. Usually, I close these posts with what worked, what didn't, and what I'd change. I'm reluctant to blame the class fully, after all I'm the one in charge, but I think an essential component of the class experience is what prep they receive from the professor. In this case, I wonder about what they were told to expect. Some seemed excited to roll with the punches and the activities; some seemed annoyed at what they got. So I suppose the 'what I'd change' about this class is that I would make sure the professor communicated clearly with the class about what to expect, which I usually assume happens smoothly. Of course, I always start with a rundown of what to expect from the session but having more explicit advance notice would probably have helped with some of the reluctance. Overall, I'm satisfied with how it went and what I covered, but it was a new classroom management experience to be sure.
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