Inspiration and direction

I was inspired to start this blog by reading the DMA summer edition student blogs and Facebook discussion posts and comments. It struck me that writing my own blog might be a better way for me to share my thoughts about composition than squeezing such thoughts into the texts of daily assignments (which is what I started out doing).

I had forgotten that the source of my inspiration for diving into the world of creative media studies and new-media composition in the first place was none other than online conversation. For me online conversation has always (well, since 1993) been a richly creative medium. So, seeing the Facebook discussion take flight on the first day of the five week summer term (and I mean like immediately take flight) engendered the feeling of returning to a cherished hometown, a kind of primal or ur experience.

I confess. In many instances in my teaching I fall prey to being an absolute idiot, a complete knucklehead. I spend time worrying about keeping things in order, or thinking about grading, or thinking about [insert some other form of approved and officially-recommended craziness here], and I let this overwhelm the far more important need to think about, provide a space for, and tend to the quality of a conversation. I absolutely believe that all learning takes place in conversation, and that conversation is beautifully and wonderfully creative. To me, conversation is like a cognitive-emotional form of dance. So why would I allow myself to find ways to ignore or limit conversation in my teaching?

Sometimes the stumbling block for me into the vast and sorry land of excuses in this regard is the numbers of students I typically have enrolled in the regular-school-year edition of the DMA course. It's a lot of students. Six sections of twenty students each. Admittedly, this is a pretty good excuse for shutting down or limiting conversation, because there is only one of me. How am I supposed to read six different online conversations with twenty speakers/writers in each, or twelve with ten speakers/writers in each? But... conversation is surely as ever the lifeblood of learning. So...

One of my challenges as a composer of courses, a challenge that I am taking on this summer, is to figure out a way to make the regular-year DMA sections more conversation-friendly, like the current summer edition is. This may boil down to a simple yet complex question: how do I redefine and/or redistribute the teaching role?

This summer we are one group of eleven. I have heard (in text form) all of the voices on the first day of class. I've already been inspired by how smart and insightful everyone is, and this has reacquainted me with the the sheer fun and remarkable creativity of conversation. How do I multiply this by twelve in the fall semester?

That's my question. That's my direction. Based on an inspiration. Got any ideas?