I read a quote this week that has been following me around. It expresses a view fairly common among faculty, I suspect. The article (D’Abate et al., 2018) in which it appears focuses on the need for teachers to support students’ work in groups. The faculty member quoted observes, “My class isn’t on how to work well in teams, so if I could find some support for teamwork which could be done without taking away from class time, that would be hugely valuable” (p. 94). This view implies that material not related to course content “takes away” valuable class time. I don’t subscribe to that view, but it caused me to reconsider how we decide what we’ll do during class time or that time when students are interacting with our course content online. What criteria do we use to make those decisions?
