Last night I taught Week 2 of the Beginnings: Books of Moses class. We were supposed to spend one week on the book of Genesis. The whole class has seven weeks. It was all supposed to be part of my perfect little plan. Take one week to give an introduction. Spend one night per book for five weeks, to cover the five books of the Torah. Then, take the final night to pull it all together and make practical applications.
Tidy little plans like that work well on paper and in PowerPoint presentations. It didn’t quite work that way last night. Questions happened and we only got through the first chapter of Genesis before our hour and a half was gone.
So, here I am, perplexed. I have two competing agendas and value systems waging war in my mind. On one side there is my deep conviction that adult learning is a communicative practice in which I, as the teacher, am called to structure space in which adults can gather as equals around the subject and enter into dialogue. The students should always set the agenda with the subject based upon their own set of experience and questions. This value system and pedagogical methodology was at the heart of my dissertation!
On the other hand, I have set out to video record these lessons and post them as an online course. The course description promises that the online learner will work through an overview of all five books in the Torah in this course. How well will the free-discussion that went down bunny trails I never anticipated during the session translate into a video presentation? If I let the class go like this, we may never get through the book of Genesis, let alone the entire Torah!
Do I post the video as is? Do I edit it down to just the parts that are more presentational? Do I create a separate “talking-head” presentation for the online portion that “covers” the topics I did not address in the live session?
I’m curious to know if anyone else has run into this dilemma. Thoughts? Comments? Advice?
