Thoughts on Education – Continuing Education with Limited Time and Money – 7/31/2014

One of those interesting topics that comes up sometimes is the question of how and when those of us who teach can keep our job skills up to date. Admittedly, many who teach do not care about this at all, and they are happy to teach as they have always taught because it works for them. I, for one, am never happy with where I am as a teacher and educator. To my family’s ongoing chagrin, I am always reinventing, reconfiguring, rewriting, and reforming my classes. Only rarely do I run the same course again the next year as I did the year before. I am always making changes, and I am always seeking out ways to make these changes.

The problem comes in the question of what to change and how to make changes. In this case, my own desires for continuing education and change meets the ongoing budgetary crisis head on. We do not have the money for conferences or continuing education. And, as a community-college instructor who teaches full time with overloads and summer courses (essentially a 6/6/3 load), there is little time and money on my own for going to and doing things to improve my education. One of the options is, of course, books, but I find myself with little time and motivation to read professionally any more. This is sad, as I used to read history for fun, but now, after 8 years of graduate school and 8 years of full-time teaching, the idea of sitting down and reading a historical monograph is just not very appealing. I have had to confront this in myself, as my job is history education, and I should have the responsibility to be up on the latest scholarship, while also reading widely in topics relevant to what I teach. However, much like my students, if it is not required, I am not going to read it. In the spare time I do have for teaching, I generally read fiction, as it allows me an escape from everything else. Unfortunately, that means that one primary avenue for continuing education is largely unavailable for me.

So, with no money or time for traveling to conferences and not really being willing to read the things that I should, I have turned to taking MOOC courses through Coursera. Last Spring, I took University Teaching 101, and this summer, I am in two of them. The first one, which I am in the middle of right now, is e-Learning Ecologies, which looks at new ways we can think about the online learning environment.  It runs for eight weeks, and it is week 5 right now.  The other one that I am taking now is Learning to Teach Online, which takes a more basic approach to looking at how we teach in an online environment.  I am hoping to learn more through these courses about how I teach, how I could teach, and what other ideas there are out there.  I can’t say much more about them than that, as I am still working on them.

Those of you who teach, what do you do to keep updated with your skills?  Those of you who do not, what else can you think of that could be useful?