Mentoring

In this lesson, you've evaluated a lot of content delivery methods, useful across disciplines in many different classes.  But these may be of limited use to you, if your course is built less around a body of subject matter, and more around mentoring students as they develop skills.  

An obvious example are writing methods courses, where professors provide regular, timely, and actionable feedback on student composition.  Another example is a programming course, where students write the code for entire applications, and while there isn't a single way to code a program, some ways are clearly better than others.  

We might think of an art course taking place in a traditional studio, with easels, sculpture tools, and the scent of linseed oil.  But what stops a professor from providing meaningful mentorship to a student artist, via internet communication?  (And, if the artwork is digital, submission of student via the web may be more efficient than viewing it in a studio.)  

And many courses feature a blend of content and methods, where professors still spend much time communicating with individual students about their submitted work.

In Week 4 we explore methods for cultivating student composition skills (and the analytical skills that develop in tandem with creation).  But here it is worth mentioning that providing students individual feedback on their work is a big mode of instructor presence.  If you teach a course where, for example, you comment on student writing or artwork, then creating online interactive lessons, adding lengthy videos to your course space, or even learning the various features of Zoom may be less relevant than falling back on the hard work of traditional mentorship: how do you provide, in text,  feedback that help students discover their personality as a writer, an artist, or a practitioner?