(Posting on behalf of Rebecca Mitchell & Caroline Miles)

We’re both literature professors in the English department at the University of Texas-Pan American where we frequently teach fully online/reduced seat time courses; between us we have experience using Second Life, Blackboard, WebCT, Wimba, and Tegrity, to name a few technologies.

At THATCamp we’re particularly interested in reconciling two potentially clashing ideals. Neither of us believe in teaching literature primarily through lecture, and we are interested in technologies which allow us to replicate online the student collaboration and independent literary analysis that we conduct in a live classroom.   At the same time, having worked to develop our familiarity with interfaces and software, we are now really interested in learning about other ways to build content online, not just enhancing the mode of delivery.

We are curious about ways in which technologies relate to content outside of the classroom, and curious to learn how others ensure that content remains the focus in an online learning environment without depending on posting lecture notes/recorded lectures or turgid learning modules.