Take My Liberty COUC 747 Class

Four books run through the term. McKeachie and Svinicki's Teaching Tips supplies the practical craft: planning a course, leading discussion, assessing learning and teaching online.

Vella's Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach introduces dialogue education, in which adult learners are treated as decision-makers who bring experience to every session.

Jacobsen and Jacobsen's Scholarship and Christian Faith asks how faith can shape the questions a scholar asks without turning scholarship into apologetics.

Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed challenges what he calls banking education, in which teachers deposit facts into passive students, and argues for learning that helps people understand and change their world.

The early weeks examine the language of education and what separates good teaching from great. The middle weeks cover faith and scholarship, dialogue education and learning research, with the group case. Week six turns to Freire, week seven to Christian pedagogy and the conference paper, and week eight closes with reflection.

A blog falls every week. The case study runs in weeks four and five, the book review is due in week six, the conference paper in week seven and the essay in week eight.

Each week adds short presentations, and several add articles or websites on teaching practice.

Assessment of learning runs through the McKeachie and Svinicki chapters, from writing fair exams to grading reflective work in counseling skills courses.

Online teaching receives attention too, since many counselor educators now teach in hybrid and fully online programs.

Course design chapters show how to align objectives, activities and assessments.

COUC 747 is carried with your own teaching philosophy at the center, since the blogs and the closing essay are reflective and the essay draws on the blogs.

Each blog runs at least 400 words, engages that week's readings and takes a position, with substantive replies to two colleagues. Because the blogs are personal, they are drafted from notes on your experience as a learner, a counselor or a teacher, so the voice stays yours.

For the group case, your share of a two-to-four-page teaching dilemma is written from your assigned McKeachie and Svinicki chapter, and the following week your group's response to another group's case is drafted from the relevant chapter.

The book review, up to 1,000 words, summarizes Freire briefly, places the book in its field, evaluates its argument and its relevance to counselor education, including from a Christian perspective, and says who should read it.

The conference paper is written to a call for papers you choose, such as one from a Christian counseling association or an adult education research conference, following its length, format and theme. A topic might be using structured peer feedback to build case conceptualization skills in an online practicum course.

The reflective essay, 800 to 1,000 words, organizes what you learned around a few insights, quoting your own blogs. You post and submit everything yourself.

Each blog cites the week's readings in APA, so the reflection rests on the course texts.

The writer is a doctoral counselor educator who teaches graduate students and presents at conferences.

That experience shows in the conference paper, which is pitched to the audience of the call and structured the way accepted proposals usually are: a clear problem, a grounded approach, evidence or illustration, and implications for teaching.

It shows in the book review, which reads like a journal review written by someone who has taught with Freire's ideas and knows their strengths and limits in counselor training.

The group case is written as a real teaching dilemma faculty could discuss, not a quiz with an obvious answer.

Another doctoral reviewer reads every piece, and one educator covers your term.

They also bring classroom stories, changed to protect identities, that make the blogs concrete.

The blogs are the first difficulty. A blog every week, with real replies to two colleagues, asks for candor as well as scholarship.

The conference paper is the second. Finding a real call, matching its requirements and writing something presentable takes time and judgment.

The book review is the third, since a scholarly review must evaluate a classic, not just summarize it, in no more than 1,000 words.

The readings are the fourth: four very different books, from practical teaching tips to critical pedagogy.

The group case is the fifth, depending on teammates in weeks four and five.

Many also find it hard to bring Christian faith into a scholarly paper without turning it into a sermon, which the Jacobsens warn against.

A blog is due in week one, so help is most useful from the start.

Blog drafts come early in each week, built from your notes, and replies follow.

Your part of the teaching case comes ahead of the group's week-four date, and the response in week five.

The book review arrives before week six closes, and the conference paper before week seven closes.

The closing reflection, built from your blogs, comes before the last Friday.

Students joining partway send their posted blogs, and later pieces build on them.