Thanks Gina for walking through this and providing some clarification. You've got me thinking!
It is fascinating to me that the initial question of What do you want more of in the teaching and learning experience? would be a challenge. It's a question I ask myself when I am going into developing a course, whether it is curriculum, learning activities, interactions with students and assessment, etc. What do I want more of for the students' success? Then, how might that work, and I start considering options- even if they don't generate the exact outcome I expected. I guess I am exposing my own vulnerability as an instructor. I don't have an answer here, just mulling my own experience of drafting this prompt....
You want to open the discovery (& the discussion) up wide, BUT also generate -- publicly or privately -- some concrete ideas for change. Absolutely. These are instructors who are interested in professional development and are taking the course to improve learning. Ideally the teaching experience as well but that's another angle. Brainstorming many ideas and sharing can empower one's self and others. The focus here is on possibility. It would be messy and that's probably what the challenge is. I suspect many are more comfortable sharing final ideas, rather than expose 'in progress'..
In thinking about the examples that could be offered, here goes:
What constructive outcomes could happen if you changed your approach to any aspect of a course?
In my Intercultural Communications Studies course I currently have students write a final paper that demonstrates conceptual understanding and personal shifts they see in themselves from the beginning of the course until now. I get the odd one that reveals a sense of deep learning about ones self and an empathy and curiosity about other ways of being and doing. It's okay, but how could I liberate them if the paper is constraining their ideas? I confess, when I asked a faculty to try a different approach to the research paper, I was elated, had fun and that paper was a success.
What if I allowed students to choose the method to show me their learning? The criteria wouldn't change, but how they present it, could. They could always do the paper, but now their are other options.
When I did this, I got erasure poetry, a short story and a video, all demonstrating solid understanding of concepts and personal reflection. It was the most powerful expression of learning that I saw and I wondered why I had not done this before. The prompts that I drafted for this course were an attempt to see what wording might invite that kind of exploration of practice. I probably should have added to the context that this would not be the first discussion and that time for relationship would have been provided. Does that make more sense?
Thank you for the revision: Suppose you suddenly stopped during [some approach, be specific] & replaced that with [some other approach, be specific]. What's the best thing that could happen? What's the worst? I like that it is about imagining- I think that is a more effective word. I like the best thing that could happen. That is the positive tone I was leaning to. I deliberately didn't go with the worst because I was thinking it added another part to the participant/student/teacher's workload, and there may be a tendency to dwell in the negative. However, I see how a balance of the question might be necessary.
Hoping this is more clear. Thank you Jeff and Gina for pushing me through this!