Category: Digital University

Shit or get off the pot: Why are we still talking about the seismic impacts technology will have on higher education?

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It is a fascinating exercise to look back at how academics and scholars viewed the impact of  computers in education.  There have been discourses around technology and computer-mediated learning for over three decades.  What is interesting in the 20 or so articles I read (ranging from 1970 to 1985) is that we are having the same debates, with the same arguments being constructed around the same fault lines, roughly split between evangelists and critics advocating or arguing against the impacts and benefits of technology in higher education;

 

“We are, whether fully conscious of it or not, already in an environment for higher education that represents the most drastic change since the founding of the University of Paris and Bologna…some eight or nine centuries ago.” Stephen Muller – President Johns Hopkins talking about technology in 1985
 
“In each instance, technology failed to live up to its early promise for three reasons: resistance by teachers, high cost, and the absence of demonstrable gains in student achievement” – ‘Looking into education’s high-tech future’ Raymond Bok 1985

 

With the almost ubiquitous impact of technology, whether in the form of devices, usage or interaction, in many aspects of society, there still seems to be significant contesting of the relevance of technology to the way we do higher education teaching, learning and assessment.

1984
 “Communication between people occurs in a social context including role relationships eventually negotiated by participants. Developing and maintaining these relationships assists the society, and the entire communicative process is a necessary condition for a person’s definition of a self-identity. Contemporary technologies potentially limit the development of social relationships and broadening of self?concepts. Computers cannot fulfil many social functions and could disrupt the social fabric, thereby losing vehicles for defining and constructing self.” – ‘Technology and the crisis of self’ – Gratz and Salem, Communication Quarterly v.32, n.2, 1984
 
 1998
“It is often very tempting first to draw a simplified picture of the role of the teacher in “traditional” or even “old-fashioned” education and then present contrasting visions of a new role in the future. In my opinion, there is too much easy and superficial talk about revolutions and paradigm shifts in education. Revolutions don’t happen that often…” ‘The role of university teachers in a digital era’ – Ljoså, paper presented to the EDEN Conference, Bologna, Italy 1998
 
 2013
“The potential of technology to transform teaching and learning practices does not appear to have achieved substantial uptake, as the majority of studies focused on reproducing or reinforcing existing practices.” – Kirkwood, Adrian and Price – ‘Technology-enhanced learning and teaching in higher education: what is ‘enhanced’ and how do we know? A critical literature review.’ Learning, Media and Technology 

 

There are thousands of examples of individual projects both here in the UK and around the sector globally where small and medium scale applications of e-learning, web 2.0 technologies, infrastructure investment or new pedagogies have been implemented and evaluated to varying degrees of success (Smith 2012). There is little evidence that there has been institutional level change, in terms of teaching, learning and assessment or pedagogical strategy, aside from changes in administrative processes connected to those strategies or to enshrine within them the didactic content-driven transmissive models of the existing pedagogy. Nor has there been the associated promised revenue generation or cost savings (Blin & Munro 2008; Kirkwood 2009; MacKeogh & Fox 2008; Stepanyan, Littlejohn & Margaryan 2010).

 

I used to work in a bookstore in the late 1980s back in my hometown of Sydney, Australia.  There was no way in the days of pastel pink walls and stacked tan and maroon bookshelves did we ever believe that the model of book retail would ever change.  The main technological change I saw from the time when I used to go into the bookstore as a five year old was to replace the grand central staircase with escalators.   As I grew more knowledgeable of the business I would see the impact of technology in terms of stock control, buying, customer service and range development.  But once again, little could we predict that less than 10 years after I finished working there, it would be the last major bookshop standing in the city because technology had not simply changed the way they did business, it changed the business itself.  As yes of course, there were more reasons as to the failure of hundreds of bookstores than simply the power of Amazon.  But at the core of it, book buying as an industry changed.  It started with distribution, then it went to price, then it went to promotion and finally it went to product, with e-books and e-readers changing the very way the product is produced and consumed.

 

 

This model of change (for better or for worse) can be seen happening in hundreds if not thousands of every day practices.  Yet despite some change within higher education, we are still arguing about the impacts of technology, perhaps fiddling whilst Rome burns.

 

“People will argue that you don’t get the same interaction as in a face-to-face environment. But the vast majority of our students elect never to show up on campus as we record our lectures and don’t force participation. In terms of project work – they organize themselves digitally – they set up a Facebook group, meet over Google+ hangouts and Skype, and occasionally in person. This really changes the need for face to face interaction.” David Glance, Director of the UWA Centre for Software Practice, University of Western Australia

 

It is clear that the modern university will not look the same as it does now. The challenges and significant changes that the digital age represents cannot afford to be reacted to by putting a new coat of paint on an old car. The modern university will have to adapt to a world that is looking for new ways to get from point A to point B, driven and navigated by learners and a community that are not necessarily constrained by roads or engines.

 

 ”…educational policymakers have not learned anything from these decades of research, whose recurring theme has been the complexity (if not outright failure) of educational change and the inadequacy of so many reform ideas…we have so little evidence that anyone has learned anything new about the processes of teaching and schooling beyond the confines of their own personal locations.” Bascia, N. & Hargreaves, A. 2000, ‘Teaching and leading on the sharp edge of change’, in N. Bascia & A. Hargreaves (eds), The sharp edge of educational change, Routledge, London, pp. 3-28.

 

For me, the phrase that adorns this blog post, ‘shit or get off the pot’, represents a critical line in the sand for all of us engaged in the strategic and pedagogical direction of higher education.  Can we afford the same moments of blessed ignorance afforded to the management of Borders and HMV who staunchly refused to embrace the new behaviors of users and when they did it was too little, too late?  Are MOOCs the wake-up call that perhaps all is not right in neverland?  As noted by David Glance, the users of higher education are adapting the new skills they have in information and digital literacy to interacting and engaging with each other and the academy in different ways.  We all know the statistics around mobile text usage, the continued decline in email in 16-20 year olds and continued blurring between the personal and professional in terms of web 2.0 usage.

 

“Tasks that were previously the domains of faculty are now under the control of learners: searching for information, creating spaces of interaction, forming learning networks, and so on. Through blogs, wikis, online video, podcasts and open educational resources, learners are able to access content from leading lecturers and researchers around the world. Through the use of social media, learners are able to engage and interact with each other (and in some cases, directly with researchers and faculty)”. Siemens & Weller, ‘Higher education and the promises and perils of social network’, Revista de Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento (RUSC) 2011
 

How long can we continue to argue the toss about technology in higher education?  I argue that the tipping point has already been passed.  The ability to access information and further, the skills to use that information in creative, constructive or problem solving ways are embedded and integrated into school level learning and social interactions from a young age.  Significant aspects of business practice are linked inexorably with technology and more importantly, are different from the way they were even 5 or 10 years ago.  Yet we, as often the largest employer in a region, the hub of innovation and the heart of entrepreneurship and intellectual capacity are debating whether there is any benefit that can be gained from technology in our practice.  We talk about our 19th century learning model as one that has worked in the past, why are questioning its relevance now?  Perhaps the answer to the question as to why there has been little measurable institutional impact of changes in technology is that there have been very few instances of an institutional strategic imperative to respond to the change.

 

Are we trapped in a model of fundamentally believing what is right about what we do that we can’t see that not everyone shares this belief?  Often anyone who advocates for technology is labeled an evangelist or an advocate, sometimes used as terms of derision in the same way users of Facebook are branded addicts because they use Facebook more than the person undertaking the research does (I hasten to tell the story about whether my long dead grandfather would consider all of his grandchildren as addicts for the amount they are addicted to their cars, because he only drove his olive green Morris Minor to church on Sundays).  Whilst we arguing about whether Twitter is an intellectual copyright minefield, or whether Dropbox own our data or if we should ban students from using Wikipedia and Google learners are acquiring knowledge from different sources, they are interacting in the ways they feel comfortable doing and they will seek something different from higher education if what we offer is in discord from what they want.

 

‘It’s tragic because, by my reading, should we fail to radically change our approach to education, the same cohort we’re attempting to “protect” could find that their entire future is scuttled by our timidity.’ David Puttnam Speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 2012

 

So much of our scholarship on e-learning is about tools and platforms, arguing the relative merits of second life or twitter, or analyzing the dropout rates of MOOCs.  What we are missing in our research and in our arguments at a strategic level is a narrative around what are the changing educational requirements and conditions that necessitate a critical review of our teaching and learning pedagogies.  Employers are actively searching a potential employee’s digital profile, how do we integrate that into our teaching of professional practice? Crowd-sourced information is driving sales and reputation in industries as automotive, travel and arts and culture.  The issue is not the use of technology by the academy, but how that technology leads to a new model of collaborative, interactive and authentic higher education experience.  As Michael Wesch notes;

 

“We want to put them in a state of wonder. They’re insatiably curious. If we (teachers) inspire them, then we can work to harness and leverage technology and create with them.”
Michael Wesch from Kansas State University who directed ‘A vision of student’s today’

 

It is time for us to shit or get off the pot.  In my opinion we cannot afford to continue this cyclical and eventually damaging ‘will they, won’t they?’ dance of unresolved technological tension.  There has to be a critical, empirical and research informed evaluation of our pedagogical practices.  The systems by which we enhance our programmes and courses need to be agile and responsive.  And this has to happen quickly and publicly.  Our agenda in some ways is being controlled for us by companies like Pearson and the reputational one-two of things likes MOOCs and hacktivist education coming from organisations like Coursera, FutureLearn, TED and the Gates Foundation.  At the moment we as universities are relying on the import of credentials and qualifications.  But this is being broken down through new industries, new jobs and continued (in my opinion, flawed) belief that learning can be simply broken down and aggregated like the way you collect football cards, swapped, bartered and finally made into a set.  This is a not a call to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  In fact, it is the opposite.  We need to make a case that we are at the centre of facilitating a creative, engaging and innovative culture.  We support learners to develop a skills set that is authentic, transferable and shareable.  We have decades of interactions, conversations, research, investigations and experience.  Technology does not diminish that.  Technology provides a way in which our learners can connect and join with that body of knowledge.  Technology affords the learners with an opportunity to add to it, share it, remix it and create something new from it.  But at the heart of that is still the institution, the space that encourages, supports and fertilizes that creativity.  But by banning mobile phones in classrooms or insisting that lectures are compulsory (as the only way to learn something is to listen to it being intoned from afar),  we are creating the constructs of our irrelevance.

 

‘Last fall, the Harvard Business School began requiring every entering student to purchase an IBM personal computer. Those who were unfamiliar with these machines received special instruction in their use. Software was distributed to enable students to manipulate financial data. Word processing programs were provided to assist students in preparing their reports’ ‘Looking into education’s high-tech future’ Raymond Bok 1985
 

How do I know that all of this was real? The dark side of being a digital stranger in an online learning environment – Part 2

Introduction

In part 1 I started to explore some of the darker aspects of online engagement, particularly the process of disinhibition, which can be facilitated by the anonymity, fantasy, openness and freedom that engaging online affords.  In this post, I want to take that analysis a little further and perhaps a little deeper into our practices as both digital citizens and academics.  More specifically, I am going to unpack some of the notions around authenticity and realness.   Lying at the heart of an educational experience is the ability to understand why something is authentic or real.  Without that, we are left with a bunch of words sans context.  Repeated, spoken but not contextualised or understood.  Remembered, resourced but without meaning or resonance.

 

The use of e-learning as an instrument of replication and repetition is a theme I have explored in a number of earlier blog posts.  The concept of the digital stranger throws a specific light on why using web 2.0 platforms and social media specifically as didactic, broadcast-led instruments firstly may isolate learners who have been moved significant components of their interactions and relationships to an on-line environment and secondly miss an opportunity to explore different modes of authenticity and realness, facilitated by a learners disinhibited to varying degrees, being interactive and collaborative.

 

What makes engaging on-line different from a face to face meeting or a class?  Is there something that emerges from these apparently dark processes of identity, interaction and sharing online that doesn’t occur when we are in the same room or lecture theatre?  Are we even comparing apples with apples?  Perhaps we are talking about two separate iterations of the very same thing – learning.  The evolution of social media and its increasingly ubiquitous use by people who chose to live some or all of their lives online do not simply represent the transition of conversations and relationships to a new platform, like moving from one coffee shop to another.  These relationships can be very, very different, drawing on a portfolio of skills that have emerged and aggregated through social media platforms.

 

Aside from the aspects of online engagement such as anonymity and asynchronous communications that I looked at in part 1, on-line relationships can be collaborative and open, where content sharing, appropriation and creation are a daily function of the interaction.  Before Facebook, would you send a memo to all your friends giving them a status update?  Before Flickr, the only way we had to share photos was the dreaded slide night (I am still trying to get the memory of bad fondue and Blue Nun out of my traumatised brain.)  The difference is more than the mode of transmission.  Let’s take Flickr as an example.  It affords the opportunity, if provided by the creator, to re-use photos, not just from people we know, but complete (digital) strangers.  It provides us with a chance to comment, which can then become conversation which evolves into a relationship.  It then allows us to meet other people who liked the photo or the subject of the photo, as part of a wider group.  Finally, it can provide for learning through the application of critical comment, expertise sharing and collaboration.  Now, think about your own discipline in this context.  A class of learners engaged not just in consuming material provided to them by academics, but re-purposing them, sharing them with others, making network and connections that facilitate interaction and social construction of knowledge and participating in learner-led and facilitated learning.

 

However, the purpose of this blog post is not to proletize the use of social media in higher education.  There are enough advocates out there doing that without me and my size 12s.  No, I think there is a more fundamental lesson here for education.  As academics designing and facilitating programmes there is a challenge about how much we need to engage with these new relationships.  Do we keep designing learning, teaching and assessment in the same way we always have, just using web 2.0 platforms in very web 1.0 ways?  Is there something more to be gained from identifying and understanding the changing ways in which interaction is occurring?  Should we experience more, become part of networks and communities ourselves as a way of applying and repurposing those experiences to next contexts?

 

I have been actively engaged online for nearly 17 years from bulletin boards, to IRC and now onto any number of social media platforms.  It has been a continual cycle of experience and appropriation and evaluation.  Most of it has been enjoyable and satisfying.  Some of it has been painful, traumatic and cathartic.  There have been moments of inspiration, of creativity and of disappointment and body shaking laughter.  I have made friends, partners, enemies and colleagues.   That lived life informs how I design and develop a programme especially where there is some blended or online component.  I am also 42.  I am cogniscent of the fact that modes of interactivity are neither uniform nor agreed across all users, and that there are significant differences between age groups, context of usage and device preference. But I am also aware that many of my own experiences would not have happened in real life.  It took both the emancipatory and the disinhibiting nature of social media to facilitate much of those experiences.  In part 1, I looked at three of John Suler’s considerations for what he termed the ‘online disinhibition effect’, a way of understanding some of the darker aspects of online interaction.  In part 2, I would like to explore three more; invisibility, dissociative imagination and minimisation of status and authority.

 

Invisibility

The absence of visual cues like tone of voice and body language can lower the inhibition of online learners.  Suler notes;

 

‘People don’t have to worry about how they look or sound when they type a message. They don’t have to worry about how others look or sound in response to what they say. Seeing a frown, a shaking head, a sigh, a bored expression, and many other subtle and not so subtle signs of disapproval or indifference can inhibit what people are willing to express.’ (Suler 2004)

 

The fact that you can’t see the person you are engaging means the bounds of physical appearance are no longer present.  Some writers (Stephens, Young and Calabrese 2007) argue that it increases the opportunity for cheating behavior in learners (necessitating a different kind of assessment, one that relies on understanding and application, not repetition and memory).  Invisibility also engenders lurking and trolling behaviors  both in many ways anti-social and counter to the participatory aims of most online programmes.  The cloak of invisibility also impacts on those facilitating the programme as they cannot identify the visual cues of the lurkers, identify the motivations of the trolls or even see who they are actually interacting with.  Equally, invisibility may afford the user with the sense of braggadocio that comes from not being seen or known, and which may hide a lack of understanding or a deliberate or accidental misreading of the learning.   More widely, this can manifest itself in fantasy and role playing, gender swapping and increasingly complex scenario building that works simply because the user is effectively invisible, relying on text and images completely in their control.   What happens in an online environment when some or all of what someone says turn out to be untrue or a misconstruction of the facts?   What does it say for trust, authenticity and realness?  How does it impact our processes of marking and feedback?

 

Dissociative Imagination

How much of online interaction is a game that we control when we log in and log off?  Dissociative imagination unlocks inhibition by pretending that what is happening is not real, that the interactions are akin to those that are simulated in a video game; that the emotions, impacts and personalities affected by your actions are not real, or at least not as real as real life.  And, that these actions are free from the responsibilities and consequences of real life interaction.  In terms of engagement in online learning, dissociative imagination can result in boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable interaction becoming blurred, learners not treating collaborative or group activities seriously because it’s only ‘online’, especially in the context of activities or formative assessment.  It is less the case in summative assessments as these have a defined impact on achievement.  Whilst this type of disinhibition is not limited to online learning and clearly occurs in many classroom based modes of group work especially, the ease with which it can occur online has considerable impact on social interaction, especially in large, disparate and potentially anonymous groups.

 

Minimisation of status and authority

As a guiding principle, most of the online programmes I have designed or been involved in developing have been put together with the intention that the role of the ‘teacher’ should be de-privileged.  Why should the articles we recommend become the basis for the literature used in all our assessments?  Why can’t learners find and share references through citation platforms or digital curation tools like Scoop.it?   Suler notes that;

‘The traditional Internet philosophy holds that everyone is an equal, that the purpose of the net is to share ideas and resources among peers. The net itself is designed with no centralized control, and as it grows, with seemingly no end to its potential for creating new environments, many of its inhabitants see themselves as innovative, independent-minded explorers and pioneers. This atmosphere and this philosophy contribute to the minimizing of authority.’ (Suler p.234)

 

In the context of adult learning, how do we reconcile the internet’s ability to support a democratic and emancipated environment (although within a wider context of access to infrastructure and bandwidth – the digital divide is a post for another day) with the central control that a university craves?  I would argue strongly for the need to support the development of ‘innovative, independent-minded explorers and pioneers’ both inside our community and our faculties and schools.  Arguably, whilst the deconstruction of authority poses many challenges, especially to ego and established practice, the potential it offers from programme design and assessment is exciting.

 

Conclusions

At the end of the day, as a person leading a programme, what I am really seeking?  Are retention and achievement the key measures of the success or failure of the programme to make learning happen? Without doubt they measure, at least obliquely, learner engagement and perhaps even more obliquely, learner satisfaction.  I called these two blog posts ‘How do I know that all of this was real?’  What matters most to me in the digital life I live, the digital scholarship I engage in and the relationships that I build and have fall is authenticity.  The experiences, whether they are with me or others hidden behind a disinhibited wall or showing their ‘real’ selves warts and all, should have something authentic about them  That could be a glimpse of a personality or trait kept well hid in real time or a full blown role play of character and emotional resonance.

 

The most powerful form of authenticity in terms of online learning manifests itself as creativity.  I see online learning as a magnet for creative activity, freeing learners from the some of the rules of society that inhibit creative thought.  There are risks attached to this at a curricular or learning level.  People can hurt in this environment; it can be traumatic, worrying, confusing and challenging.  Whilst it is essentially (although not always) a safe environment, it might provoke learners into thinking about why they are doing something or why they are being told something.  My observations from part 1 still stand however.  In the age of MOOCs and platform driven e-learning, fuelled by OERs and user engagement, there is a place for a new pedagogy, a new way of thinking about how we structure higher education.  It is a pedagogy that accesses the skills the learner already has and does not assume that they are a blank slate, ready to be moulded by own inputs as faculty ‘experts’.  It is a pedagogy that puts interaction and engagement at the centre of learning, teaching and assessment strategy.  It is a pedagogy that challenges the learners to make decisions about the authenticity or realness of what they are learning.   It asks learners to reuse, appropriate, create, design, share, collaborate and apply things.  It is a pedagogy that draws inspiration from the challenges presented by interaction as and with digital strangers.

 

In 2007 Marilyn Lombardi in a piece called ‘Authentic learning for the 21st century’ used the phrase ‘authentic learning’ to describe a learning-by-doing process, defining it thus;

‘Authentic learning typically focuses on real-world, complex problems and their solutions, using role-playing exercises, problem-based activities, case studies, and participation in virtual communities of practice. The learning environments are inherently multidisciplinary.  They are “not constructed in order to teach geometry or to teach philosophy. A learning  environment is similar to some ‘real world’ application or discipline: managing a city, building a house, flying an airplane, setting a budget, solving a crime, for example.” Going beyond content, authentic learning intentionally brings into play multiple disciplines, multiple perspectives, ways of working, habits of mind, and community. ‘   

 

The attraction of the space between disciplines is a strong one, and a lot of the literature around authentic learning supports the benefits of inter and trans-disciplinary learning.  Perhaps there is a need to think again about authentic learning as a way of shaping both the curriculum design and broader pedagogical principles of an institution, right down to programme or even modular level.  Drawing on some of the recommendations from these last two posts, maybe there is a need for authentic learning 2.0.  A topic for another blog post!

 

Keep the conversation going by posting comments, following my twitter feed @PeterBryantHE or just getting in contact  through the blog.

 

Lombardi, M. M. (2007). In D. G. Oblinger (Ed.), Authentic learning for the 21st century: An overview. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. http://alicechristie.org/classes/530/EduCause.pdf

Suler, John (2004). “The Online Disinhibition Effect”. CyberPsychology & Behavior 7 (3): 321–326.

http://www.samblackman.org/Articles/Suler.pdf

E-Learning: Going down to the crossroads. Track 2: Same as it ever was: Pedagogical slippage in MOOCs and other top 40 hits

One of the most consistent rules in music is that when something becomes popular, it gets commercialised, sanitised and commodified .  It certainly happened with punk, Britpop and any number of major musical movements.  The Sex Pistols lead to Adam and the Ants.  Nirvana led to Stone Temple Pilots and Blur and Oasis led to Coldplay.   The same could be said of e-learning in higher education.  The innovations, the pioneering and the experimentation that lead to a critical analysis and evaluation of the way we do things, becomes corrupted and made safe by either risk averse faculty, firewall friendly administration or the inevitable gravitational pull of a one-stop ‘software in a box’ commercial solution.  The practices of innovators and early adopters question and challenge the existing pedagogical orthodoxies.  Our understanding of learning, teaching and assessment evolves, and adapts into new ways of thinking about pedagogy.  But as these practices seep into the mainstream, they don’t mutate or replicate, they can become hollowed out, a fresh new shell for the way we have always done ’it’.  This pedagogical slippage occurs across most of the e-learning landscape.  New ideas become old ideas in a shiny new suit.  And in the end, all we are innovating is the technology and not the way it’s used.

 


Anderson and Balsamo (1997) note that;

‘In practical terms, classroom technologies must be critically evaluated, analysed self-reflexively, and understood as part of broader cultural, economic, and political contexts. Inviting students to think critically about both the tools of technology and the uses to which they may be deployed is an empowering gesture that resonates at every level of educational exchange.’ (Anderson & Balsamo 2007)

 

What we see in the hype that surrounds methodologies like the MOOC and flipped classrooms is firstly a mad rush to be part of one, whether the pressure is institutional, peer or media driven, and secondly a lack of pedagogical criticality.  Sure there is plenty of incisive (and not so) comment and analysis, to which this blog post clearly contributes, but there is little of what Anderson and Balsamo argue for.  Perhaps this is a consequence of the lag between research and practice, but arguably, taking MOOCs as an example, the learner is not asked to think critically about the platform or the way it’s used, they are numbers plucked out of the air, hurled around as labels to argue whose MOOC is biggest and then dismissed as drop-outs and failures, as the attritions rates are so high from most MOOC offerings.

 

To support my assertion, I offer you two examples, and then let the controversy begin…

MOOCs

The MOOC ‘phenomena’ embodies all the characteristics of pedagogical slippage.  The first MOOCs (such as the one on connectivism by Downes and Siemens) were not your average on-line course made free.  They were the manifestation of the work done on Connectivism, with mass aggregation of user sourced and generated content, the repurposing of this content for the specific context of the learner and ‘feeding forward’ of this knowledge to be shared openly with the wider network (ie: the open community).  This challenged existing pedagogies in a number of ways.  It de-privileged the role of the teacher, putting them as part of the network, but not the hub of the network.  The design challenged the linear ‘teaching leads to learning’ format of most higher education programmes and finally it clearly identified a significant place for learner-led interaction and knowledge construction.  These are challenging concepts.

 

However, some of the MOOCs we see emerging today, such as those from Coursera and Edx for example are not as experimental.  Have a read through the course materials of some of these programmes.  They are often presented in the way we have always done distance learning.  They provide the learner with curated material, mainly produced by the lecturer.  They ask the learner to consume that material, perhaps get into a group and discuss it, then produce an assessment which is either auto-marked against an instrumentalised rubric or is peer marked (which in itself is different, but challengeable –  a topic for another day).

 

The flipped classroom

Generally attributed to the Khan Academy, the flipped classroom has been around a lot longer than that, with some of the early work occurring at Harvard in the late 1990s.  The intention of these pilots was to break down the misconceptions that had begun to creep into learners after they had attended the lecture and provide opportunity for discussion and dialogue, not just broadcast.  The idea of flipped classrooms is quite radical in itself.  Flip the homework so that the learner consumes materials (preferably socially curated) before they come to the lecture and use the time for engagement with debates and the arguments that emerge from the material.  But then, what starts to occur as they become popular can again be attributed to pedagogical slippage; the innovate idea makes way for last year’s lectures reused but not remixed or repurposed.   Then the lecture space becomes an area for the lecturer to effectively run what they used to do in a tutorial but on a larger scale, group discussions, rarely fed back and shared, or as another secondary lecture.

 

Now it would be wrong of me to argue that all MOOCs and all flipped classrooms are run on a pedagogy 1.0 model (‘Same as it was ever was’, to quote the Talking Heads).  But each time I see a case, or a conference presentation or the ever increasing PR machines pumping out visions of a new radicalism emerging from within the academy in the form of a MOOC, there are significant parallels to when record companies begin to infiltrate and exploit a ‘scene’.

 

Do I think that all the hype around MOOCs and flipped classrooms is a bad thing? It clearly has drawn attention to the need for change in the way higher education does its business.  It has placed some of the emerging epistemologies on the table and has made people at least acknowledge their existence.  But in the great race to get on the MOOC train to Memphis have we forgotten that it is not about the destination, but the journey?  Simply using a MOOC, or trying a flipped classroom, or making an app, or putting some OERs up for use is not the point.  Identifying why you are using them, in what way can they enhance the student experience, embolden the community to achieve more and change the way we ‘do’ education’ are more critical questions.  A MOOC by itself is simply that, a course put up on-line for free.  As Jesse Stommel notes in an excellent blog post  …‘In fact, a MOOC isn’t a thing at all, just a methodological approach, with no inherent value except insofar as it’s used.’

 

This debate has surfaced in the almost hysteric rush to MOOCdom that has enveloped the blogsphere, higher education policy making and taken (and returned) of the job of one University manager.  Noted library scholar, Siva Vaidhyanathan wrote a cutting piece for the Chronicle where he quoted Dan Cohen of George Mason University noting his concerns that MOOCs have a…

 

‘“…lowest-common denominator/old-style learning by repetition aspect….” Instead, Cohen argues, we should be developing projects that help students explore, lead them toward new insights, and help them build digital projects themselves.’

 

The notion of technology as a vehicle for the ‘old ways’ we do things has been of concern to researchers and practitioner in this area;

‘As we have seen, the likelihood is that educators will engage with Web 2.0 technologies in the same old ways. As Kirkup and Kirkwood (2005) have shown, teaching staff in higher education will probably employ the latest technologies to teach much as they have done in the past, if left to their own devices. To the extent that, say, podcasting has begun to make an impact in higher education, this has already happened. Most podcasts are last year’s lecture in digital format. Student remixing of podcasts, use of syndication to pool collective responses and other more active learning approaches are losing out to those that see podcasting as a high-tech alternative to the audio cassette of the 1980s.’ (Barnes & Tynan 2007) 

‘(VLE’s can create) conservative dependence on pre-digital metaphors, signs and practices which are increasingly anachronistic as digital modes gain in social and cultural significance’.  (Hemmi, Bayne & Land 2009)


Now, I guess the argument could be made about the idea of relativity.  I mention that Blur and Oasis as bands and a successful ones at that were partially responsible for creating the environment that afforded Coldplay the opportunity to sign for a major label.   This is what we call in music fandom ‘a fight startin’ comment!’   However, let’s assume that it is correct.  Coldplay have sold millions of records, are incredibly popular and arguably quite successful.  So, by my logic, MOOCs arising from the 2nd generation (after Siemens and Downes) could equally be the next big thing.  I could go into how Coldplay give the audience what they want to hear and they do what they do extremely well.  They have live shows that engage the audience and involve them in the experience.  However, the analogy is just that.  What I would note is that Coldplay did not copy the chords and lyrics of Blur or Oasis and just make them with new guitars and keyboards.  They adapted, they were influenced, inspired and then made their own thing.  It wasn’t Blur v.2, it was Coldplay v.1 and that was different from what went before. Same as it ever was.

 

You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?
You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?

(Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime)

 

 

 

Anderson, S. & Balsamo, A. 2007, ‘A pedagogy for original synners’, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, pp. 241-259.

Barnes, C. & Tynan, B. 2007, ‘The adventures of Miranda in the brave new world: learning in a Web 2.0 millennium’, ALT-J, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 189-200.

Hemmi, A., Bayne, S. & Land, R. 2009, ‘The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in higher education’, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 19-30.

Kirkup, G. & Kirkwood, A. 2005, ‘Information and communications technologies (ICT) in higher education teaching—a tale of gradualism rather than revolution’, Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 185-199.