priming the double take

An academic list I subscribe to had been talking about moocs one day and someone posted a comment suggesting that although someone might learn in a mooc they couldn't be educated in one.

At the time this struck me as either deeply cynical or horribly mistaken -- much like Gardner Cambell's colleague who said "It may be learning but its not academics." Cambell's Open Ed 12 keynote

 

 

helped me see the argument we were having as evidence of the double-bind of Higher Education: we want students to learn, but the need to assess and credential that learning (often) makes it harder for students to learn. And the kinds of learning we're most thrilled by often don't fit our rubrics or assessment tools (although I suppose we can always slap a gold star on it).

We find ourselves in countless double-binds in higher education. The glorious "doubletakes" that help us pop out of the double bind and up in Bateson's hierarcy of learning happen most easily in upper level classes (grad classes and upper division undergrad). But they can be hard to come by in first-year writing classes and especially hard in basic writing classes because it is there that instructors are frequently so committed to the class (the people, relationships, and goals of the class) that the conflict between creating opportunities for rich, personal learning seems most in conflict with the pressures of assessment and credentialling -- giving students what they need to 'prove' they belong in the institution.

All of that would seem depressing as hell--is depressing as hell. Except for the window Campbell gave us to his students' double takes. Because although his class was one of those awkward-to-teach hybrid upper level undergrad/grad classes, he and his students acheived a number of double takes despite the doublebind. And if it can be done in the context of the weird hybrid undergrad/grad class, it can be done in basic writing. In fact, I think it is vital that it be done there and perhaps one way to do it would be to talk and write about the doublebind of higher education and see if together we could pop.

 

 

 

immersion in networked digital cultures

Do we need to be immersed in networked digital cultures in order to be effective literacy teachers?

I think so. As a long time lurker on many channels (a number of professional lists, twitter, reader rather than writer of blogs) I've come to face the truth that it isn't enough to read and observe; you have to do it, too.

Alex Reid's recent post prompted me to take this up now.  He writes:

Clearly all faculty have internet access at least through their workplaces. But to what extent have we collectively embraced networked culture? Certainly not to the extent that we have embraced the modern culture that we continue to celebrate through our curriculum.
Why is this an issue? Let's say, for example, that I didn't really care for reading books. I would assign books for my courses because that was expected, but I didn't live a life where books were personally valued. How successful do you think I would be teaching print literacy? Teaching with digital networks requires a kind of literacy derived from a significant level of immersion. This is, I think, a real stumbling block for our profession in facing up to this challenge. 

I'd go further than Alex; teaching literacy now requires engagement in multiple kinds of literacies, but especially networked literacies.  You can't gain fluency in a literacy just by observing; you have to practice.

teaching doesn't scale, but learning might

Over the weekend I sent the post below to the tech rhet list; I'm posting it here to link to other blog conversations about this question and to hold a place while I think more about Steve's response about the nature of education.


Steve [Krause]  might be right,

And to me, it's another example of how teaching doesn't
> scale.
>

But it is also a pretty good example of the ways that learning can and does
scale.  The course is about elearning, not eteaching afterall.  Learning is
hard to come by, even in a small f2f classroom where we do the right things
like conference with each of our students individually.  I'm much less
interested in the question "how well is this course being taught?" than I
am in the question "how much learning is happening there?"   That is an
ill-framed question that sounds sadly like an opening to a tedious
discussion of assessment practices (not where I hope we go with this!).
 I'm surprised by the intense focus on what the instructors want us to get
out of the course.  With 40,000 students (one of the instructors tweeted
yesterday 16,000+ active on the site) there must be countless goals for
taking the course and things people want to get out of it.  My own goals
have little to do with the course content (although Kathy's blog as made me
think in new ways about Prensky and has opened my mind to the possibility
of learning in ways more aligned to what I would guess are the sanctioned
goals of the course).  My point is that the goal isn't to teach but to
learn, and the learning isn't only what the teacher wants it to be.

Mooc hang outs

Today was #edcmooc's first hang out and while the instructors tried to make it participatory, it was at best participatory in the way that a call in radio show is participatory. This sounds like more of a critique than I mean for it to be, because really I'm impressed by how well the instructors are running this truly massive course (of the 40,000+ registered students, apparently more than 16,000 have been active on the site). They class is well structured (each week has a theme, the themes connect, it is clear what one should do each week and the instructors have helpfully indicated what they would like everyone to do and what those who might like a little more could do. The hangout, like the class, was well thought out with each instructor talking for a little bit about an aspect of the class, summarizing some of the discussion (mostly on the forums but also on blogs about the mooc), and offering some synthesis or response. They also took questions via twitter and google+.

As I watched I kept thinking of Kelly Ritter's Who Owns School? and her argument that literacy learning is often more vibrant in online discussions that are not in class or course space but instead take place in digital spaces not sanctioned by school. I was watching the instructors (and liking them / feeling positively about them and empathetic as I imagined what an incredible challenge this must be) but I was also watching twitter, flipping over to scan blogs and check google+. It seemed the livelier / faster/ more significant (to me) conversation was happening in the back channel. Ritter's book has also made me think about how my goals in taking this class, although clearly recognized as one of the reasons many of the participants enrolled in the class, is not, nonetheless what the course is teaching (even if it is what many of the students are there to learn). That is, I want to know what it is like to be a student in a mooc. Further, I want to know what it is like to participate in a class solely through a tablet. While I can't imagine the instructors for this "E-Learning and Digital Cultures" class would object, I know my interest in those goals far exceeds my interest in the content assigned for week one. While I watched the videos and read the texts, I found myself skimming quickly so I could get back to twitter and reading the blogs which, for me, is where the course is really happening. But it is Kathy Fitch's blog http://outwithlanterns.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/binary-oppositions-the-believing-game-edcmooc/ that has brought me back to the course material even, or perhaps especially the Prensky essay which I hadn't reread (having taught it a few times over the past few years, I thought I 'knew' it). But her reflections, emerging from the 'believing game' which had been prompted by the really rather scathing critique of the terms chosen and dichotomies introduced that had emerged in many blogs (especially blogs written by professors and most notably, to me any way, in blogs written by com rhet faculty).

I am REALLY struggling with composing on my tablet. I can't figure out how to include links on this app (really pretty basic feature for a blog...) , I'm finding it physically uncomfortable to write and difficult to edit. I'm committed to this experiment, but it is hard!