Weeks 10 and 11: Openess and Systematic Change

First, an apology to myself and any readers that might possible be out there. Last week I hit a wall. First there was a migration surge at work as I realized how very close I was to completing the remaining spring semester courses that needed to be migrated into the new system and tweaked. I worked toward my goal set in July of finishing those courses by the holiday next week and there I was finishing early! However, by Thursday, I was feeling punky and Friday necessitated a sick day with 20 some hours of sleep. These two events definitely put me behind in my coursework last week. In fact, I did almost nothing to participate in the course. So, as I'm now caught up at work and at home, I'm resolved to catch up in this course. I have a feeling that these two subjects are more or less related even before I get to the postings and videos.

McTeachers in Education
The other day I drove by a local elementary school advertising "McTeacher Night". McTeacher Night? What is the heck that, some kind of mass produced, fast food robitron wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with golden arches teaching kids to flip hamburgers and fry potatoes? It turns out it's a fund raising event whereby the teachers, students, and parents of a school converge on a local McDonald's for one evening and a part of the proceeds for the evening are (presumably) given back to the school.

I don't know about you, but I find this idea appalling, not only because I hate McDonald's (and most fast food companies) for the damage they've done to our environment and our health, but also because this corporation will now have some kind of message, however subtle, to parents and children that it "supports" education. Let's not forget that this money came directly from the pockets of the parents, teachers and students themselves and that the pockets of ole Ronald McDonald himself are duly filled as well. It's all win, win, right? Wrong. How is it that we accept corporate sponsorship of education so freely? We even introduce our children into it when they are too young to realize that they are being "branded" for life. I'm probably being too alarmist when I say that, by giving money back to the schools to fund projects that the schools themselves should be funding, McDonald's will own these kids for the rest of their lives. McDonald's as the good guys, right? Uh-huh.

The idea of corporate interference with knowledge - both its creation and its transference - just bothers the heck out of me. For years, corporate "America" has been ingratiating itself into the classroom with it's funding and brand names. More and more our government, who is supposed to supply its population with an education so that it can think and therefore, vote with intelligence, withdraws educational funding forcing schools at every level to rely on private (corporate) contributions and forcing our children to become fundraisers instead of students. I smell a corporate rat here! Ignorant little fundraisers growing up to be ignorant corporate cronies.

How can we get corporations out of our schools and the business of education? Part of the problem is that we see education as a business with knowledge the commodity sold to "clients" (students) hawked by providers (instructors). Many no longer see knowledge as an end in itself, but as a product that can be bought. Thus, we see students who believe they are entitled to an "A" because they paid for the class even if they did not learn one thing. Another part is that our schools, being underfunded, have to fill that gap somehow. Parents (taxpayers) will only tolerate so much in increased taxes, so here come corporate America to the rescue - as long as you prominently display their logo.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...
Reading Higher Education, Globalisation, and the Knowledge Economy (M. Peters, 2007) only reinforced some of ideas about "systemic change within education gone bad" that I have been harboring for a while. As our higher educational system moves from the purveyors of reason and culture to that of purveyors of "excellence", we are less concerned about the acquisition of new knowledge for its own sake, then with knowledge as it applies to ::fill in the blank:: objective. If it can't be measured, it ain't knowledge or at least it ain't worth knowing. Hmmmmm.

Peters hits the nail on the head when we calls the modern day university president's job a "bureaucratic administrator", an "executive." Our presidents and chancellors are disengaged from the day to day dealings of the college because they must spend time doing their own fund raising. Fund raising from the government legislatures who want progress typed into little boxes in black ink before they give out their stingy cash streams. They want results and they want them now! Measure every idea going into a student's head and then measure it coming back out again. See how much money's been lost? Sorry, go to the end of the line.

The problem, as I observe it, is not a lack of planning - there's a whole heck of a lot of planning going on, but a lack of planning for what goes on inside the classroom. Most of our 7 institutional initiatives are unrelated to the classroom. Student services, physical assets, and administrative operations occupy at least as much space as academic initiatives in the plan. I've seen my employers in the past few years become obsessed with institutional and strategic planning and heaven help you if you have an idea to do something outside these plans! Forgetaboutit! It ain't happenin'

Sinking ships?
Does anyone else feel as though they are holding on to the sinking Titanic? Both Seimens' and Peter's articles foretell the end of education as we know it by "gutting" classrooms and other bounded spaces. The view from there seems pretty fuzzy. No experts leading the charge or boundaries where information is obtained. It all seems rather chaotic to me. Not that I oppose changes in education or the unbinding of learning spaces.

To answer Seimens' question to the class, i.e. "Is it fair to expect students to participant in space we create for them?", I think the answer is yes and no, particularly at the undergraduate level because so many of the students I've encountered do not have a good foundation for learning. Part of the job of community colleges is to help the under-prepared figure out how to learn (and don't get me started again!). To set them loose in cyberspace without these skills is sinful, but modeling these skills, giving them time and reason to practice them, and encouraging them to continue must remain part of what we do. As students become more comfortable with learning, then, yes, they should be given much more control over their own learning and I see that is what Seimens has in mind.

A part of me doesn't want to give up the comfortable feeling of working as an instructional designer at a bricks and mortar campus even though I design online "classrooms." I want to be assured I'll have a job in the next 5 years, I want to design learning in my own way and I probably will continue to do that for a while at least. However, I need to feel the slowing and lurching of this Titanic I'm on. I need to check around and see where others are going? Where are those escape hatches? Who is giving the directions? What will see travel look like once I'm off this thing? Bare rations, only the night sky for navigation, a lot of hopelessness as well as hopefulness, open waters, tiny boats, and lots of hands helping out. Sounds like chaos, but at least we haven't gone down with the ship!

Week 9: What becomes of the teacher? New roles for educators

So, if the power and control in the connectivist classroom shifts from the instructor to the students, the question becomes "What is the role of the teacher in the connected classroom?" If the instructor is not at the podium in front of the room, where are they? If not the "sage on the stage", how does the instructor transform him or herself into the "guide by the side?" What the heck is a guide by the side, anyway? These are the questions the class touched on this week.

Although there are some who sincerely believe teachers and academic institutions aren't necessary to support education, I'm not ready to advocate destroying the educational system as yet. If it were that easy, why isn't everyone living and working at graduate levels? Humans do need someone to show us how, to guide us through, but not necessarily to lecture at us. As was said during today's UStream session, the role of the teacher in the classroom is fragmenting and in a state of flux. It is changing at a rapid rate,and it's about time!

I read an article (whose name and author escapes me at the moment) in which author pointed out that if we brought people from 200 years ago to modern times, most of them would not be able to function in their profession at all. For example, a farmer from the 1800's would be baffled by combines, fertilizers, and other modern farm implements. A doctor could not prescribe medicines nor perform surgery in a modern hospital. A lawyer would be sunk under the weight of law briefs that one has to know in order to practice law, but a college instructor, well, he could be plunked right down in the middle of the most progressive college and could still find his way around the halls of academia without much problem. Lecture halls still look pretty much the same, committees function in the same way, etc. Can we really say that the form of education serves us so well that we haven't needed to change it in hundreds of years? Of course not! So isn't it about time that education changes?

Before we get to the finer points of change, I should point out the comments made as part of the discussion this morning that there have been times when education has made a change and it has hurt vast numbers of people. I'll give 2 examples from my own schooling. During my elementary school years, "new math" was introduced an we spent a huge amount of time dealing with set theory, alternate numbering systems, and other such concepts at the expense of basic arithmetic skills. As a result, I'm 47 years-old and still use my fingers to figure multiples of nine. In junior high school, we abandoned reading classics for newer, shorter novels or rather pieces of them. I haven't read many classics that I feel are so important to being a modern adult. Although I won't go on to actually name them as I'm too embarrassed, I am trying to compensate by reading some of them as an adult. The point is that making changes in education does have an effect on society as a whole, so we must consider it carefully.

However, I don't think that releasing power and control in a classroom is all that detrimental as long as it transfers the power and control of learning to the students and doesn't dissipate it. It now becomes the instructor's job to toss the power out to the students and the students' responsibility to catch that power and control it. If the students refuse to accept the power over their own learning, the instructor has failed. Students today NEED to learn how to focus the control over their learning so that learning can continue after graduation.

In the connected classroom, the instructor has a role quite different than the sage on the stage. He or she becomes the curator of learning artifacts, the facilitator of discussion, the community organizer, the product showcaser, and even the concierge of knowledge path: directing, questioning, pointing the way. But, I think the most important role of the connected-classroom instructor becomes that of evaluator. Especially in this day and age of accountability and assessment, it is the instructor who has to figure out who has got it and who does not. Who is on the path and who has wandered too far or not wandered far enough. However, it's not just a role for the end of the course. It's a role that instructors must take from day 1. What pieces does each student bring with him or her into the classroom? What pieces are necessary? What are the best tools to find and assimilate those pieces? Where are those pieces and how can I best direct students to find them? Do those pieces of content need to be created or re-created? These are the questions instructors must now answer. Instructor become full participants in the course, not just the drone reading from yellowed lecture notes and students also become full participants in the material - getting out of their seats perhaps (gasp!), questioning, answering, and seeking their own way.