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.