Comments on
I. Overview
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I really like this sequence of comments. Thank you very much for such a thoughtful conversation. The drop-out rate issue needs to be separated out carefully. I don’t think we have decided yet how much, for example, NCLB will be part of this project. (I am writing another where I think it will be quite central, but that is more about learning and cognition and not on institutional transformation.) Thanks very much.
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There are costs to participating in HASTAC activities….these are born locally, either by the supporting institution (i.e., Duke, UCI, Berkeley) or by the individuals themselves, rather than centrally as would be the case for a professional organization (through the payment of dues from distributed participants). Although i would say that the costs are more socialist than organizations. From each according to their means….
But the costs are real, and unevenly distributed, as is the anxiety about covering the costs.
This is a very important question and one thing that we are thinking about is an appendix with the precise legal details of reforming HASTAC as a 501c3 which would have made it more like a “real” institution rather than a virtual one. What compiling such a document did was made evident the many, many ways and levels in which this “virtual institution” is supported by actual ones. Such things as health insurance for those on grants. The virtual institution could not exist without the support of extremely stable institutions, including grant agencies. The distinction we need to make is between “voluntary” and “cost free.” And what is gained and what is lost by an actual institutional identity and membership? Those are the issues that your good question helps to elucidate and we are grappling with on many different levels.
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College learning, even in lecture format classes, is not uni-directional. Well defined assignments can encourage peer-to-peer learning contexts as well as opportunities for self-directed learning. Open-ended assignments (e.g. essays, etc.) provide the opportunity for creative, research-based, learning.
It is also naive to assume that all (or even a majority) of students who were born after a certain date will shun more traditional methods of instruction. My experience has been that in project based, constructivist learning environments, the project must be created very carefully so as not to be seen as a contrived environment with a pre-determined outcome. Students need a variety of learning activities including some that are teacher centric to help to build the scaffolding and scope of reference needed to enable them to be successful on more peer-to-peer related projects. When they are employed, constructivist projects must be designed to be authentic, meaningful, and have a purpose that is clear to the student.
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I think you have to be careful here not to equate social valuing of the “merit and worth of products and ideas” with peer-review of the same. Some social networks (e.g. Digg.com) provide ways for users to vote on content, and these tools are useful in gaging the popularity of a concept within that culture, but they are no replacement for peer-review, if only because there’s no guarantee that the contributors and the voters are peers in any meaningful sense of the word.
Academic publishing may (and will probably have to) find ways to use these technologies, but their implementation of them will differ from the current popularity context that is web-based ranking.
But in America, this is how we elect leaders…
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Unless you fully intend to use it, the word “exponentially” may be incorrect. It’s a precise word with mathematical meaning and replacing it with “widely” or simply omitting it altogether would convey the same message without the possible misuse of this overused and abused word.
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I’m not sure you should praise Long Tail with the phrase “smash bestseller” – it seems to go against the phenomenon & logic Anderson’s talking about!
Funny comment. Hilarious . . . maybe the long tail for Anderson is into academe, where he has made nary a ripple. Some cats, I guess, have multiple tails, some long, some short. But your point is well taken, about targeted audiences, rather than popularity. Although even “smash bestseller” is a fraction of the population, hitting some segments, missing others entirely. Thanks for the insight. Very helpful in pushing our thinking.
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[...] PARA OS interessados, uma discussão aberta sobre um relatório que será produzido ao longo dos próximos meses: The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. [...]
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I agree this is a central issue. Authorship is fundamental to the operation of the university from the grading of student-authored essays to the granting of tenure for faculty-authored research. How much time can I devote to this kind of writing when I know no one will validate my work? How can I convince my students to work in this way or convince them of the validity of my evaluation of their labor when their individual work is so difficult to untangle from their peers? In part I think the answer to these challenges begins with recognizing the difference and relationship between the marketplace function of the author-as-owner and a more material-technological understanding of the networked practices of composition.
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[...] This is an interesting commenting tool in use (and probably an interesting read but I haven’t got that far yet!). A blog that allows you comment on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. It’s being used here to draft a paper. According to Scott Leslie it’s a WP plugin. [...]
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I agree with the idea that there is an American cultural bias against open, collaborative structures which makes people suspicious of things like wikipedia. Perhaps this is the reason we are such poor collaborators. For over a decade I worked in various roles on hundreds of large complex cutting edge technical projects and seldom experienced productive collaborative teams. Countries that can produce productive collaborators have an economic edge. I’ve personally watched dozens of critical technical projects get derailed because the team members can’t collaborate. Team collaboration is an extremely complex activity and one to date that is poorly researched and understood.
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What is (will be) the focus here regarding curriculum outcomes, outcomes assessment, skill sets, and professional certification? It seems to me that there are at least two forms of learning outcome here – implicit “discovery” models that encourage and facilitate students’ ability to undertake open-ended personal searches, and explicit (“satisfy the gatekeeper”) outcomes that meter out graduates subject to and capable of passing institutional review to enter business, medicine, law, and other professions. Are we talking about both? Are they mutually exclusive? We should hope not.
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Note that you’re assuming I know the format of this…article? Book? YouTube video?
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While I agree with the premise that young people learn and interact in new ways, I’m not convinced by an argument equating dropout rates with a world where “choice and customization prevail.” I even wonder if the two demographic groups (the empowered youth versus the dropout youth) are mutually exclusive.
Right. We can not fall into the trap of believing that students choose to drop out because they have discovered a preference for other modes of acquiring information. Much more likely they drop out due to a strong preference for video gaming or recreational drug use over attending class. Some people feel that the best response is to re-package the information we’d LIKE students to have into a game or game-like environment. Any attempt to do this will need to respect the difference between work and play. An activity can not be called a game unless one ‘plays’ it when and if they want to. While some students will choose to play games that, as a by-product, teach them something we’d like them to learn, most would rather slay monsters.
We send students to school in the belief that what they learn there will help make them well-adjusted, productive members of society. If students can achieve that goal without attending school, more power to them! Unfortunately, high dropout rates are probably NOT an indicator that students are integrating themselves into society without the benefit of formal instruction. More likely, it is due to the (correct?) perception that after all that seat time, a below-average student will still be a low-wage earner, criminal, or welfare recipient. Since, by definition, only half our students can be above average, one can hardly be surprised when a large number choose to drop out.
Grid computing is typically not associated at all with Web 2.0. One is a methodology typically used in high performance scientific computing and the other is a loose term describing applications on the World Wide Web. In fact, grid computing has nothing to do with the Web.
I know it’s hip and buzzword-worthy but I’d recommend dropping the grid computing reference completely. I’d also recommend you consider dropping the Web 2.0 references and simply reference examples of recently developed technologies as you already do. Web 2.0 is ill-defined and contested by some people. So it’s imprecise and may lose, confuse, or alienate some of your readers. Your text should (and does) stand on its own merits.
I strongly agree. Facebook has completely eclipsed Friendster as the tool of choice for students … in fact, since Facebook expanded to non-academic users in Fall 2006, you could argue that it actually is in direct competition with Friendster.
Interesting to read the Zagat’s model here. I just heard a talk by Sir Ken Robinson at NAIS where he used a metaphor for educational quality about two methods of maintaining quality in restaurants: Standardization (i.e. McDonalds) and Generalized standards tailored to individualized / localized needs and tastes (i.e. Zagats).