Jan 2013
Co-intentional Education: a #digped Discussion
January 30, 2013 | Filed in: #digped
by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse StommelThis Friday, February 1 from 1:00 - 2:00pm Eastern (10:00 - 11:00am Pacific), Hybrid Pedagogy will host a Twitter discussion under the hashtag #digped to discuss student involvement in teaching, learning, and pedagogy. If you’re an educator, please invite your students to participate. The Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age was published on January 22, 2013. The document, a collaboration between twelve educators, proposes on its surface 9 rights and 10 principles that affect students and their work in any learning environment, with an eye toward those which are hybrid or online. The document has generated a great deal of discussion about its context, but little about its implication: namely, students are so integral to the process of education that how we conceive the institution and the practice must evolve. As educators, our work is not to better understand and defend our own positions, but to abdicate those positions in meaningful, thoughtful ways. Read More...
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A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age
January 22, 2013 | Filed in: Online Learning
On December 14, 2012, a group of 12 assembled in Palo Alto for a raucous discussion of online education. Hybrid Pedagogy contributors Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel gathered together with folks from a diverse array of disciplines and backgrounds, representing STEM fields, the humanities, schools of education, corporations, non-profits, ivies, community colleges, and small liberal arts colleges. Among us were adjuncts, CEOs, a graduate student, several digital humanists, and two outspoken educational technology journalists. As a group, we’d chaired online programs, designed MOOCs, dropped out of MOOCs, and the term "MOOC" was even coined in one of our living rooms. The goal of the summit was to open a broader conversation about online learning and the future of higher education. This co-authored document, which calls for hacking and open discussion, was the result. Read More...Somewhere Between a Course and a Community: Alec Couros Twinterview
January 17, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Pete Rorabaugh
Last Friday, January 11, 2013, I asked Alec Couros to join me for an hour-long Twinterview. It was the weekend before the launch of #ETMOOC, his brainchild, and I wanted to get some context and history for his digital work before he began another connectivist adventure. Our conversation roamed from his first experiences in the cMOOC (even pre-MOOC) community, academic influences on his "open thinking" philosophy, reflections on publication and tenure, and his motivation to organize #ETMOOC.
Read More...
Last Friday, January 11, 2013, I asked Alec Couros to join me for an hour-long Twinterview. It was the weekend before the launch of #ETMOOC, his brainchild, and I wanted to get some context and history for his digital work before he began another connectivist adventure. Our conversation roamed from his first experiences in the cMOOC (even pre-MOOC) community, academic influences on his "open thinking" philosophy, reflections on publication and tenure, and his motivation to organize #ETMOOC.
Read More...Learn Like an Arachnid: Why I’m MOOCifying
January 15, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Janine DeBaise
Every fall when I ask my first year students, “Why did you choose the College of Environmental Science and Forestry?” at least one will answer, “I want to save the world.” By the time they are sophomores, my students have taken rigorous science courses that focus on environmental issues. When they do group projects in the research/composition course I teach, I’m impressed with their topics, the depth of their knowledge, and their passion. What seems wrong is that their presentations are only to each other. Sure, they invite their friends, but at a small college where everyone takes a whole bunch of the same courses, that’s not a very satisfying audience. The students teach me and have changed me -- dramatically -- but I shouldn’t be the only person to benefit from their knowledge and fresh ideas.
Read More...
Every fall when I ask my first year students, “Why did you choose the College of Environmental Science and Forestry?” at least one will answer, “I want to save the world.” By the time they are sophomores, my students have taken rigorous science courses that focus on environmental issues. When they do group projects in the research/composition course I teach, I’m impressed with their topics, the depth of their knowledge, and their passion. What seems wrong is that their presentations are only to each other. Sure, they invite their friends, but at a small college where everyone takes a whole bunch of the same courses, that’s not a very satisfying audience. The students teach me and have changed me -- dramatically -- but I shouldn’t be the only person to benefit from their knowledge and fresh ideas.
Read More...#digped Storify: the Course as Container
January 14, 2013 | Filed in: #digped
by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel
During our January 11th #digped discussion, we took a close look at what a course is, and what happens when we consider altering -- or entirely abandoning -- this format for learning. Right off the bat, the nature of the "course" came into question. Every definition offered both made sense, and felt vaguely objectionable. The idea of courses as Lego structures that could be dismantled led us into the idea that a course needs to "go" somewhere; that it takes its participants on a kind of road trip, leading toward a predictable outcome or goal.
Read More...
During our January 11th #digped discussion, we took a close look at what a course is, and what happens when we consider altering -- or entirely abandoning -- this format for learning. Right off the bat, the nature of the "course" came into question. Every definition offered both made sense, and felt vaguely objectionable. The idea of courses as Lego structures that could be dismantled led us into the idea that a course needs to "go" somewhere; that it takes its participants on a kind of road trip, leading toward a predictable outcome or goal.
Read More...The Course as Container: a #digped Discussion
January 10, 2013 | Filed in: #digped
by Sean Michael Morris
In his article, Online Learning: a User's Guide to Forking Education, among other arguments, Jesse Stommel foresees a need to break or rebuild the idea of the course. "We need to devise learning activities that take organic (and less arbitrary) shapes in space and time. We need to recognize that the best learning happens not inside courses, but between them." As part of his larger discussion of "forking" education in order to bring learning more effectively into the digital medium, Jesse suggests that the course is only one of a set of components that needs to be taken apart, scrutinized with care and with playfulness, and then rebuilt. The inspection of education and educative methods needs to be so complete that no assumptions are left unexamined.
Read More...
In his article, Online Learning: a User's Guide to Forking Education, among other arguments, Jesse Stommel foresees a need to break or rebuild the idea of the course. "We need to devise learning activities that take organic (and less arbitrary) shapes in space and time. We need to recognize that the best learning happens not inside courses, but between them." As part of his larger discussion of "forking" education in order to bring learning more effectively into the digital medium, Jesse suggests that the course is only one of a set of components that needs to be taken apart, scrutinized with care and with playfulness, and then rebuilt. The inspection of education and educative methods needs to be so complete that no assumptions are left unexamined.
Read More...Online Learning: A User’s Guide to Forking Education
January 08, 2013 | Filed in: Online Learning
by Jesse Stommel
At exactly this moment, online education is poised (and threatening) to replicate the conditions, courses, structures, and hierarchical relations of brick-and-mortar industrial-era education. Cathy N. Davidson argued exactly this at her presentation, “Access Demands a Paradigm Shift,” at the 2013 Modern Language Association conference. The mistake being made, I think, is a simple and even understandable one, but damning and destructive nonetheless. Those of us responsible for education (both its formation and care) are hugging too tightly to what we've helped build, its pillars, policies, economies, and institutions. None of these, though, map promisingly into digital space. If we continue to tread our current path, we'll be left with a Frankenstein's monster of what we now know of education. This is the imminent destruction of our educational system of which so many speak: taking an institution inspired by the efficiency of post-industrial machines and redrawing it inside the machines of the digital age. Education rendered into a dull 2-dimensional carbon copy, scanned, faxed, encoded and then made human-readable, an utter lack of intellectual bravery.
Read More...
At exactly this moment, online education is poised (and threatening) to replicate the conditions, courses, structures, and hierarchical relations of brick-and-mortar industrial-era education. Cathy N. Davidson argued exactly this at her presentation, “Access Demands a Paradigm Shift,” at the 2013 Modern Language Association conference. The mistake being made, I think, is a simple and even understandable one, but damning and destructive nonetheless. Those of us responsible for education (both its formation and care) are hugging too tightly to what we've helped build, its pillars, policies, economies, and institutions. None of these, though, map promisingly into digital space. If we continue to tread our current path, we'll be left with a Frankenstein's monster of what we now know of education. This is the imminent destruction of our educational system of which so many speak: taking an institution inspired by the efficiency of post-industrial machines and redrawing it inside the machines of the digital age. Education rendered into a dull 2-dimensional carbon copy, scanned, faxed, encoded and then made human-readable, an utter lack of intellectual bravery.
Read More...The Hybrid Scholar
January 04, 2013 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete RorabaughOn my campus, and on many others, there are two entirely different units -- the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education -- suggesting, somehow, that the activities of one are wholly separate from the other. “Learning how to teach” happens in one while “analysis” (or something like it) happens in the other. The problem is that all of those Arts and Sciences grad students have to do something else in addition to the scholarship they are being trained to compose. They have to teach, and, considering the current job market and the landscape of traditional academic publishing, they are probably going to rely much more on their teaching at the start of their career than on their research. Do these carefully groomed grad students ever set foot in the teaching college a block down the street during their four years (or six or eight) years as doctoral students? On my campus, they do not. Read More...
Personal Learning Networks: Knowledge Sharing as Democracy
January 03, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Alison Seaman
Sherry Turkle famously argues technology has begun to overtake our attention and time, which has led to increased physical isolation and shallow online interaction. She contends, in a community-starved world, we need to disconnect from our smartphones and other Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-enabling devices in order to create greater balance: “We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true ... If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will know only how to be lonely”. Detractors such as David Banks, Nathan Jurgenson and others counter that Turkle’s assessment of alienation creates a digital dualism. As David Banks at Cyborgology suggests, it may be more appropriate instead to consider our technique—how we use technology.
Read More...
Sherry Turkle famously argues technology has begun to overtake our attention and time, which has led to increased physical isolation and shallow online interaction. She contends, in a community-starved world, we need to disconnect from our smartphones and other Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-enabling devices in order to create greater balance: “We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true ... If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will know only how to be lonely”. Detractors such as David Banks, Nathan Jurgenson and others counter that Turkle’s assessment of alienation creates a digital dualism. As David Banks at Cyborgology suggests, it may be more appropriate instead to consider our technique—how we use technology.
Read More...