On learning in a technological age

No, this is not about the use of technology to enhance learning and teaching--it's a different angle.

Nicholas Carr's (2011) The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember (London: Atlantic Books) is a well-written popular account of what it says in the title. Naturally it is selective and tends to assume its conclusions from the outset, but its fair.

There have been a couple of substantial blog posts this week, too, exploring similar issues;

• from Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science on "The extended mind – how Google affects our memories" and
  
• from The Neurocritic on "The Google Stroop Effect?" (read it to find out what a stroop effect is!)  

The Yong article seems to have been the source for a number of shorter pieces in the serious newspapers.

The very basic underlying argument is a variation on Dr Johnson (1775); 

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. 

Broadly it suggests that since the net (or Google as its metonym) has made it so easy to know where to find out, it has made it unnecessary to hold the information ourselves. There is a further argument that just as Socrates argued against writing in the Phaedrus (274e-275b);

...writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture, which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses the same words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent nor any one else is there to defend it. The husbandman will not seriously incline to sow his seed in such a hot–bed or garden of Adonis; he will rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. The natural process will be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well as in his own.

...so the adoption of technological extensions to human capabilities ultimately undermine those abilities. Calculators replace the ability to do mental arithmetic, for example. It's an old argument.*

And to a certain, nuanced, extent it is true.  As it has been through the ages. The introductions of writing, of printing, of local printing, etc. have all had their impact. They have changed what it means to "learn". The challenge for education... Sorry! Scrub that cliche! So how have they changed what it means to "teach"?

(I recividistically** and opportunistically try to weave too many themes into a post, but this is about "reflection" and this does reflect how I think, for better or for worse...)

My colleagues and I have just been subject to a (insert derogatory adjective of your choice but don't forget nugatory) review of a course. One perfectly proper and reasonable question focused on the assessment strategy. "Why don't you use a wider variety of assessments? Quizzes? Timed tests?..." etc.

We didn't answer in these terms, but it did occur to me that the choice of assessment is an epistemological issue. What kind of knowledge/skill/value do you think you are testing? And on this kind of professional course, sheer memorization as assessed by a multiple choice test does not matter very much.***

It's a matter calling for thoughtful consideration, not knee-jerk answers.

[Although the other book I've just been reading--which poses similar questions from a very different angle--is Matthew Syed's (2011) Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice London; Fourth Estate, which touches on similar material to that I've discussed earlier.

What I don't see in much of the popular literature--and the textbooks, indeed--is much recognition of how fundamentally different the learning issues are in different disciplines and contexts.]

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 * ...and of course my discovery of these links and references relied heavily on the availability of the linked material online.

** I'm not sure if this is a "proper" word (it only gets three hits on google, at the time of writing, in the adverbial form) but I commend it as "in the manner of a repeat offender".

*** which is not to say it doesn't matter a great deal on other professional courses, such as medically or perhaps legally-based programmes, where there is indeed a body of knowledge to be acquired for instant access--"there's a fracture of the thingy-bone and a puncture of the whatsit-artery. Sorry! On the tip of my tongue! I'll just go and look them up..."

and--great minds think alike corner--here is another piece.

On another overview of on-line education. Are the geeks backing off?

A few days ago I drew attention to a report from the US Department of Education on on-line learning.

I should have waited, because now there is an interesting parallel report from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities / Sloan National Commission on On-line Learning.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Marc Parry introduces his piece thus;

They worry about the quality of online courses, say teaching them takes more effort, and grouse about insufficient support. Yet large numbers of professors still put in the time to teach online. And despite the broad suspicion about quality, a majority of faculty members have recommended online courses to students.

That is the complicated picture that emerges in "The Paradox of Faculty Voices: Views and Experiences With Online Learning," part of a two-volume national study released today by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities—Sloan National Commission on Online Learning. ...

The major survey of public colleges and universities found that 70 percent of all faculty members believe the learning outcomes of online courses to be either inferior or somewhat inferior, compared with face-to-face instruction.

Professors with online experience are less pessimistic. Among those who have taught or developed an online course, the majority rated the medium's effectiveness as being as good as or better than face to face. But in a potentially controversial finding, even among professors who have taught online, fully 48 percent feel it is either inferior or somewhat inferior.

And for those hooked on the hard stuff, here is a discussion of attending a virtual conference in Second Life.

Rather more polemically, Mark Bauerlein draws attention to the impoverished nature of on-line and mediated communication in the WSJ. Read the comments, too. (And incidentally he mentions the recent death of Edward T Hall, anthropologist and author of "The Hidden Dimension"--on cultural aspects of the management of physical space--and "The Silent Language", to which Bauerlein refers. Hall was 95; his website has not yet caught up with his death.*)

It's all interesting in its own right, but most encouraging is the more considered and balanced evaluation of technology-based teaching and learning which is emerging. The Second Life example particularly is a comment on the former geek rhetoric, "We can, therefore we should". Instead, there is a more realistic question about the added value of doing stuff on-line (and the added costs).

But there is also an issue about whether people like us are really equipped to comment on what the student experience might be. They, it is argued, are "digital natives" who have grown up with all this technology and to whom it is totally transparent and natural. We did not, so we shouldn't project our own reservations onto them...

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* Oh dear--I can't resist. The question of who will up-date one's website with news of one's death is a new problem. But it is not as exotic as the question concerning, it appears, some American evangelicals who believe in the Rapture (Google it if you are not into eschatology), when Jesus will return and true believers will be taken into heaven, leaving the rest of us behind. The problem is, who is going to look after the dog? No worries! Rapture Pet Care has it sorted. A dedicated band of atheists will...

On-line learning (1)

My apologies for the heading! I somehow fell into the pattern of prefacing all the post titles with "on" from the very start...

I posted a link a week ago about a Canadian professor of tourism about to embark on his his first e-learning course as an instructor. Well, I'm doing the same thing as a student; I have previously designed, written and run two quite different blended learning modules through several iterations, but I have never before been at the "receiving" (if that is the right metaphor) end of such a course.

The heading links to the course description, and since one of the requirements is to keep a reflective journal or blog (surprise!), I thought a bit about whether to create a blog solely for the purpose or to use this existing one. There is of course the danger that I will simply bore stiff those of you who for whatever reason read this in the real world, and those of you kind enough to sunscribe via RSS may well not be pleased to have esoteric ramblings pushed at you... On the other hand, the knowledge that I am not writing purely for myself or to be read only by "insiders" should impose some constraint on my self-indulgent ramblings. I promise not to post too frequently.

On the other hand... This blog's "manifesto" (pardon the grandiosity) is about modelling reflection, or at least producing samples of it for illustration or critique, so I have to share my thoughts to live up to that.

For those of you less interested in this, I'll keep to the same heading for related posts with updated index numbers and possibly sub-heads.