Attempt at a Self-Criticism

My writing style is straightforwardly argumentative. This is not, however, my teaching or speaking style (though my wife might complain that I am argumentative in conversations with her!). Part of the reason for this is that I am trained as a philosopher, and argument and critical thinking are the central methodological tools that we have. Another part of it is that when I am typing, as opposed to teaching or speaking, I tend to adopt my philosopher-researcher persona. This means that I “ought” to be defending a claim by argument or taking apart someone else’s claim by attacking their argument. An example of this is from my post to the Context and Content discussion:

I thought that Lambert’s “Context and Content” makes a mistake in suggesting that content and context are separable and somehow exclusive in assigning context to traditional education and content to distance education. Thus, I am not at all impressed by his concluding suggestion: “I submit there is place in academe for both contextual learning and content learning.” Of course! Both are necessary. There are all sorts of ways in which context is crucial for learning, just as there are all sorts of ways in which content is crucial. Without the appropriate content, there is nothing to learn; without the appropriate context, there is no opportunity for it.

In this post, I challenge the assumptions of Lampert and point out that his conclusion only makes sense if one accepts his false assumptions. I understand that an argumentative approach may serve to undermine the goals of an online community since some might take my arguments or criticisms to be decisive, thereby shutting down dialogue. Others might be wary of posting for fear that I might criticize their view. However, I do not think that I have adopted this argumentative style in my responses to others (though I would be interested to hear what others think about this!). I am aware that my mode of professional interaction (the parry and thrust of argument) does not necessarily translate well to other contexts. I imagine that, as an online instructor, my posts will more closely resemble my responses to others than my original posts.

Of the voices that Collison et. al. describe (Generative Guide, Conceptual Facilitator, Reflective Guide, Personal Muse, Mediator, Role Play), I am perfectly comfortable with (and indeed recognize from my own teaching ) the voices of Generative Guide, Conceptual Facilitator, Reflective Guide, Mediator, and Role Play. In my face-to-face classes, the theoretical options need to be clearly laid out (Generative Guide), the key philosophical concepts need to be formulated clarified (Conceptual Facilitator), the comments of students need to be refined and redirected (Reflective Guide), disputes need to be addressed and mediated (Mediator) and, at least in my class, we are always using thought experiments (Role Play). I am less comfortable with the Personal Muse voice. I almost never tip my hand, so to speak, in my philosophy classes.

Knowing the different voices and tones will help me to develop moderating skills by helping me to learn to identify when and what sort of post will most effectively move the discussion forward so that students will come to a better understanding of the material. By having an explicit set of options for responding to student comments, I can craft my posts more precisely and hopefully more effectively.

PS The title is a dorky reference to Nietzsche!

The Decline of the Liberal Arts?

One of the potential repercussions of the authors’ predicted revolution in education is the decline of the liberal arts (p.107). This may come about as a result of students’ specializing only in things that interest them and/or as a result of economic pressures to take occupation-oriented courses. The authors wonder whether students will choose to expand their own horizons, in the way that a liberal arts education is meant to.

Though it is to their credit that the authors signal this issue, I think it merits more attention that the authors give it, because it opens up into two larger questions about the nature of education. The first question is: to what extent should education be a function of student choice? The second is: what are the appropriate outcomes of education? I do not pretend to have answers to these questions, but I would at least like to raise some further questions about them.

The authors are right to indicate that forcing students to learn leads to apathy, boredom and discontent amongst students. But is it wise to let students choose their own paths? Perhaps they will by and large forego the liberal arts. On what grounds will they do so? Are their own, young, inexperienced inclinations necessarily going to lead them in the right direction on this issue? At that age, do they even know enough about themselves to make informed decisions? The liberal arts have represented a traditional core of human learning, which include disciplines that are, from a certain perspective, useless. They are nevertheless valued and valuable. I want to focus on one that is both especially useless and dear to my heart: Classical Studies, in which I have an MA. Being able to read Ancient Greek merits no appreciable economic benefit and the skill has little transferable qualities. It does, however, allow one to read Homer and Sophocles in the original, not to mention Plato, Aristotle and Aristophanes. Classical Studies are in decline; without interested students, they may wither and die. By letting students choose so early and by not exposing them to ancient Greek at all, we risk losing the next great Classical scholar to plumbing, which she happened to choose because her favorite TV show featured a cool, wise-cracking plumber!

I always cringe when economic measures are used to value education at any level. However, I don’t doubt that both students and parents have economic and occupational hopes which their education is meant to enable. Fair enough. The liberal arts have always represented a broader view on education, one that sees humans as inheritors of the intellectual achievements of the past. Reading Greek is thought to be valuable for its own sake, and not as a means to something else. If education is cast in terms of measurable outcomes and useful occupational skills, then what happens to something like Greek? Can one measure educational outcomes of all sorts? Administrators schooled in the language of “assessment” like to think so, but is it really so? If so, to what extent? For all disciplines? Can one measure the interpretation of an Aeschylean choral ode? This sort of thing seems not to be amenable to the kind of computer-generated feedback loop that authors discuss.

This week's discussion

I really enjoyed this week’s discussion about teaching through inquiry and the positive and negative effects of having access to vast resources. Both questions were well-formulated and easy to sink your teeth into. I wrote on the second question, but responded to posts on the first one, so I really felt like I managed to discuss a lot of material. It was interesting to read other people’s view on pedagogy generally and online pedagogy, and in the course of my reading and responses, I began to develop clearer ideas on what the salient features of the topic were. I very much liked that there were two questions to respond to and not just one. That opened up, at least for me, different ways in which the two issues overlapped.

One negative aspect of the activity was that there was a fair bit of repetition in the posts. This is natural, of course, since some of us have similar ideas—hopefully the right ones!—on these matters, but it does become a bit boring and unhelpful to read the same point made several times. Another minor inconvenience was that several people posted .docx files, which I am not always able to read (depends on where I am and thus which computer I am using).

Taking off from the idea of student-driven content in Rethinking Education, perhaps it would be a good idea for some discussions to involve a student or two who post the week’s question(s) (with oversight from the instructor) based on their own interests. Some rough guidelines could be given, but it could work. Alternatively, one or two students could ‘lead’ the discussion by posting initially on a topic of their choosing (again with oversight) and having everyone else respond to that.

First Blog...Ever

Welcome to my blog. I am currently taking a course on online teaching, and setting up a blog is one of the assignments. I have never blogged before, and I never thought that I would ever blog. Yet here I am...