It is the consistent
confrontation by unsupported, dogmatic assertions which tacitly (and sometimes
explicitly) require unquestioning buy-in to even begin talking about online
education that marks my own experience of Edu-Cyberland. As a student of
religions, I recognize dogma when I hear it and I know true believers when I
encounter them.
Nowhere was that clearer
than in the third workshop I attended at the Sloan Conference. Entitled “Choose Your Own Adventure: Millenials and
the Post-Traditional Credit Hour.” It was an hour long paean to the
consumer-student and the university as providers of goods and services. And, in
the usual pattern of hubristic hype, it was offered as the way of the future in education.
In Praise of Millennials
The session began in a
promising fashion with presenter Sean Traigle laying out the differences
between the traditional student (18 year old freshman, needing more structure)
and the post-traditional student (older, needing flexible structures). Traigle
then began painting a somewhat questionable picture of millennial students:
They
expect to be engaged in learning, they don’t do well as passive learners, they
won’t stick around if there’s no technology utilized, self-assured,
confident, civic-minded, compelled to
make the world a better place.
From my observations, there
is some truth in this description if primarily in the thus far unrealized potential of this generation if not its
actualization. As with online education, there has been far more hype than
substance thus far.
Traigle asserted that 90% of
the millenials are in college primarily for career reasons – to advance, start
or change careers. This is certainly true of my observations. The vast majority
of my students are strategic learners driven by extrinsic motivations. Of
course, at some level, they are a reflection of the culture which bred them, a
culture which Richard Hofstadter observed to be anti-intellectual 50 years ago
and which today clearly values education largely – perhaps solely - in
instrumentalist terms.
Whether these students
“don’t do well as passive learners” is somewhat debatable. In truth, few real students
do well taking passive approaches to learning. One of the great gifts to
pedagogy is Paolo Freire’s critique of the banking
concept in which experts pour information into the heads of passive
learners who must then disgorge such information upon cue. Such approaches
produce little retention of its content or critical comprehension, much less
its connection to the lives of those learning it.
But Millennials are the
products of standardized test driven pedagogies. Their primary question is inevitably
“Will this be on the test?” In my
experience they do not regularly come to class prepared for discussion (i.e.,
reading prior to class) and often whine about any kind of engagement demanded beyond
the data dump high-stakes testing for which they are so well trained,
particularly if it requires even a modicum of critical thinking. Strategic
learners are motivated by extrinsic rewards – grades, degrees, accolades. The
notion that they would be particularly engaged in learning at any depth is
probably not a reasonable expectation.
Traigle also heralded Millenials
as keenly aware of the differential between their own “comfort level of
technology” and that of their instructors, a phenomenon easily observable today.
Yet, as a group they also exhibit a profound inability to judge context in the
appropriate use of technology, a failure of judgment that is not only rude but can get you killed in
movie theaters in Florida these days. They also display major difficulties in
remaining attentive to any given task at hand due to well-developed patterns of constant
self-distraction with their technological toys.
While their technical skills
are clearly well honed, their contextual awareness and critical judgment about
the proper time and place to use those skills are limited if not impaired.
Indeed, a number of studies are now suggesting it’s precisely the persistent
interaction with technology rather than people that results in such impaired
judgment and the decline of interpersonal communication skills as well.
They
are well-trained consumers, indeed.
Creedal Assertions
About halfway through the
presentation, the creedal assertions of Edu-Cyberland appeared. Traigle works
for an online technology company called Straighterline. The company describes its services as
“providing high quality courses that are guaranteed to fit into your degree
program.” Clearly, as with any consumerist enterprise, it is, at least on the
surface, all about you.
The site continues
With
StraighterLine you earn your college degree from the top career-focused
universities, in the field and ultimately in the career of your choice - in
less time, with less stress and with $15,000 less in student debt.
Traigle then launched into a
diatribe on “being tied to a seat” and being required to regularly study with
any level of intensity. Traigle described these behaviors as tied to a
traditional system of education whose time has passed, a system which must be
replaced by learning with flexible start/end dates, outcomes-based personal
learning and accomplished primarily through technology. In the revealed truth of Edu-Cyberland, the ultimate
heresy is always to be seen as “old school.”
The dogmatic presumptions of
this approach and their religious implications are pretty clear:
· Education is strictly about careers (confessional
statement)
· Investment of money, time, presence, intensity and energy in this process are negative values to be avoided at all cost (sin)
· Investment of money, time, presence, intensity and energy in this process are negative values to be avoided at all cost (sin)
·
The
consumer is always the best judge of all aspects of the process, at least the
limited array presented him/her by the provider of goods and services (personal
salvation schema)
· Learning cannot occur without technology (liturgical
ritual) and the terms of its usage must be unconditional (orthopraxis)
This makes for an
interesting religion but it is an impoverished view of education if it can
truly be called that at all. There are a number of problems with these presumptions
beginning with the fact that, like all dogmatic assertions purporting to define revealed
truth, they must be accepted without question as a condition of even discussing
online education.
The minimalism and
reductionism in these presumptions are staggering. But the most troubling aspect is the understanding
implicitly revealed in the requirement that one avoid any kind of investment in
the process that education itself is somehow a negative experience to be
engaged in only the most expeditious and painless manner as possible.
Why in the world would that be?
Less Hype, More Critical Reflection
If online education is to
have a prayer of success in actually creating an educated public, it is going
to have to become MUCH more critically conscious of and willing to discuss its dogmatic
presumptions and the values they reflect. The how of online education is much less important in the long run as
the why.
- We need to question whether careers are the only or even the primary reason people should attend college.
- We need to question consumerist presumptions of convenience and comfort as the primary values in our approaches to education.
- We need to ask ourselves why we see education in such negative terms generally and what such attitudes say about us as a people.
- And we need to critically confront the way we use our technologies generally but particularly in the context of education.
My observation is that higher
education needs a lot less hype, a lot less dogma and a lot more critical
self-reflection. Perhaps it is only when
our hype implodes and our failures confront us - as San Jose State discovered
to its great chagrin last year in the meltdown of its MOOC Great Leap Forward –
that we will be forced to do the hard work of thoughtfully considering the
questions of why we do what we do and how it impacts those we would ostensibly
serve.
Not surprisingly, false gods inevitably give their challengers plenty of
evidence of their emptiness to work with. This one is no exception.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott
Coverston, J.D., M.Div. Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive
status)
Priest, Episcopal Church
(Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Lecturer: Religion and
Cultural Studies
Osceola Regional Campus,
University of Central Florida, Kissimmee
If the
unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it
religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production
in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
