[Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class

[Dr. Steve Eskow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark D. Johns" <mjohns at luther.edu>
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 11:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class


> Dr. Steve Eskow wrote:
>> ...
>> Suppose, for example, our students could actually be scattered in space 
>> and
>> time, engaged in work or service anywhere in the community, the nation, 
>> the
>> world, and the "learning community" is online--lectures online, if they 
>> are
>> needed, discussion online, collaboration online, libraries online?...
>
>MDJ: I think you are describing the University of Phoenix.
>
> It's an interesting experiment, and it may be the paradigm of the
> future. >>

Actually I wasn't describing Phoenix, although Phoenix offers much to learn 
from. If I was thinking of an existing institution it would more likely be 
The British Open University, and the other mega-universities of the world. 
See, for example, John S. Daniel's MEGA-UNIVERSITIES AND KNOWLEDGE MEDIA: 
TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.

MDJ:But my contract for fall makes it pretty clear I have to show up
> in the appointed classroom at the appointed time if I wish to collect my
> paycheck. And for the moment, the vast majority of workers in the world
> are likewise still punching clocks in one way or another.>>

If I were in your position, without tenure and with an institutional climate 
that doesn't allow for differences in practice, I would undooubtedly do as 
you are doing--in order to collect my paycheck. I will think about whether I 
would defend those  practices--compulsory attendance, "points" awarded and 
deducted, etc.-- in public.

I want to think more about your comment on the vast majority of workers who 
still punch time clocks. I think you're suggesting that the college should 
prepare people for this kind of life, this kind industrial discipline--and 
this level of employment-- by organizing instruction around the punching of 
clocks. Have I misread you?

As opportunities for the college educated in the work force contract, it may 
be a good idea to prepare college graduates to work as data collectors and 
processors who sit at work stations along with a thousand others and do 
repetitive work for $7 an hour.

>
>> Bourdieu calls the university ideal "the scholastic enclosure," a way of
>> insulating students and teachers from the world for which they are 
>> nomially
>> preparing.
>>
>> It used to be called "the ivory tower."
>
> MDJ: To the extent we allow students to make up their own rules about
> participation and regard it (in the words of a popular comic strip in
> this morning's newspaper) as, "basically four years of fully-funded,
> unsupervised, independent living," I suspect most working folks would
> still consider it pretty insulted and most definitely "ivory."

Insular? Isolated? Insulated?

Is the only alternative to the world of time clock and the industrial logic 
and the campus as factory "four years of fully-funded. . ." etc.?

There's an 1995 UK report from UK's Higher Education Funding Council which 
studied the academic quality of 70 tertiary institutions of England. Public 
expenditure per full-time student at the Open U was the lowest in the UK 
system, "yet it was one of only 13 of the 70 universities. . .to receive 
excellent ratings in more than half of the subjects assessed."

That is: the alternative to punching the clock is not mindlessness, nor 
indiscipline, nor the endless party. Indeed, the party disappears as part of 
the academic lifestyle  in the technology-enabled open university, as does 
much else of the "extra-curriculum."

We might be able to invent a new way, neither Open U nor Phoenix, for 
connecting the power of the Internet and the Web to the work of learning.

Steve Eskow


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