[Air-l] Academic traditions

Tue May 22 06:46:08 PDT 2007

Suzana, thank you for the clarification. I find academic transformations are both 
amazingly fast and staggeringly slow depending on the field. My perceptions... 

In teaching, the fast part is the rapid changes pushed by new technologies and 
expectations of use by (some) incoming students. The laptop in classes 
discussion is an example of a push from such students as far as media goes, 
but new technologies include far more than just media. We're also pulled to be 
up to date with the skills we provide students as they go out to employers. My 
perceptions of the latter is that the academic tradition of widening people's view 
of the world still very much holds. 

For those of us who are involved in online education, the changes 
are dramatic and swift, with what one might call a 'revolution' in teaching and 
learning practices accompanying e-learning. For many of us this drives 
significant changes in our overall teaching practice (there's lots of references on 
this, including some of my own :) ). Some of the other recent AoIR discussion 
has touched on this topic and there's lots in the online learning/asynchronous 
learning/e-learning/collaborative learning/computer-supported collaborative 
learning literature on new ways to approach teachiing. Unfortunately, I am 
always tremendously surprised to hear vehement anti-online teaching stances I 
encounter regularly. Some have no clue about what it really means to teach and/
or learn online, and the change in learning practices the combination of new 
media and online teaching bring. My perception is that the real 'revolution' in 
online learning is the new way of teaching and learning, not so much that it is 
done through new technology.

But teaching is only part of the academic game ... I mean tradition. Tenure holds 
a lock on what we do, and the tenure evaluation system is very slow to change. I 
have colleagues even now (not at my university) who say an online publication in 
an online refereed journal will not 'count' to tenure for them. The online/offline 
nature of this will, I believe, change, but the reputation system associated with 
publication venues will not. Everyday we make a judgement of where to send 
papers for publication. In shifting traditions -- where online gets more 
exposure, but offline/reputation gets you tenure -- the decision is not 
straightforward.

You asked originally "What is it in shifting traditions that affects you as an 
academic in your daily work?" For me, the changes are bringing online education 
approaches to teaching in general, and making balancing decisions about where 
and how I disseminate my work and ideas.

/Caroline

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 10:56:45 +1000
>From: Suzana Sukovic <suzana.sukovic at uts.edu.au>  
>Subject: Re: [Air-l] Academic traditions  
>To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
>
>Caroline, my doctoral study into the roles of e-texts in the humanities 
>investigated some of these issues. I finished data-gathering and 
>analysis,  but this aspect of findings hasn't been published yet. I am 
>still very curious about issues of academic tradition and change. My 
>question for the list is a matter of interest and curiosity, not formal 
>data-gathering. I hope that the list participants could provide a variety 
>of answers and insights because Internet researchers may have different 
>experiences from people who study religion and conduct part of their 
>studies online, for example.
>
>I am coming to Urbana-Champaign to present some of my findings at Digital 
>Humanities 07. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to continue this conversation.
>Cheers,
>Suzana
>
>At 11:34 PM 21/05/2007, Caroline Haythornthwaite wrote:
>>An interesting question. Can you give us some context -- more that general
>>curiosity -- for the questions. Do you have a particular incident that 
>>generates
>>you question, or a research project? Is this information for a research 
>>study or
>>for academic practice?
>
>
>Suzana Sukovic
>PhD Candidate
>_________________________________________
>Information & Knowledge Management
>Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
>University of Technology, Sydney
>
>PO Box 123
>Broadway NSW 2007, Australia
>www.hss.uts.edu.au/research/research_students/suzana_sukovic.html
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----------------------------------------
Caroline Haythornthwaite
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820