[Air-l] Technology Transforming Education--EE-Learning

Wed May 23 08:20:02 PDT 2007

Like Charles, I'm thoroughly enjoying this discussion but having trouble keeping 
up!

Just to add another dimension to the discussion, I want to bring into play the 
socio-technical (social informatics) consideration. Like Marj, I can point to a 
Peter Lang publication by myself and Michelle Kazmer "Learning, Culture and 
Community in Online Education: Research and Practice" (2004). But also a 
forthcoming edited volume with Sage, by myself and Richard Andrews 
"Handbook of E-Learning Research" (expected out in August, 2007). 

The introduction in both of these books addresses how social and technical 
aspects must be balanced in coming to the right definition of use -- very 
common idea from many aspects of ICT use, but not discussed as much re 
elearning where the all online or all on-campus debate sounds much like the 
"internet good - internet bad" discussion we should have got over a long time 
ago. 

The newer book also brings in consideration of co-evolutionary processes -- 
technology does affect teaching/learning, with then in turn affects technology 
use, deployment, etc. Again, very familiar to anyone in social studies of 
technology, but less so in elearning circles. 

For anyone newly embarking on elearning, do see the wonderful book by 
Garrison and Anderson (2003) "E-learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for 
Research and Practice" (RoutledgeFalmer, NY). Their elaboration of social, 
cognitive and teaching presence is essential reading.

/Caroline

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 06:31:27 -0500
>From: Charles Ess <charles.ess at gmail.com>  
>Subject: Re: [Air-l] Technology Transforming Education--EE-Learning  
>To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>
>> Not quite sure how I came to be the champion of the face to face
>> classroom - my argument is simply that all teaching/learning methods
>> will have advantages and disadvantages for some.
>
>Hang in there, Marj!
>This has been a terrific discussion and my only regret is that preparations
>for overseas sojourns have kept me from participating.  Now I can't
>resist...
>
>While there are clear advantages to online learning environments - one of
>the best teaching moments in my life occurred during a brief stint with
>WebCT - because, like Mark Johns, I'm privileged to teach in a private,
>liberal arts place with classes ranging between 8 - 20 students each, I'm
>also profoundly convinced of the many sorts of teaching excellences that I
>can do only in f2f environments.
>A great deal of it has to do with what I teach - logic, philosophy, applied
>ethics, religious studies, critical thinking, writing.  All of these can
>deeply challenge not simply the intellect but also the whole person as a
>complex, embodied being.  First of all, the f2f context lets me gauge how my
>students - both individually and collectively - are responding to these
>challenges in ways that allow me to then judge (though it's always a
>judgment call, and sometimes an incorrect one) whether they're "getting it,"
>how much further, if at all, they may be pushed, what turns I might take to
>help them come along - and what ones to avoid - etc.  I know from hard
>experience that I can make mistakes in these judgments in f2f - but I make
>them even more frequently in online settings (and we're off with the
>disadvantages of relative anonymity, etc.).
>One of the points that may be missing in the discussion so far - though I'm
>being quick here, so if I've missed something, apologies - is the nature of
>the "information" at stake.  As some know, I've written a couple of articles
>on teaching not simply information, but wisdom and virtue vis-à-vis online
>environments - wisdom and virtue of the Socratic and Confucian sort.
>Following the taxonomies of Hubert Dreyfus (based on a phenomenological
>focus on embodiment and learning), I concur that there is much good that can
>be taught in virtual environments as they currently exist.  But there is
>also much that, in my view, cannot be taught in such environments as they
>currently exist, because they depend on being close at hand to and with
>someone with great and embodied familiarity with not simply the material and
>content, but most centrally the _judgment-making process_ (what Aristotle
>calls _phronesis_) as it works in a given discipline or area.
>My analogy for this is learning to sing in the choir.  I suppose such a
>thing could be done - up to a point - through an online venue.  But I find
>it difficult to conceive that a master choir director and even modestly
>capable choir would be able to make much progress in an online environment
>with helping a novice (such as myself) come along with learning how to
>engage with the music - not simply in terms of learning to read notes, but,
>more fundamentally, of learning how to produce music out of one's own mind
>and body in concert and harmony with others.  So much depends on 
immediate
>verbal and nonverbal communication - hearing how the person next to me is
>finding his note; seeing the choir director cut us off together at a tricky
>rest out of the corner of my eye while simultaneously looking at the music
>for the current and next measures; trying to hear how the tenor part blends
>(or fails to blend) with the larger choir and the music, adjusting
>accordingly, etc.  Most of all, what is learned there are judgments about
>how to do it right, or at least well (with many possibilities for that, of
>course, not just one).  So much of this sort of embodied learning seems to
>crucially depend on spending hours and hours, weeks and weeks, years and
>years, face-to-face and side-by-side with a group of sister and fellow human
>beings struggling to learn the same things.
>I had exactly the same experience this past year as I struggled to improve
>my all-but-non-existent French - reading is easy; repeating drills on the
>computer is straightforward.  But learning to speak appropriately - not only
>to get the grammar and vocabulary right, but also to learn to judge
>face-to-face with another human being in response to his or her actions and
>responses what the right thing to say might be is an entirely different
>matter.
>
>All of this is to say that I think Marj has it exactly right.  Each venue
>has its strengths and its limitations.  The point is not to fall into false
>polarities of "good" / "bad" - but to learn to use each environment
>effectively for specified pedagogical goals.
>
>O.k. - back to packing ...
>- charles ess  
>
>
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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