Chris Lott

Is coming from those who spend their time worrying about a research basis for a phenomenon that is easily observable in any classroom, followed very closely by those who presume that the net-gen is determined by biology. I still can’t post comments to George’s blog, so I will respond to his Net Gen Nonsense post here.

George: The Net Gen Nonsense blog fits right in, of course, with your predisposition– perhaps borne of seeing too much extremism ala Prensky– to be against the notion that learners are changing. And you seem to equate the idea, again ala Prensky, with being mostly– or even significantly– biological.

I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!

More importantly, a whole lot of learning is not about biology but about cognition and the mental processes built on top of that biology. The two points with which you conclude your post ("1) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and create information, and 2) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and connect to each other.") are changes in learners, and they are changes that happen as a result of living in a very different and quickly changing technologically mediated environment than others. Fight it all you want, but those learners are different. It has nothing to do with age and the biological origins are at best unclear… but it is immaterial. Anyone who pays attention to their students can see this in the divide they face within their classes between the haves and knows and the have not/know nots. Whatever the label, a host of educators nod in recognition of the characteristics regardless of the question of the origins, which has always been my central point in this debate: I don’t care about the reasons as much as I care about the solutions, and I won’t discount what I see and experience because the research (which hasn’t been an enviable guide when it comes to education so far, but that’s a different discussion) isn’t there or isn’t unclear. A refutation would make a difference, but there’s an obvious reason why there isn’t one, and I don’t mean the philosophical bit about proving a negative.

I don’t know how much you teach and how many of those you teach are adolescents, but clearly you see these changes or you wouldn’t so explicitly point out some of the conditions effecting that change in your two concluding points. It’s not as if all of us who teach are likely to be suffering a mass delusion and I think too many people with too many different, varying backgrounds when it comes to experience teaching and knowledge of technology and communication hear the squeaky wheel to be convinced that it’s just an illusion they are bringing to the table.

David Warlick, blogging about a presentation by Stephen Heppell, pointed to this incredibly cool video demonstrating a visual method for solving math problems. These are just the kind of alternative approaches we need to incorporate to be an expansive teacher. I love one of the last comments, presumably in response to an earlier expression of mystification: "Brilliant visualisation. Compare this with the ‘normal’ way and you are doing real mathematics."

"From what I knew of learning to write I asked Harold Bauer if it wouldn’t be possible to learn to play by playing tunes from the beginning without preliminary finger exercises. He cheered me with the assurance it would. Many second raters present were scandalized. Children are learning now without finger exercises. Think how much easier their education is to listen to."

–Robert Frost
from Notebook 26

Or is it "Some Parts of the World Without Some Courses?"

[photo by Joseph Robertson]

I’ve just finished listening to George Siemens’ presentation "A World Without Courses" [presentation and discussion] for the second time and it has raised a number of questions:

1. Who is the "we" that George is referring to? At some points it sounds like everyone, at some points it sounds like educators, and at others it sounds like institutions. When George talks about the open question of how we tie these ideas together he posits a situation (wish there were a transcription of the presentation available) where "we" in "an academic setting" are confronted with a students who has been learning in this reputation-based, self-organized world… what role is George seeing for the "we" that is the institution? I took this as essentially a platform that would to some degree replace the institution. If it doesn’t– or if the institution is still in the middle of things granting legitimacy to learning and recognizing levels of achievement– then the whole picture changes. Then it becomes a question more like "how do we mimic the act of granting credit for prior learning on a larger scale?"
2. Learning and learners are treated a bit monolithically here, where learners are like grocery shoppers going to the store with a list in hand (or in mind). Yet institutions play a larger role than that. More importantly, learners at different levels of achievement and maturity have different motivations and abilities to succeed as an independent entity. In the comments to George’s blog post someone mentions the Antioch PhD model that has no courses… would this work for many undergraduates? Adult learners? Developmental-level learners?
3. Perhaps most importantly, I wonder how many of the advantages and examples of context that George lists can be accomplished without institutional transformation, within a world where there are still courses… because, pragmatically, I don’t believe our institutions are capable of transformation. Distributed conversations, reputation systems, distributed information can all be had by moving most activities out of the LMS and by making material available openly. What does the extermination of the course yield above those benefits and at what cost?
4. Along those lines, much of the distributed content and information out there making this learning possible comes– directly and indirectly– from those who can afford to spend time making those things and the institutional support they receive. Is the free, reputation-based marketplace up to supporting that activity?
5. What of the learning sciences? Learners are often unaware of– and then sometimes notoriously resistant to– practices they need to learn effectively. Who helps those students?

I’m not trying to knock any holes in the idea, these are just questions that come to mind. My two biggest questions involve the admitted unknown of institutional roles in recognizing value, accreditation, etc.– that’s a gigantic hole that needs some filling– and the assumption that effective learning just happens when the material is good and the conditions are right. The part of me that is involved in distance education instinctively jumps back at this point… it feels like the free marketplace of unbounded learning would serve only a very small minority of extraordinarily self-motivated and advanced students.