I sometimes remind students that ‘words have meanings’, so it caught my attention when I received an email C/O the Chronicle of Higher Education for a webinar titled: “Why Blended Learning Scares Instructors.” This is a essentially an advertisement for a for-profit company’s product (Lecture Capture) disguised as a educational webinar.
Some of you who have had me in class previously may have heard me discuss my general dislike for on-line teaching/learning. There are obviously many forms of on-line learning and it is unwise to make blanket statements about anything related to education. However, I do think it is generally the case that most people learn better in a F2F learning environment. Also, I think that in general it takes significantly more time and energy on the part of instructors to make on-line teaching/learning as effective as F2F.
So what meaning should I make of the specific word choice used in this email? I am actually offended that this advertisement suggests that blended on-line learning ‘scares’ instructors. Marketing folks choose words very carefully and with intention. “Scares” reminds me of Halloween and an irrational fear of what we know will no hurt is. It also reminds me of children. What image does the word ‘scares’ create in your mind? The image I believe this word choice is intended to create in the minds of provosts and deans (the targeted audience) is of a scared instructors acting like children in a haunted house whenever they are presented with the opportunity (or forced to use) to use new technology.
The rest of the email reads:
Blended learning can be a dirty word among some members of your faculty. The fears of embarrassing technical snafus, poor student attendance, and job insecurity often enter the discussion when it comes to using lecture capture in a blended learning model. This web seminar will explore why blended learning and lecture capture may make your faculty nervous and how to help them to overcome their fears and increase their effectiveness.
Join our panel of faculty who have survived and thrived using class capture and hear their accounts of the positive, negative and humorous aspects of teaching in a blended learning environment, including:
- How to bring faculty on board with blended learning
- Why lecture capture isn't the equivalent to a nanny cam
- How to interact with the digital student and gain new insights into study habits and comprehension
- What to do when class attendance rises and no one shows up during office hours
Everything I know about Lecture Capture, a for-profit business, I learned from an article on the Chronicle. Basically, it videos your entire classroom during the times you are scheduled to meet and make these recording available to students on-line. There are controls over how soon these recordings are made available (so in theory students couldn’t access them for 1-2 weeks). Questions about who owns these recordings and how they can be used in the future are for another blog entry.
Is this a good technology? I have no idea and don’t really care. My issue is with how this webinar is being marketed. The first few lines of this suggest that faculty are scared of and fear embarrassing technical snafus, poor student attendance, and job insecurity. Hmmm. Well, speaking for myself, yes- technical snafus are a concern. Anyone who has watched me struggle to get my laptop and LCD projector to synch-up, or waited patiently while a technician has to come over and replace an LCD projector bulb, know that this takes away from class time and is a distraction. It leaves me flustered and distracted because it makes me look/feel like I am unprepared. But does it ‘scare’ me? No. Do I worry about poor students attendance? Nope, there are policies for that. Do I worry about job security? Well, of course. I would be a fool to think that an institution would not attempt to use new technology to lower its overhead. And while I assume this particular reference is directed at term faculty more than tenure-track, it infers that perhaps I should be concerned. I suspect the real concern for term faculty is that once their lectures are recorded the institution can simply replay them for future classes and perhaps have a T.A. grade the final exams. Do these professional have something to worry about in terms of job security? Absolutely. Should these folks be scared of this technology? I would be!
Returning to “words have meanings”…the words used to market this webinar suggest faculty are infants needing help to overcome some irrational fear. Instead of portraying faculty as skilled and highly educated professionals who can make independent decisions about how they teach, we are irrational if we resist technology in the classroom.
This one happened to be directed at faculty but I also know that similar marketing and word choice has been used to describe students. Have you come across any lately?
Honestly, I have to say that this word called exactly the same image to my mind. I suppose they are attempting to convince decision-makers that they don't need to listen to their "commanders on the ground" when making these kinds of decisions. (I've a blog posting about exactly what is wrong with this approach to platforming learning to IT). As for fearing technology though - and allowing it to give rise to concerns over one's job security, what we see from the IT revolution is that, IT doesn't eliminate work, it creates it by economies of efficiency. When it first came into widespread use, projections were made that e-mail would decrease administrative workloads by 75%! It instead increased them by 4 times! (Because, now, more could be done in a shorter amount of time if everyone attended and retained what they learned from the on-boarding training.) There will always have to be "a monkey in the loop" and, more than likely, the efficiency of technology will enable institutions (which I have seen already) to geometrically expand their course offereings.
ReplyDeleteThe key philosophical point - or epistemiological - point which I connected with was your reference to "words having meanings." If I intuit your intention you are elucidating that communication should be treated in a consistent manner - especially in academia. I have read a number of "research" papers which take great liberty with ad-hoc definition of terms critical to the underlying logics of their arguments. I feel this is one way we disguise bias with rhetoric - find a word that is perhaps not as common in daily conversation and redefine it however best suits us without explicating that definition much less supporting it through collectively constructed reinterpretations of its meaning. I can draw a flawless discourse if I choose to do this - every single time. It may seem like a trivial matter of semantics - splitting hairs - but the truth is, as you say, "words have meanings." And the policies which are developed on the arguments presented through the medium of words are developed based on those meanings. It's an ethical thing for me.
Matt (and David), I'm also very suspicious of and sensitive to just about any sales pitches made by a promoter of technology or what have you. Having worked for a number of mortgage banks during the mortgage boom, I witnessed first-hand how managements attempted to program all of us into profit-generating machines, by slickly targeting identified decision-making consumers and then playing on their needs and weaknesses in order to score a quick profit. Typically, little to zero consideration was given by our managers to the mid- to longterm consequences of such short-sighted and predatory sales strategies with respect to the lives of our customers. And since cost-cutting is perhaps more of a priority nowadays in higher education, shrewdly playing upon administrative pressures to reduce operating costs by creating visions of hapless, cringing faculty luddites who resist progress in the face of innovative technologies is an understandable strategy. I don't think this type of sales approach will unfortunately go away anytime soon in contemporary America.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the digital and technological divide among generations does regularly concern me. I agree with Matt in that I believe face-to-face teaching and learning is more productive and enjoyable than online versions, however advanced the delivery systems. But different generations have overall different views on this topic, as this particular survey and analysis revealed (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_technology_generation_gap_at_work_is_oh_so_wide.php).
According to this survey, Gen Y (currently aged around 30 and younger) and Baby Boomers (currently aged around 46 and older) overlap in their views on technology, but nevertheless differ noticiably on the value and appropriateness of mobile phone devices and laptops in the classroom, and the appropriateness of accessing personal mail and blogs from work and school, for examples (Gen X folks aged 31-45 or so weren't really addressed in this survey writeup, unfortunately).
I think that differing generations today need to work alot more collaboratively at accepting the technological divide between them in productive ways that strive to take the best from what each generation has to share, perspective-wise. Because, as this article from the NY Times relates (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/weekinreview/10stone.html ), interactive communications technology (unlike automotive or energy technologies, unfortunately), are advancing so quickly that today's Gen Y "Net" Generation may very well be treated as dinosaurs themselves by the upcoming so-called "i" Generation. Gen X'ers will soon be ruling the societal roost in majority numbers, to be supplanted eventually by Gen Y and then Gen "i". And each will probably have to deal with ever-accelerating communication techno gaps. So better that we all openly address these gaps with more civility and collaborative team-building, or we as a society will be doomed to repeat the generational battles of the preceding age.