Theorizing the Digital:From Tsunami to Trojan Horse to

Transformer

by

John MittererDepartment of Psychology

mitterer@brocku.ca

16th Annual Teaching Support Services Teaching and Learning Innovations

Conference

2003 theme

“New Teaching Tools and Learning Environments”

What’s the BIG DEAL?

on’t worry. This is a fad like educational TV. We don’t need to take notice. We have been around since the middle ages.

For we are the true guardians of epistemology and pedagogy. The digiterati are pretenders to our throne.

Not! Tsunami!

The digital revolution is like the industrial revolution

The computer is like the printing press

Cybernetics is the next step in human evolution

Marshall McLuhan

War and Peace in the Global Village, 1968

"The computer is by all odds the most extraordinary of all the technological clothing ever devised by man, since it is the extension of our nervous system.”

Ubiquitous computing and distributed cognition

Taking McLuhan literally

“All information in all places at all times”

The ideas of ubiquitous computing and distributed cognition will converge to refashion our culture.

e.g. The war in Iraq

Why are computers so powerful?

The computer is a “metamachine” or “metatool” or “metamedium” which represents a logical endpoint of our Western epistemological tradition

The pedagogy of the future will be rooted in understanding computation – form vs. content, formal vs. interpreted, syntax vs semantics.

Rene Magritte?

Think matter vs. information, form(al) vs. interpretation, atoms vs. bits

Think modern art, physics, mathematics, critical theory, philosophy of science, post-modernism, etc.

Nicolas Negroponte

Being Digital, 1995

Bits are not atoms. "A bit has no color, size, or weight, and it can travel at the speed of light. It is the smallest atomic element in the DNA of information. It is a state of being: on or off, true or false, up or down, in or out, black or white.” The concept of "digitizing"

"While we are undoubtedly in an information age, most information is delivered to us in the form of atoms: newspapers, magazines, and books (like this one). Our economy may be moving toward an information economy, but we measure trade and we write our balance sheets with atoms in mind. GATT is about atoms."

Some levels?

Heuristic, algorithm, intent, goal.E.g. I want to turn photos into pastel artE.g. I want my students to become critical

thinkers

Bits, interpretation, content, software.E.g. Photoshop plug-inE.g. Virtual laboratory software

Atoms, form, hardware, computer. E.g. Macintosh Powerbook G4E.g. WebCT, ethernet, laptops

Impact on teaching?

Because they empower us to explore the digital, computers will revolutionize not just education but EVERYTHING. We are foolish to think the academy can emerge unscathed. Instead, we should accept their power because they invite the creation of software which allows us to realize pedagogical values.

But will education improve?

Surely it is up to us educators to ask the right questions, such as:

Could the digital improve education? Or is it just pandering through edutainment?

Could the digital improve how we teach?

Could the digital improve how our students learn?

Show us the proof!

Oh, the irony!

Computing has become a modern “Trojan horse of pedagogy” - it is normally only around computing that most institutions of higher education are, nowadays, motivated to ask the right (i.e. pedagogical) questions - “How does (sic) technology impact on student outcomes?”.

Common technologies become invisible and, hence, unexamined epistemologies (Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1984).

Ursula FranklinThe Real World of

Technology, 1990"Technology is simply a way

of doing things.”

From the Merriam-Webster: “a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge”

Instructional technologies

A university course IS a technology. The lecture IS a technology.

This is true when we are talking about the digital. It is also true when we consider other aspects of the course. Consider writing. Or chalk, overheads, speech patterns, essays, multiple choice examinations, etc, etc, etc.

Concern for teaching as a craft motivates us to ask over and over again: Are these tools, old and new, being used to best advantage?

Instructional technologies

Instructional technologies

Nowadays the phrase “instructional (or “educational”) technology” is synonymous with “computer technology” - especially actual computer hardware.

This usage makes it possible to claim to teach “without technology”, if you do not use computers in your teaching.

This usage makes it possible to run studies comparing teaching “with” and “without” technology”.

This usage makes it possible to have names like CTLET (at Brock) or even to have separate groups dealing with pedagogy and technology.

Is it this usage which makes it possible to conceive of “hybrid learning”?

To some this means hybridizing distance and face-to-face teaching; to some it even means blending teaching with (digital) technology and teaching “without technology”.

While I understand the politics of this sort of nomenclature, I personally do not use it in my thinking about education.

I prefer to think of “technology” more broadly, to treat digital technologies as tools, and to treat teaching as a craft.

Instructional technologies

Back to Nicolas

Theory: We educators are in the information business. We traffic

in bits.

We use atoms, as needed, to express our educational ideals, theories, and goals in some physical medium. But the physical medium is NOT the point, even if it is the message. University teaching is NOT books or laptops. Lecturing is NOT chalk or seats to put “bums” in. The academy is NOT, first and foremost, a physical place. We must design educational goals; for information flow. All information at all places at all times!

The digital offers an infinite suite of tools, a “Swiss army knife of the mind.”

We owe it to our craft as teachers to continuously reinvent it at every level. This means that we must rethink teaching and learning in light of the digital. More than ever, this means thinking through the use of computation in education. The pedagogical possibilities are infinite.

Digital technologies

Wireless wins (how else do you get universal access?)

Put computer power in the hands of students (Dan Watt, laptop U)

Foster faculty “orientation” towards the scholarship of teaching

Go open source and collaborate with everyone (e.g. CLOE, MIT)

Some transformational trends…

Transforming education

Working order:

from pedagogy (educational vision, goal, or task)

to tool (software - WebCt, Desire2Learn, Turnitin.com)

to hardware (computer, network, printer, etc.)

Transforming education

e.g. Skill, T.D. & Young, B.A. (2002). Embracing the hybrid model: Working at the intersections of virtual and physical learning spaces. New Directions in Teaching and Learning.

Transforming education

Skill & Young’s 7 heuristics:

Good practice encourages student-faculty contactGood practice encourages cooperation among

studentsGood practice encourages active learningGood practice gives prompt feedbackGood practice emphasizes time on taskGood practice communicates high expectationsGood practice respects diverse talents and ways of

learning

Making pots

For my money, the most powerful educational environments ever to evolve are those based on apprenticeship.

My pedagogical attempts at innovation in my large introductory psychology course are constantly inspired by the image of learning to become a potter.

Making academics

University education is not necessarily treated as an apprenticeship environment. We have tended to focus on abstract cognitive processes, rather than concrete products. Further, we have tended to value direct student-professor relationships, work by individual students that is done alone, final products, and have placed relatively little stress upon socially valuable results.

Making academics

Cognitive apprenticeship is the application of the principles of apprenticeship to the learning of cognitive skills. It is what I am trying to do in my introductory psychology course.

Lave, J. (1965). Cognition in practice. NY: Cambridge Press.

Collins, A. & others (1989) Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics. In L. Resnick (Ed.) Knowing, learning and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: LEA.

Making academics

In my experience, higher levels of university education, say, graduate education, tend more closely to approximate apprenticeships.

The features of the apprenticeship environment are part and parcel of many professor’s “labs”. In some cases this is deliberate.

In many professional schools, apprenticeship develops as a natural student adaptation to a difficult curriculum.

Making academics

When it comes to undergraduate education, sheer numbers long ago forced us to develop mass production methods which make the apprenticeship ideal seem unreachable and even quaint.

My work in introductory psychology is aimed at deliberately creating, as much as I reasonably can, a cognitive apprenticeship environment for my students.

And I use “technology” to do it. In fact, I believe that is the only way I have any chance.

My own pedagogical stance is to ask how to use the new digital tools to finally approximate the old pedagogical ideal of apprenticeship when we are dealing with large classes.

Instructional technologies

PSYC 1F90

Course description

History - cognitive process pedagogical stance evolving into a cognitive apprenticeship pedagogical stance

The double cohort looms large

Course management

WebCT 3.8 & Turnitin.com• The digital infrastructure• Technical problems

Our administrative systems• Online gradebooks• Student portals (future),

etc.

Seminars

Providing multiple levels of expertise

• Brock’s (traditional) focus on seminars

• Student seminar leaders - intermediate levels of expertise

Seminars

Socially situating the workplace• Hybrid seminars - modeling

academic discourse in a social context, in both spoken and written form; the written form as intermediate product

• Expanding the social context Seminar (& course) threaded discussions; seminar (& course) e-mail -

Essays/Projects

Highlighting intermediate products and socially meaningful work

• Peer review via turnitin.com - intermediate, public products

• Plagiarism checking via http://www.turnitin.com/ - educating students

• Student pseudojournals such as BURP & BJP - socially meaningful work

BJP

Web distribution and archiving of journal

Using PDF rather than HTML formatE-mail management of

communications, including submissions

Peer review mechanism

Quo vadis?

As academics:Work to reform the distinction

between research and teachingWe need to invest in the

“scholarship of teaching” (What if we treated our research like we seem to treat our teaching?)

CLOE, MERLOT, Teaching journals

Quo vadis?

As individual teachers:Respect our teaching as an integral

part of our craftApply the same care to our teaching

as we do to our research (Andre & Frost’s Researchers Hooked on Teaching, 1997)

Acknowledge the central role of pedagogical design in our courses

Experiment in our courses

Quo vadis?

As university administrators:Develop and implement strategic

teaching and learning plansTrain graduate studentsHire pedagogically sophisticated

faculty“Orient” current facultyRevise tenure and promotion

proceduresSupport teaching support unitsCreate a few faculty millionaires?

Closing

I believe that expressing well thought-out pedagogical objectives through the application of (new) media/tools IS the only way to go.

Closing

Digital technologies do not absolve us of our responsibility to our craft, instead they empower us in astonishing new ways.

Closing

Relax :)Do your own thing...

NOTE: Do not be afraid of your students.It is an honor to sometimes be their apprentice!

Many thanks to: Tamaris Kozar, Laurie Hollis-Walker, Lena Malloy, Jamie Dohn, Yurii Kuzmin, Dan Shakhmundes, Leanne Gosse, Catharine

Milner, Claudia Megna

Closing

Theorizing the Digital:From Tsunami to Trojan Horse to

Transformer

by

John MittererDepartment of Psychology

mitterer@brocku.ca