Here's an extract from a piece predicting we're about to go through a long and debilitating period of 'knowledge drain' because of the financial crisis and its unfinished business.
I think the catastrophic unwinding (and there is still potential for more default, even of the – whisper it – sovereign variety, which could make Greece look like a blip) will have some positive side effects. In fact, it will have lots of positive side effects.
But I remember the 80s (and the 70s, a bit) and all that was lost then. And I wonder what firms and organisations are planning on doing about it?
PS If you still read my bits here, I'd just like to let you know I've moved!
I'm at http://hypergogue.amplify.com now
It's a 'rebranding' of sorts. It would be nice to see you over at the new Amplog! But, before we start on all that malarkey, can you see anything a bit odd in this picture? |
Bubonic plague killed many of the more experienced craftsmen in the church-building business. And the result was a Crooked Spire. |
The spire has always been one of my favourite buildings; a more modest, more eccentric, more English version of that show-off, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. |
So, in a way, I’m looking forward to the upcoming tail-end of the Econopalypse. Lots of things that are due for overhaul or extinction will go under, or be forced to change. For a tub-thumper like me, these are interesting times. |
And we’ll see a lot more crooked spires. |
The key section of the Lost Knowledge extract, for me, is (my emphasis): |
With them went years of experience and expertise about the design trade-offs that had been made . . . |
This means, basically, that even if NASA had managed to keep track of the ‘critical blueprints’, they would have been stuffed. Design trade-offs are the stuff of tacit knowledge. Which usually lives inside stories, networks, snippets of shoptalk, chance sneaky peeks at a colleague’s notes, bitter disputes and rivalries . . . |
1. This is a test post while I test out some snazzy technology.
2. I love this post. He's talking about WarioWare DIY, which is one those newish types of meta-game where the game is to make games.
3. I think he's actually talking here about wabi-sabi, or something similar to what Doug Belshaw has called Creative Ambiguity (or what the late, great - on Twitter, that is - Kathy Sierra called #hardtoignore). That is, things which can't be perfect, which have to suggest, which are incomplete.
4. Of course, he's also talking about constraints.
5. Constraints and having-to-work-that-bit-harder-with-your-imagination seem to do wonders for learning.
6. We've all been over the uselessness of Higher Education, erm, education many times. So I won't go there again. | I’d argue that stiff, frank rules give a sturdier foundation for outlandish experimentation. Part of the fun is learning to exploit the software beyond its limits |
This takes me back to an old school pastime, and an odd one at that. Back in secondary school I used to create animated films using Microsoft PowerPoint 97. It started with a piece of IT homework gone awry. Two clip art businessmen grow bored of the subject being discussed and go off on a ‘comedy’ tangent before being interrupted by a carrot. (I was a lot more zanier back then.) The simple tools bubbled with potential. Teacher showed how to materialise bar charts; I saw a trick to make a gun muzzle flash. And where ‘fly ins’ help bullet points swoop in, they’re even better for launching space rockets. |
| And playing WarioWare I find the same skills flooding back. Layering, point-of-entrance, the importance of comedy arterial spray… I’ve retained more from PowerPoint 97 than I can remember of my degree. Pushing against tight constraints strengthens the creative muscles. Drop me into a sprawling LittleBigPlanet or Kodu and I don’t know what do to with myself. Don’t pander and pamper; constrict and challenge. As is true of most things, when a result is out of our reach we’re more inclined to pursue it.Read more at five-players.com |
Something I read recently (but have had refinding failure with) was (paraphrasing):
In a complex environment, by definition every individual element is inconsequential or, at least, it is perceived that way.
But, the degree of interdependency and intertwingling means that every element can cause catastrophic failure.
From an educational/training perspective, it seems kind of hard to deal with. But it's only the testing and the examination that's tough. We can train people to deal with complexity but that training is hard to accredit.
Boo hoo. | Complexity is a defining attribute of society today – in fact, it’s foundational to understanding people, markets, technology, and why “things go wrong”. Unfortunately, school did not equip me to understand complexity or even to recognize it. I learned that right answers exist (in fairness, they do sometimes). I learned that clarity and lack of ambiguity were hallmarks of an education. I learned about cause and effect – not always explicitly, but as an underpinning component to how I was taught. |
It was this comment (if you're new to Amplify, the comment I'm talking about comes below) from @irasocol that kind of got me started.
I don't really believe in epiphanies. Anybody who works in training or education should know better than that. But sometimes there are moments when you catch yourself in a position of such blatant self-contradiction that you know you have to make a choice or become (even more of) a hypocrite.
When I read this, I was actually scandalised. It just seemed so wrong and, to be honest, it still does. (More on why, in a moment.)
But it definitely makes sense. I believe it's right.
And the same goes for all of this new technology and the workplace. Should we have Facebook in the enterprise? This is an utterly banal question. If you've been around on the web for long enough, you'll remember similar discussions about the internet itself. An astounding number of people believed that the web was a fad. I distinctly recall somebody on TV saying that the web was all hype because it merely duplicated a library. I remember shouting at the screen - but a library in every house! I was incensed. (Of course, many of us now have a library in our pocket - even I, tech nerd that I was, couldn't imagine that. I wasn't alone.)
Facebook may well be a fad. But the ability to be in almost constant ambient contact with a number of people far in excess of the Dunbar Number all over the planet will feel like a birthright to my kids. (It already does to me - I'm like Charlton Heston when it comes to my phone.)
Businesses only have two choices (and, yes, schools are businesses too) when it comes to this stuff. They can lead or they can follow. (Don't get me wrong, sometimes following's a good thing.) But they won't get to choose.
@ToughLoveforX tweets:
Conversations about technology are no longer value added. Instead they are distractions.
He explains why:
It's all about a focus on How but without a crystal clear demonstrable definition of Why. Same story in many organizations
And, or course, he's absolutely right. But I also think that it's worth thinking about why I'm still scandalised by Ira's comment.
I'm scandalised because I know that pretty much everybody (in what I still call 'real life') would think this to be insanely radical. And I'm guilty by association.
(And, trust me, if you knew me, you'd know I'm not radical. I'm whimsical and slightly capricious - these are not the same thing at all.)
"Crystal clear demonstrable definition of Why" or no explanation at all, I wouldn't work for an organisation that took away my social tools any more than I'd work for an organisation that banned pens or forced me to wear a blindfold.
Discussions about technology are no longer value added, if you're one of those people who takes the technology for granted. (I'd compare this to saying that discussions about feminism are no longer value added - yes, the battle has been largely won but but but . . .
Ira's comment, below, prompted this blog post, which is still my favourite.
BTW, you should follow @ToughLoveforX on Twitter. | So, the telegraph succeeded not because it was invented, but because the world had grown much more interconnected and needed news faster. “Web 2.0″ has succeeded because after 200 years on urban anonymity combined with one-way linear learning, humans were hunting for better solutions |
So, it is not a question of whether these technologies add value somehow to education, but the reverse, can education add value to the communications and information technologies of our present day world, and its future? |
This switches the responsibility. It is not the job of contemporary technologies to prove themselves to educators, the book was never required to do that, and I’ve never read studies of the lecture which demonstrate that it is particularly effective in any way. It is the job of education to alter itself to prove itself of value to the world which now exists. Read more at ideasandthoughts.org |
What's really interesting about this is that the ecotherapists aren't keen on the research even though it supports their work. (For a clue why, click through and read the comment thread).
So, what to read into this research?
First, people can learn random sequences of digits more effectively when they're in 'nature' (note, this may or may not have anything to do with Cognitive Load as subjects clearly responded to 'nature' in a different way than they did to an environment with little in the way of distraction or images of nature).
Second, this may or may not mean anything for learning at work. When we learn at work (or in an educational establishment), we're in an environment designed by us for us. The built environment is something we use to think with (though sometimes it probably provides more in the way of distraction than help). Most of our learning tasks aren't even similar to learning random sequences of digits.
Third, this seems related to the ideas in this post about embodied cognition, which contains more about using the environment to think with. And this by Dilbert author, . Focus Among the Flowers
In addition to helping us relax, authentic interactions with nature help maintain concentration, according to attention restoration theory. “Our energy to focus gets fatigued,” Doherty explained. “Natural spaces restore our ability to pay attention.” |
In a 2008 study at the University of Michigan, Marc Berman asked some participants to memorize digits and recite them in reverse order. Then he had one group of participants walk through an arboretum, while others traveled crowded city streets. Afterwards, the subjects completed the digit task again. Those who’d strolled through the arboretum performed with higher attention and memory than those who had walked in the city. The arboretum-walkers recited an average of 1.5 digits more on their second test than on their first, compared with an average of 0.5 digits improvement for participants who had been exposed to the urban environment. |
“Our study was one of the first to make it into a mainstream psychology journal,” said Berman, whose study was published in Psychological Science. “We had a lot of experimental control.” For example, Berman made sure his participants followed consistent paths through the arboretum and streets by monitoring their progress with GPS-enabled wristwatches. And he used standardized surveys to assess people’s mood before and after their walks. |
But some ecopsychologists and ecotherapists aren’t so enthusiastic about the new empirical work. “For me the science is not a critical piece,” said Dennis Grannis-Phoenix, the Maine ecotherapist who asked Eric Adams to hike a mountain alone at night. “I’ve seen the changes Eric and my patients go through and they are real.” Read more at www.scienceline.org |
The 'expectation of email' uses up our working memory and makes us less able to think and/or make useful decisions.
Which is kind of what Dave Allen's GTD has been saying for a while, I suppose.
One interesting sign from reading this article (I say 'sign', the article is disappointingly vague and the scientist seem to come up with nothing more profound than deciding to take more holidays in future) is a feeling of reactance.
That is, I have a wordless but distinct feeling that, in some way, this is another article that's criticising me and my predilection for spending time immersed in social media and the web.
This is not a good sign. | Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain |
It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects. |
“Attention is the holy grail,” Mr. Strayer says. |
“Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.” |
Late in the afternoon, they make camp on the banks. They eat pork chops, the Big Dipper brilliant above, the thousand-foot canyon walls narrowing their view of the heavens. A few bats dart and dive, seeking bugs drawn to the flashlights. |
The men drink Tecate beer and talk about the brain. They are thinking about a seminal study from the University of Michigan that showed people can better learn after walking in the woods than after walking a busy street. |
The study indicates that learning centers in the brain become taxed when asked to process information, even during the relatively passive experience of taking in an urban setting. By extension, some scientists believe heavy multitasking fatigues the brain, draining it of the ability to focus. |
Behavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask. These researchers are wondering whether attention and focus can take a hit when people merely anticipate the arrival of more digital stimulation. |
“The expectation of e-mail seems to be taking up our working memory,” Mr. Yantis says. |
Working memory is a precious resource in the brain. The scientists hypothesize that a fraction of brain power is tied up in anticipating e-mail and other new information — and that they might be able to prove it using imaging. |
“To the extent you have less working memory, you have less space for storing and integrating ideas and therefore less to do the reasoning you need to do,” says Mr. Kramer, floating nearby. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
(I've clipped the bits I'm most interested in but for Learning geeks there's a whole load more, including a discussion on the important question of whether Cognition is for Action.)
The observation I'd make about the whole issue of Embodied Cognition is with regard to how Learning & Development/Organisational Development/Knowledge Management practitioners (and teachers) orient themselves.
Roughly speaking, there are two approaches to learning at work. One group of practitioners is interested in the 'scientific' approach to learning and factultative embodied cognition (where facultative approx. = temporary).
Another group are less interested in 'explanatory power' and focus on obligate embodied cognition (where obligate embodied cognition implies we are cyborgs).
I think that, if we're talking about people at work, then it doesn't make sense to focus on the psychological or 'scientific' aspects of learning too much.
Organisations are engines of cognition and as soon as we strap on our iPhones and other connectivity prostheses (or, more mundanely, visit a watercooler analogue or open up the P & P manual from our HR department) then we're clearly in the realm of obligate embodied cognition. | If the term “embodied
cognition” is to retain meaningful use, we need to disentangle and evaluate
these diverse claims. Among the most
prominent are the following: |
| 1)
Cognition is situated. Cognitive
activity take place in the context of a real-world environment, and inherently
involves perception and action. |
| 2)
Cognition is time-pressured. We are “mind on the hoof” (Clark, 1997), and
cognition must be understood in terms of how it functions under the pressures
of real-time interaction with the environment. |
3)
We off-load cognitive work onto the environment. Because of limits on our
information-processing abilities (e.g. limits on attention and working memory),
we exploit the environment to reduce the cognitive workload. We make the environment hold or even
manipulate information for us, and we harvest that information only on a
need-to-know basis. |
| 4)
The environment is part of the cognitive system. The information flow between mind and world
is so dense and continuous that, for scientists studying the nature of
cognitive activity, the mind alone is not a meaningful unit of analysis. |
| 5)
Cognition is for action. The function of the mind is to guide action,
and cognitive mechanisms such as perception and memory must be understood in
terms of their ultimate contribution to situation-appropriate behavior. |
| 6)
Off-line cognition is body-based.
Even when decoupled from the environment, the activity of the mind is
grounded in mechanisms that evolved for interaction with the environment – that
is, mechanisms of sensory processing and motor control. |
| Claim 2: Cognition is Time-Pressured |
| One
reason that time pressure is thought to matter is that it creates what has been
called a “representational bottleneck.”
When situations demand fast and continuously evolving responses, there
may simply not be time to build up a full-blown mental model of the
environment, from which to derive a plan of action. Instead, it is argued,
being a situated cognizer requires the use of cheap and efficient tricks for
generating situation-appropriate action on the fly |
| Claim 3: We Off-Load
Cognitive Work onto the Environment |
| Despite
the fact that we frequently choose to run our cognitive processes off-line, it
is still true that in some situations we are forced to function on-line. In those situations, what do we do about our
cognitive limitations? One response, as
we have seen, is to fall apart.
However, humans are not entirely helpless when confronting the
representational bottleneck, and two types of strategies appear to be available
when confronting on-line task demands.
The first is to rely on pre-loaded representations acquired through
prior learning |
| What about novel stimuli and tasks, though? In these cases there is a second option,
which is to reduce the cognitive workload by making use of the environment
itself in strategic ways – leaving information out there in the world to be
accessed as needed, rather than taking time to fully encode it; and using epistemic actions (Kirsh & Maglio,
1994) to alter the environment in order to reduce the cognitive work remaining
to be done. |
Some
investigators have begun to examine how off-loading work onto the environment
may be used as a cognitive strategy. Kirsh and Maglio, as noted earlier, report
a study involving the game Tetris, in which falling block shapes must be
rotated and horizontally translated to fit as compactly as possible with the
shapes that have already fallen. The
decision of how to orient and place each block must be made before the block
falls too far to allow the necessary movements. The data suggest that players use actual rotation and translation
movements to simplify the problem to be solved, rather than mentally computing
a solution and then executing it. A
second example comes from Ballard, Hahoe, Pook and Rao (1997), who asked
subjects to reproduce patterns of colored blocks under time pressure by
dragging randomly scattered blocks on a computer screen into a work area and
arranging them there. Recorded eye
movements showed repeated referencing of the blocks in the model pattern, and
these eye movements occurred at strategic moments, for example to gather
information first about a block’s color and then later about it’s precise
location within the pattern. The
authors argue that this is a “minimal memory strategy,” and they show that it
is the strategy most commonly used by subjects. |
A
few moments thought can yield similar examples from daily life. Not all of them involve time pressure, but
other cognitive limitations, such as those of attention and working memory, can
drive us to a similar kind of off-loading strategy. One example, used earlier, is physically moving around a room to
generate solutions for where to put the furniture. Other examples include laying out the pieces of something that
requires assembly in roughly the order and spatial relationships they will have
in the finished product, or giving directions for how to get somewhere by first
turning one’s self and one’s listener in the appropriate direction. Glenberg and Robertson (1999) have
experimentally studied one such example, showing that in a compass-and-map
task, subjects who were allowed to indexically link written instructions to
objects in the environment during a learning phase performed better during a
test phase than subjects who were not, both on comprehension of new written
instructions and on performance of the actual task. |
In
fact, though, potential uses of off-loading may be far broader than this.
Consider, for example, such activities as counting on one’s fingers, drawing
Venn diagrams, and doing math with pencil and paper. Many of these activities are both situated and spatial, in the
sense that they involve the manipulation of spatial relationships among
elements in the environment. The
advantage is that by doing actual, physical manipulation, rather than computing
a solution in our heads, we save cognitive work. However, unlike the previous examples, there is also a sense in
which these activities are not situated.
They are performed in the
service of cognitive activity about something else, something not present in
the immediate environment. |
Typically,
the literature on off-loading has focused on cases where the world is being
used as “its own best model” (Brooks, 1991a, p. 139). Rather than attempting to mentally store and manipulate all the
relevant details about a situation, we physically store and manipulate those
details out in the world, in the very situation itself. In the Tetris case, for
example, the elements being manipulated do not serve as tokens for anything but
themselves, and their manipulation does not so much yield information about a
solution as produce the goal state itself through trial and error. In contrast,
actions like diagramming represent quite a different sort of use of the
environment. Here, the cognitive system
is exploiting external resources to achieve a solution or a piece of knowledge
whose actual application will occur at some later time and place, if at
all. |
| Notice
what this buys us. This form of
off-loading – what we might call symbolic
off-loading – may in fact be applied to spatial tasks, as in the case of
arranging tokens for armies on a map; but it may also be applied to non-spatial
tasks, as in the case of using Venn diagrams to determine logical relations
among categories. When the purpose of the activity is no longer directly linked
to the situation, it also need not be directly linked to spatial problems
–physical tokens, and even their spatial relationships, can be used to represent
abstract, non-spatial domains of thought.
The history of mathematics attests to the power behind this decoupling
strategy. It should be noted, too, that
symbolic off-loading need not be deliberate and formalized, but can be seen in
such universal and automatic behaviors as gesturing while speaking. It has been found that gesturing is not
epiphenominal, nor even strictly communicative, but seems to serve a cognitive
function for the speaker, helping to grease the wheels of the thought process
that the speaker is trying to express (e.g. Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 1998;
Krauss, 1998). |
| Claim 4: The
Environment is Part of the Cognitive System |
Where
does this leave us with respect to defining a cognitive system? Is it most natural, most scientifically
productive, to consider the system to be the mind; or the mind, the body, and
certain relevant elements in the immediate physical enviroment, all taken
together? To help answer this question,
it will be useful to introduce a few additional concepts regarding systems and
how they function. |
First,
a system is defined by its organization,
that is, the functional relations among its elements. These relations cannot be changed without changing the identity
of the system. Next, systems can be
described as either facultative or obligate. Facultative systems are temporary, organized for a particular
occasion and disbanded readily.
Obligate systems, on the other hand, are more or less permanent, at
least relative to the lifetime of their parts.
|
We
are now in a position to make a few observations about a “cognitive system”
that is distributed across the situation.
The organization of such a system – the functional relations among its
elements, and indeed the constituative elements themselves – would change every
time the person moves to a new location or begins interacting with a different
set of objects. That is, the system
would retain its identity only so long as the situation and the person’s
task-orientation toward that situation did not change. Such a system would clearly be a facultative
system, and facultative systems like this would arise and disband rapidly and
continuously during the daily life of the individual person. The distributed view of cognition thus
trades off the obligate nature of the system in order to buy a system that is
more or less closed. |
If,
on the other hand, we restrict the system to include only the cognitive
architecture of the individual mind or brain, then we are dealing with a
single, persisting, obligate system.
The various components of the system’s organization – perceptual
mechanisms, attentional filters, working memory stores, and so on – retain
their functional roles within that system across time. The system is undeniably open with respect to
its environment, continuously receiving input that affects the system’s
functioning and producing output that has consequences for the environment’s
further impact on the system itself.
But, as in the case of hydrogen, or an ecosystem, this characteristic of
openness does not compromise the system’s status as a system. Based on this analysis, it seems clear that
a strong view of distributed cognition – that a cognitive system cannot in
principle be taken to comprise only an individual mind – will not hold up. |
Second,
it remains to be seen whether, in the long run, a distributed approach can
provide deep and satisfying insights into the nature of cognition. If we recall that the goal of science is to
find underlying principles and regularities, rather than to explain specific
events, then the facultative nature of distributed cognition becomes a
problem. Whether this problem can be
overcome to yield theoretical insights with explanatory power is an issue that
awaits proof. Read more at philosophy.wisc.edu |
Warning: Thinking aloud here, so if you're not in the mood for that, please jump straight to the clip at the bottom.
This was written by Jo Freeman in 1970. And it's audience is other members of the women's liberation movement.
Conflation's one of our greatest analytical sins. We all do it, both consciously and subconsciously, all the time. I think few of us appreciate how much.
The formal vs informal/1.0 vs 2.0 culture war that's taking place in various forms (obviously not on Amplify or Twitter where everybody is a fully-signed up member of the 3.0 crowd - hello, hello, hello! Echo, echo, echo!) is full of conflation; the most common sin is where we confuse (as often as not, deliberately) the notion of 'effective' and 'right'.
It's simply not true that everything 'effective' and 'sustainable' is also moral and good. Theory Y is bullshit, an illusion of wealth.
Not on the decision-making timescales that most of us are capable of operating on, at least. (There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that 'effective' and 'sustainable' and 'moral' and 'right' are pretty much the same when it comes to the long term, just in case I'm beginning to sound like a Gordon Gecko groupie. And Theory Y is, approximately, how I choose to live my life, bullshit or not.)
Jo Freeman unpicks some of the conflation in the anti-structure argument - though, of course, you have to see this through a 1970s lens.
My point is that it's obvious to advocates that there is a 'structure' to Complex Adaptive Agile 2.0 3.0 etc etc (the ones who aren't politically motivated, at least). But that until this is visible to everybody, it will simply sound like coup d'etat. And focusing on how 'right' it is, how it's 'necessary' and the only way to achieve 'sustainability' only adds to the noise.
A bit like shouting at somebody to 'look harder' when they don't see the shark in the Autotereogram.
| During the years in which the women's liberation movement has been
taking shape, a great emphasis has been placed on what are called
leaderless, structureless groups as the main form of the movement.
The source of this idea was a natural reaction against the
overstructured society in which most of us found ourselves, the
inevitable control this gave others over our lives, and the continual
elitism of the Left and similar groups among those who were
supposedly fighting this over-structuredness.
The idea of 'structurelessness', however, has moved from a healthy
counter to these tendencies to becoming a goddess in its own right.
The idea is as little examined as the term is much used, but it has
become an intrinsic and unquestioned part of women's liberation
ideology. For the early development of the movement this did not much
matter. It early defined its main method as consciousness-raising,
and the 'structureless rap group' was an excellent means to this end.
Its looseness and informality encouraged participation in discussion
and the often supportive atmosphere elicited personal insight. If
nothing more concrete than personal insight ever resulted from these
groups, that did not much matter, because their purpose did not
really extend beyond this.
The basic problems didn't appear until individual rap groups
exhausted the virtues of consciousness-raising and decided they
wanted to do some- thing more specific. At this point they usually
floundered because most groups were unwilling to change their
structure when they changed their task. Women had thoroughly accepted
the idea of 'structurelessness' without realising the limitations of
its uses. People would try to use the 'structureless' group and the
informal conference for purposes for which they were unsuitable out
of a blind belief that no other means could possibly be anything but
oppressive. |
Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing
as a 'structureless' group. Any group of people of whatever nature
coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will
inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be
flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute
tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will
be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities and intentions
of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals with
different talents, predisposition's and backgrounds makes this
inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis
whatsoever could we approximate 'structurelessness' and that is not
the nature of a human group.
This means that to strive for a 'structureless' group is as useful
and as deceptive, as to aim at an 'objective' news story,
'value-free' social science or a 'free' economy. A 'laissez-faire'
group is about as realistic as a 'laissez-faire' society; the idea
becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish
unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can easily be
established because the idea of 'structurelessness' does not prevent
the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones.
Similarly, 'laissez-faire' philosophy did not prevent the
economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices
and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from
doing so. Thus 'structurelessness' becomes a way of masking power,
and within the women's movement it is usually most strongly advocated
by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of
their power or not). The rules of how decisions are made are known
only to a few and awareness of power is curtailed by those who know
the rules, as long as the structure of the group is informal. Those
who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must
remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something
is happening of which they are not quite aware.
For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given
group and to participate in its activities the structure must be
explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and
available to everyone, and this can only happen if they are
formalised. Read more at flag.blackened.net |
I like the idea of college courses being taught by two professors - a scientist and an Arts person (or whatever combination seems to give the most benefit).
And, it's true, we don't need that many papers on Virginia Woolf.
It seems folly to me, though, to talk about 'changing' Higher Ed. This argument would be better off presented in terms of saving the stuff that's good in the coming as-apocalyptic-as-it-was-for-the-newspapers-and-record-companies battle.
I know that sounds like rabble-rousing, but I just don't see it panning out any other way.
Incidentally, the comments to this piece (in The Atlantic) are approaching YouTube in the depth of their moronicity. But it's interesting to see just how entrenced *everybody's* views are when it comes to Higher Ed. The professors want tenure, alumni don't want to see their pieces of paper belittled, current students are in massive cognitive dissonance territory because of the effort expended.
The last two sections of this piece that I've clipped below about 'being marked out as an iconoclast' depress me no end. | In the past 10 or
15 years, I've seen a tremendous over-professionalization of the
academic world. Professors are identifying with their arcane
disciplines, the minutiae, the esoteric research. Schools get status by
bringing on professors who are star researchers, star scholars. That's
all we really know about Caltech or MIT or Stanford. We don't really
know about the quality of undergraduate teaching at any of these
places. And it's the students who suffer. |
| there are two ways to pick a college. One is to go to a prestigious
college, and when you graduate the world will know you went to
Princeton or Stanford. It doesn't matter what happened in the classroom
as long as you have that brand behind you. Claudia and I were up at
Harvard talking to students, and they said they get nothing from their
classes, but that doesn't matter. They're smart already—they can breeze
through college |
| Somebody did
a count of how many publications had been written on Virginia Woolf in
the past 15 years. The answer is several thousand. Really? Who needs
this? But it's awfully difficult to say, "Here's knowledge we don't
need!" It sounds like book burning, doesn't it? What we'd say is that
on the scale of priorities, we find undergraduate teaching to be more
important than all the research being done. |
| When I was at
Cornell, Congress announced that they were going to pour a lot of money
into cancer research. So a memo went out to the Cornell professors—not
just in the sciences, mind you—saying, "Can you take your current
research and cancerize it?" There's a lot of that going on. So
sociology professors decided to research cancer communications, and so
on. |
| There's hardly any turnover in the
senior ranks—not just at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford but at small
colleges in Kentucky, everywhere. You go to a campus and over two
thirds of the faculty have been there at least 25 years. They begin to
stagnate. In many ways, they become infantilized, embroiled in
ideological issues like faculty parking. |
ome of the
things you're talking about are deeply entrenched in our culture. You
and Claudia spend the book envisioning an alternative academic
universe. But how do you propose actually getting there?
That's
a fair question. We're idealistic of course. But in our closing
chapter, we point out that there are places that are already doing
this. For instance, Evergreen College,
a sweet little state school in Olympia, Washington. We spent three days
there and it was fantastic. They don't give grades, and they don't have
academic departments. There are no faculty rankings. Almost all the
classes we saw were taught by two professors—say, one from philosophy
and one from psychology, teaching jointly on Henry and William James.
Even though they don't give grades, the professors write out long
evaluations for students. And the students have no problem getting into
graduate schools.
But a school like Evergreen has a
reputation for being very cool. Having Evergreen on a resume marks a
graduate as an independent thinker or iconoclast.
Yes, that's true. Read more at www.theatlantic.com |
Simple as.
And makes perfect sense.
And this is me speaking as a fan of tools (particularly from the collaboration anxiety perspective).
I suspect I'm going to turn this into a blog post called:
The terroir of tools
Unless somebody stops me. When I teach students on Masters courses, I impress upon them the need to ask every lecturer who teaches them management tools two questions: |
1. Who invented this tool? |
|
