Ruminate

(Can I just note that Slate has been on a roll lately, what with fighting monkey hordes– see below, testament to Jens Lekman’s superiority to Abba, and the always-infuriating-even-when-he’s right Christopher Hitchens?)

Back to fighting monkeys. It’s a must-read article because: the only thing better than monkeys exacting a small bit of revenge on humans is monkeys taking over government headquarters to steal food and rip apart documents (also known as: being politicians)… and the only thing better than that is that instead of hunting the monkeys down, as we hairless monkeys are wont to do, the government has brought in the ultimate monkey fighting tool– more and bigger monkeys.

The sucking sound that emanates from the conference rooms and labs where many faculty development and training efforts takes place can originate from a variety of sources, but the most obvious comes from politically driven administration that doesn’t understand the nature of the world that faculty will be working in– and thus what is really needed to succeed in transforming the teaching and learning experience– and who remain ultimately more concerned with their departments, unit, or organization fiscal bottom line on paper than the reality of the education that is happening there.

Anyone who takes part in faculty development and training efforts knows that even a solid week devoted to eight-hour sessions with nightly homework assignments is barely enough time to scratch the surfaces of learning technologies well enough to attempt to use them productively, much less to instill community practices and take a serious look at transforming our methods and pedagogical approach to take into account the benefits that the technology affords in the first place. And most of the time we don’t get a week or two of full days. Instead we get one day, or a half-day, or a few scattered sessions across an academic term, often during some other larger event that is dividing our attention as educator and participant alike.

As it stands, this model is broken. I keep participating in it because despite being broken it is better than nothing, and I– like the faculty– am desperate for any chance to learn more, improve practice, and engage with my colleagues. And many people have become very good at squeezing every bit of nectar from this very old and dried out fruit. We have an obligation to transform our models for faculty development that is no less strong than our obligation to transform teaching, and arguably stronger: out of working faculty development many more new teaching practices will emerge.

The lowest-hanging fruit in the constellation of problems with our current approach is that of treating faculty development like application training. We all know that’s looking through the wrong end of the telescope, which is why we all have our pet slogans: “It’s the teach, not the tech; It’s learning about learning not about technology; We put education first,” etc. But returning to my oft-stated position that the difference between training and education is that a significant part of education comes about as a product of social agency in the learning environment (while training engages the social aspects little if at all), I maintain that we have to go further. If we have limited time and money then we need to forget the tools and teach the community.

There’s no clearer sign that the Clue Train has departed without an administrator on board than seeing that person force faculty development efforts into the direction of “Boot Camps” and “Train the Trainer” activities. Read the rest of this entry »