Sweat the Technique

1992.  I was working for the Southwestern Michigan Urban League.  The Urban League “has built a bridge between races and has sought to emphasize the greater reliance on the unique resources of the African-American community to find solutions to its own problems.”  I was one of two white team leaders for the Youth Volunteer Corps that year.  The Youth Volunteer Corps was founded in 1987 to engage youth in service projects that are challenging, rewarding and educational and promote a greater understanding of diversity in their community.  Another of their fundamental goals is to promote a lifetime ethic of service; it certainly did that for me.  Our service projects included rehabilitating homes for young single mothers.  Our young black kids were learning community responsibility by being responsible for their community through plumbing, carpentry, and caring for their vulnerable neighbors.  

While we worked, we frequently listened to Erik B. & Rakim’s Don’t Sweat the Technique (1992) and Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet (1990).  These were the philosophers the day who sculpted the ideas for the youth, and ff there was ever a time I understood “the poetry of teaching and learning,” that was probably it. They understood, earlier than others, what it meant to be institutionalized by technique.

Chuck D’s infamous: “I got so much trouble on my mind.”

Erik B. “They wanna know how many rhymes have I ripped and wrecked / But researchers never found all the pieces yet.”

Chuck D: Caught in the race against time / The pit and the pendulum / Check the rhythm and rhymes / While I'm bending 'um / Snakes blowing up the lines of design / Trying to blind the science I'm sending 'em / How to fight the power / Cannot run and hide / But it shouldn't be suicide / In a game a fool without the rules / Got a hell of a nerve to just criticize.”

Erik B. “Philosophers are wondering what's next / Pieces took the last to observe them / They couldn't absorb them / They didn't deserve them / My ideas are only for the audience”

I loved those albums. I loved that year.  I loved teaching and learning with these kids.  When Shelley talked about listening and remixing the poetry of teaching and learning, it was hard not to think of rap music and the fact that this balding, middle-class, middle-aged white guy still listens to Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos as he works out. “I gotta get out, but that thought was thought before.”  I don’t know if there is a way out.   

As Shelley said “everything has become a technique.” She’s right.  And better minds than mine, Ursula Franklin and Jacques Ellul, seem to think so too.  As Ellul says,

Each of us, in his own life, must seek ways of resisting and transcending technological determinants. . . Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won.  The moment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism.  He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably settled in freedom.  In the modern world, the most dangerous form of determinism is the technological phenomenon. It is not a question of getting rid of it, but by an act of freedom, of transcending it.  How is this to be done? I do not yet know.  (1964, p. xxxii - xxxiii).

For Ellul, no one is capable of making a true and itemized account of the total effect of existing techniques.  The same could be said for teaching techniques: (think-pair-share, minute papers, exit tickets, jigsaws, problem-based learning, inquiry learning, case studies, peer instruction, self-assessment, reflective journals, the prediction effect, the testing effect, concept mapping, role plays, debates, student-led discussions, community service learning, work-integrated learning, high-impact educational practices, learning outcomes, rubrics, constructive alignment, etc.).  

And the machine (the computer, the device, the hardware and software)

represents the ideal toward which technique strives. The machine is solely, exclusively, technique; it is pure technique, one might say.  For, wherever a technical factor exists, it results, almost inevitably, in mechanization: technique transforms everything it touches into a machine.

This is not just a polemic. In March 2018, OECD put faces to people at risk of automation, and they estimate 32% of jobs could face technological unemployment, and training (education) is not going to be a successful remedy because “participation in training is significantly lower for workers in jobs at high risk of automation” (OECD, 2018, p. 1).

Oxford University estimates that some of the jobs at risk of automation include career and technical education teachers (26% likely), adult literacy teachers and instructors (19% likely), and middle school teachers (17% likely) (Scott, 2017).  Who knows if this is true and/or when/will it come to pass, but many are beginning to think it is time to sweat the technique.  Ursula Franklin, like Ellul, was an early thinker in this area, and she speaks to the difficulty of applying language to technology.  

How does one speak about something that is both fish and water, means as well as end?  That’s why I think it is better to examine limited settings where one puts technology in context, because context is what matters most. . . I think it’s important to realize that technology defined as practice shows us the deep cultural link of technology, and it saves us from thinking that technology is the icing on the cake.  Technology is part of the cake itself (Franklin, 1990, pp. 14-17).

And this icing and cake is transforming the act of teaching (transforming being used here without positive or negative judgment to indicate that what teaching will look like in the future will resemble nothing like its present state).  

Franklin describes two primary types of technology – holistic and production technologies. Franklin sees teaching as a holistic technology par excellence.

All of us who teach know that the magic moment when teaching turns into learning depends on the human setting and the quality and example of the teacher – on factors that relate to a general environment of growth rather than on any design parameters set down externally.  If there ever was a growth process, if there ever was a holistic process, a process that cannot be divided into rigid predetermined steps, it is education (Franklin, 1990, p. 29).

Even though Franklin describes teaching as a holistic technology, she also recognizes that “schools and universities operate according to a production model.”  This application of the production model may be especially true for online education.  Franklin (1990) describes prescriptive or production technologies as technologies that break down the holistic process into clearly identifiable steps where a separate worker or group of workers carry out individual jobs.  This is what Bates (2015) refers to as the “disaggregation of services” (sec.10.10.3), and this disaggregation is an important aspect of achieving flexibility and scale.  It is now possible to disaggregate course development from delivery, assessment from delivery, and certification from assessment (Contact North, 2016).

Pedagogy is one of the human techniques Ellul outlines, and the conquest of technique renders former modes of social organization incompatible with technique, especially when the technique is applied in the interest of the state. 

When modern youth are fully educated in the new psychopedagogic technique, many social and political difficulties will disappear. . . The new pedagogical methods correspond exactly to the role assigned to education in modern technical society. . . furnish administrators for the state and managers for the economy, in conformity with social needs and tendencies. . . education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians. (p. 348)

See any number of articles on the death of the liberal arts.  Farewell poetry.  You have no place here. Or, maybe you do.  I truly hope Shelley can do what Ellul suggests: “What we must do is look about us and note certain obvious things which seem to escape the all too intelligent philosophers” (1964, p. 9).

References

Bates, T. (2015, February 18). The implications of ‘open’ for course and program design: Towards a paradigm shift. [Personal blog]. Retrieved from https://www.tonybates.ca/tag/disaggregation/

Contact North. (2016). The future of higher education and learning: A Canadian view. Toronto, ON: Contact North. Retrieved from https://contactnorth.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/external-presentations/future_of_higher_education_and_learning_0.pdf

Ellul, J. (1964). The technological society. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Franklin, U. (1990). The real world of technology. Toronto, ON: CBC Enterprises.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2018). Policy brief on the future of work: Putting faces to the jobs at risk of automation. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/employment/Automation-policy-brief-2018.pdf

Scott, P. (2017, September 27). These are the jobs most at risk of automation according to Oxford University: Is yours one of them. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/27/jobs-risk-automation-according-oxford-university-one/

A practitioner's expanded model of online course design

This is the abstract for a paper I am currently seeking publication for.

Baldwin, Ching and Friesen (2018) recently presented a grounded theory model of online course design and development.  Their analysis shows that instructors roughly follow the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evualation) instructional design model even though instructors do not follow it in a rigid or formulaic fashion.  Their model is grounded in the experience of practitioners, and this author’s experience agrees with their findings and the implications of the study.  In accordance with their methodological approach, this online instructor has taken a personal approach, as a fellow practitioner, to propose a revised and expanded model based on his online instructional design experience that may be more suited to the everyday context of online course designers.  Baldwin, Ching and Friesen’s model is a strong starting point to fill in the paucity of research on how instructors design online courses in practice, but it may be incomplete because it does not take full account of the disciplinary context or an instructor’s beliefs about teaching.  Other missing elements might include how to structure students for maximum engagement, building an integrated digital learning environment beyond the LMS, and the utilization of course analytics and instructor judgment to validate course design. This expanded model requires addition research for validation and verification.

The structure of the paper outlines the suggested additions, defines that element, and then explains how it impacted my practice.

Openo’s expanded view of Baldwin, Ching and Friesen's (2018) grounded theory of online course design and development.

Baldwin, S.J., Ching, Y.-H., & Friesen, N. (2018). Online course design and development among college and university instructors: An analysis using grounded theory. Online Learning, 22(2), 157-171. doi:10.24059/olj.v22i2.1212

My intrapersonal struggle with ambition and humility

Last night, 806 - one of the final program requirements - began.  We are asked to write a short reflection after each session.

It was important for me to hear the stories of struggle, persistence and resilience from others last night, and I am made better by hearing these interrupted journeys, setbacks, and triumphs.  “It’s not your life’s work; it’s a program requirement.” That’s what I was told four years ago. Maybe it’s not my life’s work. But maybe it is.

When I decided to pursue the EdD in Distance Education, I was driven by the ambition to become Dr. J.  I had made a career change into postsecondary teaching and learning after 20 years in libraries, and even though it wasn’t required for my position, I pursued the doctorate for reasons of credibility (to be in “the club”) and to raise the ceiling of what would be possible for my future.  

I didn’t want to do anything fancy; I wanted to study the effect of peer assessment using learning analytics because my favourite quote about teaching is this:

The best answer to the question, ‘What is the most effective method of teaching?,’ is that it depends on the goal, the student, the content and the teacher.  But the next best answer is, ‘Students teaching other students.’ (McKeachie, Pintrich, Lin & Smith, 1987, p. 75)

Downes (2013) disagrees, calling peer assessment “the blind leading the blind,” but the topic felt cutting-edge and necessary to achieve high-end e-learning-at-scale.  Leading learning analytics scholars were realizing that analytics is often – but should not be – decoupled from the actual instructional conditions (Gasevic, Dawson, Rogers & Gasevic, 2016), and there were gaps in the literature.  I had no illusions that it was going to be easy, but it felt straightforward because I had access to 60 students in the online course I teach at the University of Alberta’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science.  It felt like a humble project, in the best sense of that word – free from pride and another important micro-level study into the complex dynamics of online course design.

Then, ambition got in the way.  At the end of 801, Dr. Dianne Conrad asked me if I would be interested in writing a book on assessments in online learning contexts with her. My response: “I’d be crazy to say no, but I would be even crazier to say yes.”  To take on a book project when I was about to start 802 was a decision made out of ambition, and I realized that I had (again) been a master of self-deception.  I wanted something more than a doctoral degree – I wanted to be a scholar, I wanted to be an academic, and I wanted to be a leader (even though I am not sure I can define what I mean by any of those labels).  The book came out in July 2018, and I am thrilled, but also humbled – it wasn’t easy; I haven’t always been the best-version of myself throughout the process.  I have wondered, was the ambition worth it if, at the end of the day, I am only more certain that all is vanity, and that there is nothing new under the sun?  My ambition has diminished me on more than one occasion.

Doubts and disillusionment about the wonders of technology further caused me to change direction for my dissertation. The messages of Selwyn (2014) and Veletsianos and Moe (2017) had started to sink in.  I also came across Ursula Franklin’s Massey Lectures entitled The Real World of Technology.

As more and more of daily life in the real world of technology is conducted via prescriptive technologies, the logic of technology begins to overpower and displace other types of social logic, such as the logic of compassion or the logic of obligation, the logic of ecological survival or the logic of linkages to nature. (Franklin, 1990, p. 95).

Was that not the deepest concern of my heart – that technology was displacing other forms of social logic and that I was part of that process?  Selwyn notes that “the de facto role of the academic educational technologist is understood to be one of finding ways to make these technology-based improvements happen” (Selwyn, 2014, p. 12), or in Franklin’s words, my role as a director of a teaching and learning centre is to make the world “safe for technology” (1990, p. 120).  Is that what my ambition is turning me into – part of the forces displacing the logic of compassion, obligation, and ecological survival?  This is a humbling thought, and part of the struggle I decided to work out in my proposal, which has become my life’s work.  

Downes, S. (2013). Assessment in MOOCs [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://halfanhour.blogspot.com.es/2013/05/assessment-in-moocs.html

Franklin, U. (1990). The real world of technology. Toronto, ON: CBC Enterprises

Gašević, D., Dawson, S., Rogers, T., & Gasevic, D. (2016). Learning analytics should not promote one size fits all: The effects of instructional conditions in predicting academic success. The Internet and Higher Education, 2868-84. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.10.002

McKeachie, W. J., Pintrich, P. R., Lin, Y., & Smith, D. A. F. (1987). Teaching and learning in the college classroom: A review of the research literature. Ann Arbor, MI: National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning

Selwyn, N. (2014). Distrusting educational technology: Critical questions for changing times. New York, NY: Routledge.

Veletsianos, G., & Moe, R. (2017, April 10). The rise of educational technology as a sociocultural and ideological phenomenon. Educause Review. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/4/the-rise-of-educational-technology-as-a-sociocultural-and-ideological-phenomenon

Experiential Education at MHC: To Lead in Learning Excellence

During the writing of my dissertation proposal, I was asked, "What do you believe about knowledge creation?" This question really threw me for a loop. I answered immediately that every single one of the words was problematic and political, not the least of which is "I". Beliefs, knowledge, and creation are all political, and while that is true, I found what I believe about knowledge creation could be summed up in one word: experience. But that's not as easy as it sounds either. As Dewey writes:

We live from birth to death in a world of persons and things which in large measure is what it is because of what has been done and transmitted from previous human activities.  When this fact is ignored, experience is treated as if it were something which goes on exclusively inside an individual’s body and mind.  It ought not be necessary to say that experience does not occur in a vacuum.  There are sources outside an individual which give rise to experience. It is constantly fed by these springs (Dewey, 1997, p. 40).

This quotation speaks to two different sources of knowledge creation; the first type is sculpted by a culture’s stories, and the second is forged in experience.  Every month, I try to put together a brief for discussion at our Academic Leadership Council meetings. Here is what I put together for June's meeting. 

PS. Assessment Strategies in Online Learning: Engagement & Authenticity should be available this Friday (July 6) and available in print on July 22.

Assessment Strategies for Online Learning: Engagement and Authenticity

When I was in college, I dreamed of writing book. It was going to be this epic, mystical-reality bildungsroman about the time I was arrested for a crime I didn't commit. It was going to be hallucinogenic and psychedelically beautiful in line with Huxley's Island, Hesse's Demian and Thompson's Fear and Loathing. I never finished it, and probably shouldn't have. 

But this one did get finished!

It "hits the shelves" in Spring 2018. One of the reasons it is so exciting to publish with Athabasca University Press is that they believe in open access, so it will be freely available on the web, as well. It was such an honour and privilege to work with Dr. Conrad on this book. It wasn't always easy, but I am thrilled with the final product. 

Bridging the divide: Leveraging SoTL for quality enhancement

I am very excited to share this piece of research. This was put together by a great group of folks who worked together in the Society of Teaching in Learning in Higher Education's (STLHE) collaborative writing groups. A special issue of the Canadian Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning will come out soon and contain all of the collaborative writing group articles. I am very thankful for the opportunity to participate in this group, and I hope that some of the recommendations to recognize the legitimacy of SoTL with Canadian provincial quality assurance frameworks will come to pas as quality assurance in higher education continues to evolve. 

This paper argues a divide exists between quality assurance (QA) processes and quality enhancement, and that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can bridge this divide through an evidence-based approach to improving teaching practice. QA processes can trigger the examination of teaching and learning issues, providing faculty with an opportunity to systematically study their impact on student learning. This form of scholarship positions them to take a critical and empowered role in the continuous improvement of student learning experiences and to become full participants in the goal of QA structures. A document analysis of current provincial QA policies in Canada reveals a gap between how teaching and learning challenges are identified and how those challenges are studied and acted upon. A QA report is not the end result of an assurance process. It is the beginning of a change process that is intended to lead to improvements in the student learning experience. The authors consider how SoTL provides a research-minded approach to initiate continuous improvements within a QA framework, and provides considerations for how it might be integrated into evolving provincial frameworks.

Openo, J., Laverty, C., Klodiana, K., Borin, P., Goff, L., Stranach, M., and Gomaa, N. (in press). Bridging the divide: Leveraging the scholarship of teaching and learning for quality enhancement. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Appreciative Leadership: A Cure for Today's Leadership Crisis

This paper was originally written for EDDE 804, Leadership and Project Management in Distance Education.  The assignment called for students to present and review a leadership theory.  I chose Appreciative Leadership because of my powerful experiences with Appreciative Inquiry and Appreciative Coaching, and because I think Appreciative Leadership may be a cure for today's leadership crisis. 

There is a leadership crisis. Kellerman (2012) suggests “leadership is in danger of becoming obsolete” (p. 200) because of dominant cultural constructions of leadership.  These constructs, promoted by the leadership industry, include that the wider world only matters insofar as it pertains to the narrow world, and this insular leadership focuses solely on financial performance, disregarding any external damage caused.  According to Kellerman, leadership education programs assume leadership can be taught quickly and easily, and that leadership can be taught in silos with a curriculum that concentrates only on what is applicable.  Followership is unimportant, bad leadership is unimportant, and not enough attention is paid to slowly changing patterns of dominance (pp. 191-195).  

Gronn (2003) also suggests conventional constructs of leadership “are in trouble” (p. 23) due to the oversimplified leader-follower binary.  Avolio, Walumba and Weber (2009) add a growing sense that historical models of leadership are not relevant to today’s digital/knowledge economy.  The greatest indication of the leadership crisis, however, is that leadership theories and leadership development programs have not enabled leaders to do what leaders need to do.  If the essence of leadership is influencing change (Uhl-Bien, 2003), and “80 percent of organizational change initiatives fail to meet their objectives” (Black, 2014, p. 3), conventional constructs of leadership are ineffective.

Kellerman (2012) suggests a perfect world would contain an overarching leadership theory with application to leadership practice (p. 195).  Appreciative Leadership may provide that. Whitney, Trosten-Bloom and Rader (2010) define Appreciative Leadership as

a way of being and a set of strategies that give rise to practices applicable across industries, sectors, and arenas of collaborative action. . . Appreciative Leadership is the relational capacity to mobilize creative potential and turn it into positive power – to set in motion positive ripples of confidence, energy, enthusiasm, and performance – to make a positive difference in the world (p. 3).

Gronn (2003) suggests that to study leadership, one should investigate the outcomes of workplace practices and then work backwards.  This can be accomplished by examining examples where appreciative practices have been employed.

Building organizational resilience using Appreciative Inquiry

Attached below are the slides from my presentation at the Family and Child Support Service Agencies of Alberta's Power of Prevention conference. on November 24, 2016.

Session description: Best estimates suggest 60-80% of strategic change initiatives fail. Leaders can increase their odds using Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Appreciative Inquiry is unapologetic in its focus on the positive, believing communities can be strengthened through collaborative inquiry as a method to turn problems into transformation. Emerging from positive and sports psychology, Appreciative Inquiry seeks out what is working well within organizations in order to create greater success. AI is a high-engagement process where the members of an organization co-create their preferred future together through appreciative interviews, re-framing, and the development of possibility statements. This highly interactive workshop introduces a new method of strategic planning that is perfectly suited for a time of rapid change and change fatigue. 

From the American, P8: The American Crisis Revisited

I’m eating crow and a slice of humble pie with some old drinking buddies — anger, disbelief and fear — feeling like I did after the Supreme Court cancelled the Florida recount, meaning Gore “lost.” A numb hopelessness won’t let go. But it’s only Day 1. Lincoln is whispering in my ear, “we must not be enemies,” and passion must not “break our bonds of affection.” He’s right, and my better angels will reappear.

So I do what I did in 2000. I read Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, words that gave the colonists and the Continental Army hope when read to them before the Battle of Trenton on Dec. 23, 1776.

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph … My secret opinion has always been that God Almighty will not give up a people … or leave them to perish … Neither do I suppose that He has given us up to the care of devils … Let them call me rebel, but I should suffer the misery of devils if I were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.”

I refused to be a sunshine patriot in 2000, and I won’t be one now. Donald Trump is my president, but I will not make a whore of my soul and be happy about it. Now is the time for faith, that despite evidence to contrary, God has not given us up to the care of devils, and the course is to recommit to working for human decency by recognizing that a majority of Trump’s supporters are not members of the Ku Klux Klan. I’ve eaten with Trump voters at barbecues, some are members of my family, and each one I know is a hard-working American disappointed by a system that has dismissed and demeaned them.

I don’t know what to do right now, other than resist demonizing my fellow citizens. As I reflect, I figured Hillary Clinton would win (not because I wanted her to — like so many others, I fell in love with Bernie) because the Republican Party was imploding. Feuds between Ryan and Trump, McCain and Trump, and Pence and Trump, all indicated a party in disarray, which is a party that typically loses. Obama’s approval ratings were strong, which is a good sign for the party possessing the presidency, and Michelle delivered the best speech of the campaign. Trump didn’t represent classic conservative views of small government, held a confusing stance on abortion, and ran a weird campaign. And I wasn’t alone in thinking it was impossible that a 3 a.m. tweeting, Putin-admiring, tax-dodging, pathologically lying racist woman-hater would win.

This illuminates how obvious it is that it’s not the Republican brand in trouble, but the Democratic Party that’s in shambles, and they can’t blame this on Trump or the FBI. The Democratic National Committee actively worked against Sanders and chose a candidate with a history of scandal, whose foundation may have accepted donations from terrorist-sponsoring countries. Republicans now control two-thirds of state houses, a majority of governorships, and hold a historic margin in the House of Representatives. This should sit heavily on Democratic leaders, and hopefully, this will be the last we see of the Clintons, who have repeatedly failed the American people and destroyed faith in the Presidency. Just like 2000, Gore’s loss had more to do with a Clinton impeachment than it did with the hanging chads in Florida. Democrats have no one to blame but themselves, and only time will tell whether or not they realize that.

From the American, P7: Born in the USA

This is probably my last piece observing this election because it looks like it is over.