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  • Learning Technologists and Campus Conversations

    By Joshua Kim June 6, 2010 8:52 pm EDT

    '"The idea of a "senior learning technologist" telling faculty that their syllabi should be made freely available is laughable."

    --Posted by DrRingDing on June 3, 2010 at 11:30am EDT in a comment to my blog.

    On this point, DrRingDing and I are in full agreement. Nobody should "tell" faculty how to do anything. The vast majority of the faculty that I work with are incredibly dedicated and passionate about teaching and their discipline. One of the positives of the long academic apprenticeship is that most of the faculty colleagues that I work with have extraordinary teaching experience - they have their 10,000 hours. I always learn more from my faculty colleagues than I could possibly offer them about teaching.

    The idea that learning technologists "tell" faculty members anything completely mischaracterizes our relationship. Our goal is to find opportunities to have conversations with faculty to understand how we can work with them to solve their teaching needs. It is often the case that a specific methodology or technology can relieve a teaching pain point, allowing the faculty member more time and resources for their course design and teaching efforts.

    The question for all of us is should learning technologists be at the table with faculty during conversations around teaching and learning? Is our role essentially to support faculty needs and desires when it comes to technology? Or do we have a role to play in a dialogue to determine how to promote authentic student learning and innovation in the curriculum?

    Do the learning technologists at your institution have a seat at the table as colleagues with faculty for conversations about teaching and learning?

    How would you respond to DrRingDing?

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Comments on Learning Technologists and Campus Conversations

  • Ignore him
  • Posted by Laura on June 7, 2010 at 8:45am EDT

  • As a former technologist myself, I encountered many DrRingDing's. For a while, I tried to convert them, using all kinds of valid arguments to convince them to "see the light." What I came to realize is that there are plenty of people out there who don't need much convincing but do need help and advice in deciding how to approach teaching with digital tools. For those people, I served as a trusted colleague, someone with a different set of skills and knowledge, and we could discuss to pros and cons of different approaches. I gave them what information and knowledge I had and let them make their own decision, helping where needed. And that is what good technologists do, imo. And they should be at the table helping to develop an institution's philosophy about teaching with technology in addition to helping individual faculty work through that philosophy.

    The DrRingDing's of the world, however, do not value your skills and knowledge. And while I suggested that you ignore them, it is possible that they will be at the table when discussing technology and pedagogy. If he/she wins the argument, you may not have your job anymore.

  • Dr RingDing
  • Posted by Brian Mulligan , Open Learning Coordinator at Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland. on June 7, 2010 at 9:00am EDT

  • Trust me, trust me! I'm a doctor!

  • the name says it all
  • Posted by Barbara Fister on June 7, 2010 at 9:00am EDT

  • I wouldn't take an arrogant comment seriously when its author hides behind a pseudonym. In fact, when I read that comment I wondered if it wasn't a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of an academic written by an instructional technologist who'd been treated dismissively once too often.

    What I love about your column is that you ask questions - genuine questions, which is the kind of intellectual curiosity about learning that all of us should have.

  • If You Can't Help, Leave
  • Posted by Eric Gates , Sr. Sales Consultant at ALEKS Corporation on June 7, 2010 at 1:00pm EDT

  • There is a part of the brain known as the Amygdala, which is part of our ancient, low, reptilian brain circuitry. It is a binary switch, and it is therefore either on or off; there is no in-between state.
    When a consultant (or Sr. Technology Strategist) approaches someone, his first job is to open that switch, because if it is closed, the consultant does not have access to the high part of professor RingDing’s brain, meaning the good Doctor is not even evaluating what he is saying. DrRingDing is instead in full fight or flight mode, and views the consultant (who presumably came to help!) as a threat to be killed (figuratively, these days) or escaped from.
    Until such time as the professor a) views the consultant as earnestly trying to help and b) has the time and the energy to engage in a long conversation around a few things, there is no point in having a conversation.

    The consultant needs to know:
    1) Is there any pain from which DrRingDing is trying to move away from? (Low student evaluations? Low performance? High D,F,and Waithdrawal rates, no seriousness of purpose among the students, grade grubbing, cheating, low attendance, etc…)
    2) Is there instead a positive outcome toward which DrRingDing would be trying to move?
    For both of the above, what would be the value over time of a change in the right direction? If it is ~zero, there is no need to continue. If it is very high (which is often the case in education!), we have a basis to continue the discussion around constraints (why haven’t you done this before if you knew it was an opportunity? Resources (Is there any money to do the things we would like to do?), and a few other things.
    Now, finally, we have the basis for a relationship that benefits all concerned: students, the institution, DrRingDing, and the consultant. If you can’t get here, you should not even waste your valuable time together.

    DrRingDing must not have any problems or see any opportunities that this particular person can help him with. They aren’t even at square one.

  • Missing Dr. RingDing's Point
  • Posted by George , Professor at University of South Carolina Upstate on June 7, 2010 at 3:00pm EDT

  • The commenters are missing DrRingDing's point that he perceives his syllabi as his own intellectual property, and thus distribution his own decision. Joshua's initial post started out saying "Every syllabus should be published, indexed, and freely available online.", which to my reading is someone telling faculty they must make their syllabi freely available. Although Joshua's current post says that no one should "tell" faculty what to do, that is how I read the initial statement about syllabi quoted above. You won't engage someone in a conversation by telling them what to do. In the current post Joshua asks readers how they would engage faculty. Instead, it appears several commenters zero in on denigrating DrRingDing. Go back and read DrRingDing's initial post, in which he develops his reasons why he feels his syllabi are his own property and publishing should be his own decision. You may disagree with his reasoning, but just because he disagrees with you doesn't make him wrong or anti-technologist.

  • response to George
  • Posted by Joshua Kim on June 7, 2010 at 5:30pm EDT

  • George...thanks for the comment. I just want to clarify what I wrote in the original post.

    To quote:

    "While I'm suggesting a set of common standards for online publishing of syllabi, I don't believe that these standards should be a top-down mandate. Rather, I think this change will come organically if we figure out a system to support and model this behavior for instructors."

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I believe this should be a choice. But I do believe that learning technologists do have a legitimate role in advocating for this platform, and in engaging faculty on the pros (and cons) of sharing their learning materials (including their syllabi).

    Thanks again for the comment....Josh

  • Posted by Kathy Atnip at Washington University in St. Louis on June 8, 2010 at 12:45pm EDT

  • I agree that the professor was responding to the apparent idea of surrendering his/her rights in the intellectual property of his/her course syllabus. The terms "freely," "public" or "public domain" (the second two are used elsewhere to make a similar case) suggest a loss of control. In my experience, it's the case with many faculty that they may be sharing materials in a course that pertain to their research, or a forthcoming article or book, and may have rights entanglements. In any case, there are arguments to be made against freely sharing one's syllabus.

    Each institution will likely have differing interpretations of these rights, i.e. who "owns" the rights to a course's material, while departments and individuals will have still other takes. Though there is no mandate at our institution for making all syllabi public, I suspect that this, like many other decisions about teaching, will continue to be left to the individual faculty member's discretion. I'm an instructional technologist and that seems correct to me.

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