There were over thirty of us gathered that windy clear day north of the Denver-Metro Area. It was my first time seeing my faculty advisor face-to-face, my first day meeting most of those in attendance, and the first brick-and-mortar academic lecture I had attended in over ten years. I was nervous. I wanted to make a good impression but I had already become aware of my tendency to monopolize discussions. As one who often over-intellectualizes issues my mind oft tends to run off without me! When the primary delivery method of the course was unveiled I was relieved. The great thing about conducting discussion on-line is that you have the option of pausing to reflect before hitting “send!”
The assignment seemed simple enough. Over the course of the term we were to post entries to any of five initial and, later, an additional four blogs topics. The topics touched on nearly every aspect of the contemporary discourse in American Higher Education. There was a great deal of dissensus about whether the medium was an effective one for delivery. As I mentioned, I had not been in a brick-and-mortar program for some time. I had, however, been consistently in both a professional education environment and in academe via distance learning. My Bachelor’s degree had been entirely on-line (most of it I accomplished while deployed to a hostile fire zone in Iraq) and my Master’s degree as well, which allowed me to study while abroad. While many of my colleagues were trepidatious over the medium chosen for delivery, I felt very much in my element. I knew the value-proposition of on-line delivery was sound from my own first-hand experience. I felt that, not only was the discussion enriched by the reflection the medium permits, but it was also allowed for a greater breadth in the conversation as different experiences from individuals geographically separated from each other could be brought to bear in a single, cohesive – and reviewable – dialog. The brick-and-mortar environment often lacks the latter by comparison – the dialog can be captured, analyzed and – effectively - “mined” for every insight it can offer. This is learning optimized!
My background is information systems and performance management in an organizational environment. The perspective I brought to the discussion forums (as we agreed they would not be made public this is as fair a term for the blogs) was heavily emphatic on systems-thinking a la Peter Senge (…or such was my intention…). I always felt my writing was at its best when I was bridging structural-functional and rhetorical “white-space.” While some of the blogs were a bit rushed (as would be expected) there were a few which I was particularly proud to have written.
HIGHLIGHTS
In the discussion about International Higher Education, I raised a question regarding the increased emphasis on recruiting international students. I – essentially – questioned (after reflecting on some issues raised by Dr. H. Giroux of Penn State) that a latent function of recruiting said students is that they will be inculcated with a perspective that is sympathetic to American conduct, specifically in industry. I was pleased with this post because the question was just so far-out. It is an aspect of the discussion that I had not seen considered. These are the questions I like to ask – even if they are completely (or seemingly) out of nowhere precisely because they evoke a reaction without relying on a “shock factor.”
A second post which I felt was exactly on the money – both pertinent and relevant to the discourse was on the topic of Technology in Higher Education. The inspiration was drawn from an article regarding the notorious U.S. News and World Report college rankings. The buzz was that the ubiquitous list was going to include a ranking on on-line learning. The typical questions raised when college rankings enter the dialog are varied derivatives of “Well, what, - exactly – is student success?” But in this case there was another question that needed to be addressed, “What – exactly – is ‘on-line’ learning?” From my experience with on-line delivery I was able to de-generalize on-line learning into a few separate but distinct categories, remarking that each has its benefits and drawbacks and refocusing the discussion on understanding institutional culture in order to make informed decisions about exactly which technology is the best fit for a given institution. The need to understand how technology reflects, impacts, and (in many cases) is diminished by culture is important and, I believe, completely alien to decision-makers in higher ed. All of my writing on this topic focused on - or at least subtly circled back around to - this critical planning issue.
The piece which I was most proud of also incorporated culture and climate (essentially “change”) but had very little to do with technology in higher ed. One of the late arriving topics was Protest and Conflict and, naturally, the Occupy Movement featured frequently in this discussion. In one particular blog entry I wrote here I discussed the rather trivial fact that some in the movement were starting to wear merch from one of my favorite films, the mask of the character “V” in “V for Vendetta.” For this piece I explained the significance of the mask – both in the context of the film and in the context of the medium which inspired it – Japanese Noh theater. This posting allowed me to bring to bear not only my formal education and professional training in organizational change management but also a number of my personal passions and interests. I received very positive mention from a few of my colleagues on this posting. It also assembled, perhaps, more seemingly unrelated pieces of the puzzle than any other single submission making it the posting I enjoyed writing the most.
EXPERIENCE
The blogging experience for this class, though often plagued by technical difficulties (I believe I isolated this down to the security settings on my company laptop – something I cannot change without hacking the administrative rights – something that I think would be ill-advised) was, overall, very rewarding. As I mentioned above, I over-intellectualize and over-analyze practically everything in life and often draw abstractions which – while inspired by discussion – are not always related to the particular segment of the discussion at hand. Because of this there were many lost opportunities in the weekend lecture and discussion sessions which were held throughout the semester. Being already aware of having stepped on a few toes during group conversations I was particularly prone to biting my tongue. There were also a number of times during which I felt awkward about what I wanted to say – uncomfortable in saying it – because of the ideological balance of the group which was, at times, diatonically opposed to my own. (There are also times I enjoy playing the devil’s advocate – right or wrong - simply for the sake of inspiring new reactions to the issues which, in turn, generate new questions about them.) Being able to reflect and comment at my leisure and from the safety of my own space, the forums allowed me to add my voice to the dialog in an informed and sometimes oppositional manner – the latter often to surprisingly positive response I certainly would add! I believe the format allows us to strip away the emotional layers of an issue and surface our own assumptions about it, thereby cultivating more informed judgments. The experience was, for me, very democratic as well. In a time-delayed format each voice can be heard – instead of the loudest or, as is sometimes the case with mine, most meandering and monopolizing one! I was very grateful for the opportunity to engage these issues in this way. While we, as professionals in our field, need to be able to speak intelligently on-the-fly about the issues faced in ours’ and others’ professions, I did not have the prior context to contribute as poignantly as some others around the table. This medium, I feel, allowed me not only to do that but also to develop my own baseline for understanding of the dialog.
LESSONS LEARNED
It seemed each week new takes on the same old issues were surfacing in our discussion. This was an amazing opportunity for enriched learning. I sincerely hope we will continue to have access to these blogs because I feel there is still much to be gleaned from reviewing them – for all of us! For myself there were a few key areas to which I always directed my attention.
Any time technology arose, obviously, I wanted to see how my peers in the class understood its role in today’s academy. What I found was that, my knowledge on the matter – which I always take for granted – exceeds that of several of my peers and those writing in the field. Granted, I may not understand banner very well (who does?) but I do understand the ramifications of not being informed both about the climate of implementation and the platform or solution being implemented (did I mention Banner?). We are often told to assume your audience knows nothing about your topic but I think the lesson in this for all of us is to never assume that what we know is of no use to our peers. Another great example of this is in administrative and procedural issues – which I know nothing about the specifics of in higher education! I understand the dynamics of culture and I know plenty about organizational development – but my knowledge about OD in Higher Ed is abysmal! Fortunately for me a number of my esteemed colleagues are administrators in some capacity or another and their contributions to the discussion were both humbling and invaluable to me! While I may not have always responded to entries which took up the banner of administration in American higher education I believe I read almost all of them and those which I could make sense of in my ignorance on the matter were an amazing benefit to my context.
Finally, any discussion of culture in higher education (which, it could be argued, they all were in some way – depending on one’s understanding of culture) was both fascinating and quite enjoyable to me. As I said, I have some small level of general knowledge about culture and how it plays out, but to be given the pieces which constructed a field-specific lens for this knowledge-base was absolutely one of the single greatest value-propositions of this activity.
The issues raised by each topic and the myriad of manifestations and perspectives in and with which they were each developed was nothing short of revelatory to me. In a sense there was an affirmation which emerged by being able to review and reflect upon the topics. I had sincerely believed that what I had learned up until now was not wasted and was, in fact, a great benefit to my pursuit of this program. It was this belief that often kept me going when I considered dropping out of the program (as happened at one or two particularly stressful times during the semester). This belief was more affirmed through this activity than any other of the semester. We often wonder at how technology might negatively impact a sense of community and companionship and, certainly, it has accelerated the speed of communication leaving little room for reflection and resulting in a loss of richness in it. If leveraged properly, as it was in this case, technology can maintain the speed of dialog – but at the same time capture it to be mined for new insights and allowing reflection to temper conversation. This was the single most defining factor of this experience.
Regards to All,
David Dorr
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