So now that the #dLRN15 conference is over, its time for the post-conference reflections to begin. As one of the organizers, I wanted to say a heartfelt “thank you” to everyone that presented, spoke, moderated, slacked, tweeted, blogged, organized, commented, questioned, thought, and attended. I was legitimately concerned over whether or not this conference would “click” with those that attended. But it seems from the tweets, slacks and blog posts that many things did click at some very deep levels.
One thing (out of many) that really stuck out to me was how the word “disruption” seemed almost completely absent from any conversation. While the concept of disruption has been incredibly popular recently, many have rejected the idea from the beginning. Education can’t really be disrupted because it has always been changing (even if too slowly for many). Even if education could be disrupted, would we really want it to be? Disruption can’t be predicted or really even controlled, while typically producing inferior products. For example, mp3s are compressed audio files that produce lesser quality audio experiences when compared to CDs – and you usually don’t even get liner notes. Had there been any ability to control the mp3 disruption, we could have at least utilized lossless technology (like FLAC) and kept the liner notes. Society has mostly accepted an inferior technology audio because of disruption.
To me, a more effective discussion focuses on the change agents that have affected education in small and large ways. Technology is an educational change agent; online education is a change agent; political agendas are change agents. Change agents – while possibly moving at a slower pace – have a greater potential to be influenced and directed for good or bad (or both) than disruption does.
One change agent that we can and should push and influence is the humanization of education, more specifically the designs and technologies we utilize to educate people. This was one of the major themes at #dlrn15: how do we rediscover the people at the center of everything we do in education? My firm belief is that all of our work, policies, discussions, and technology needs to be re-framed with people at the center.
Take my presentations, for example. On the surface, many call the dual-layer model a “MOOC innovation.” Before the conference, I looked at it more as an “instructional design innovation.” And I still do, but I need to start highlighting more that it was not an innovation for innovation sake. The goal of the dual-layer model is to humanize education by creating a practical design for individualized learning. The dual-layer model is an attempt to teach learners how to learn, so that they will realize the epistemological, ontological, even political ideals inherent in all tools (and therefore choose which one to use at any given time accordingly). This power shift is one of many ways to place people at the center of education rather than technology.
Or take larger issues, for another example. We are beginning to understand that where you are born will determine whether you even get to go to college more than any other factor. We tend to look at this as problem to be solved just because it sounds bad. But we need to reframe this as a human problem, by realizing the de-humanizing affect that these statistics have on the people most affected by them. Our tendency is to focus on solving the problem for the sake of solving the problem: those that are least likely to attend college hear that they probably won’t make it into college just because they were born into a lower socio-economic level and won’t even try. However, our focus should not be on solving a problem, because our tendency will be to come up with a one-size-fits all solution based heavily on our own context. Complex problems often involve multiple solutions from many different contexts. We need to re-frame these issues to focus on the people at the center of them, so that we can find solutions that work in their actual, human, real-world context. As Maha Bali put it in our ontology panel, standing on the shoulders of giants doesn’t work for her because those giants were not in her context.
Humanize all people, all issues, all change agents, all technology. All of it. All of them.
The other #dLRN15 theme that resonated most with me is listening to students. Education tends to de-humanize our students by classifying them based on how we think they should be classified. As the “experts,” we sort them out based on our classifications and then tell them what they need the most from us. There is value in that to some degree. But why not let the learners sort themselves out, and then offer our services as guides, mentors, fellow pilgrims on the path to “education”? Where are we creating spaces for them to ask hard questions, fail, get back up, learn outside the curriculum, pick apart a tangent, speak for themselves… in other words, be academics rather than our projects?
Oh yeah – we don’t really let many academics be academics any more. Maybe we should look at this from all levels. Admins: humanize all of your faculty and staff, and let them sort themselves out. Admin, instructors, and instructional designers: humanize all of your learners, and let them sort themselves out. And you could also say: students: humanize all of your instructors, and let them sort themselves out.
Matt is currently an Instructional Designer II at Orbis Education and a Part-Time Instructor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Previously he worked as a Learning Innovation Researcher with the UT Arlington LINK Research Lab. His work focuses on learning theory, Heutagogy, and learner agency. Matt holds a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas, a Master of Education in Educational Technology from UT Brownsville, and a Bachelors of Science in Education from Baylor University. His research interests include instructional design, learning pathways, sociocultural theory, heutagogy, virtual reality, and open networked learning. He has a background in instructional design and teaching at both the secondary and university levels and has been an active blogger and conference presenter. He also enjoys networking and collaborative efforts involving faculty, students, administration, and anyone involved in the education process.
It may be too soon to call the conference transformative (not to mention word abuse — looking for another), but my feeling now on a personal level is that it could be. The experience from just virtual participation gave me the same frisson of discovery as the first online course I created and taught in 1998 and my first connnectivist moocs
and here I thought you were going to talk about the “you’re gonna make me cry” part ;) Instead, it seems that standing on shoulders of giants resonated with ppl big time :) I am glad. Something I guess my own “difference” adds to the conversation.
Btw, I hate that term “humanize”. People are already human. Asking people to humanize their discourse, not to humanize ppl. Gonna tweet that
I agree that I hate the term humanize, but unfortunately that is the legacy of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and even techno-solutionism: too many people stop looking at parts of their system (students, instructors, admins, etc) as fully human. If you tell them to humanize their discourse, they will feel they already have. That’s probably one of the biggest problems with humanizing the discourse: people have buried their dehumanizing attitudes so well that they don’t even see how they are doing it because they feel their discourse is already humanized. We see this a lot in Texas where the the ultra conservative racists think they are the ones that truly aren’t racist because they are the only ones wanting to speak the “truth” (silly things like people of color are lazy and want to get arrested and junk like that).