Category Archives: theory

Emerging Media and Communication at UT Dallas

Sunday, 23 August, 2009 – 4:32 pm

A new program in Emerging Media and Communication at UT Dallas looks very interesting.

The Emerging Media and Communication degree prepares the “communicators of the twenty-first century.” These new communicators will combine technological expertise with effective communication skills across a wide range of media, developing “new media literacy” in response to the digital revolution that has radically changed all aspects of human communication.

There are both undergrad and graduate majors within the program.

This syllabus from the an Introduction for Emerging Media course in the program seems much like one I’d like to create for teachers and instructional designers at the graduate level. Teachers and instructional designers are being increasingly being expected to understand the Internet and become content managers and publishers of new media. They are very rarely given any instruction about the Internet and how it functions. They occasionally get training or classes on LMSs like Moodle and Blackboard, but what they really need is a clear understanding of the entire medium, that Moodle and Blackboard are but a tiny bastardization of. The Internet is to today as the Gutenberg Press was to the middle ages… a marked shift in communications where society must change to accommodate this new method of communication.

David Parry, one of the professors in program wrote this piece on his blog talking about getting the class off the ground this year, which is worth a read. He notes,

[…]we are educating our students for a world that no longer exists instead of educating them for the world they will inherit. This strikes me as irresponsible.

A similar problem exists, as I see it, at the graduate level for teachers and instructional designers. They can take courses where they make a course in Moodle or an activity in Flash, but those are tools used today (mostly poorly)… by the time they get jobs in the field, the tech will have changed. Plus, so many of these courses use proprietary software, which, once it falls out of favor, those creation skills are almost useless, unless you have the underlying theory and literacies for the digital landscape of the Internet. They need to know what types tools are good for what tasks, and learn to make those types of critical analyses for themselves, so in a year or two when they have to decide how or why to deploy something, they’ll know how to make those choices.

By Brian Christiansen | Also posted in education, instruction, instructional design, teaching, technology | Comments

On Rothfork’s Review of Dreyfus’s On the Internet. (619)

Saturday, 7 June, 2008 – 6:09 pm

I must admit, I almost didn’t make it through John Rothfork’s Review of Hubert Dreyfus’s On the Internet.

I almost didn’t read far enough to note that the reviewer didn’t agree with Dreyfus. My immediate reaction is that someone (Dreyfus) had not spent any time actually in any online communities, and used his place of piety to lob stones at it. It would be the digital equivalent of renouncing some newly found culture in the Amazonian rain forest, without ever having spent time within the society.

I decided that I should probably finish reading the review.

Once I had done that, I figured I should do some more research, seeing that this book was written in 2001, which is approximately 70 years ago in Internet time (yes, it’s kind of like dog years). I found Dr Dreyfus’s homepage at Berkeley, and firstly found this Los Angeles Times article about Dr. Dreyfus’s podcasts being of the 20 most popular downloads on Apple’s iTunesU podcast directory. The Times story was a wonderful read, and I recommend it highly. I, too, have listed to a few lectures from there.

One of the articles main points is that people around the world, from all walks of life want to learn. Online education gives them capabilities that have never before existed so broadly or freely. I thought it a bit ironic that Dr. Dreyfus, who still stands by his 2001 work, nevertheless moved to a classroom with audio equipment to improve the recordings, of his own volition. From the article…

Dreyfus says the chance to disseminate ideas softens his reservations. And the e-mails he receives from the listening audience—”you podcast people,” he calls them during class—are touching.

To conclude, I still think Dr. Dreyfus’s assessment of communities on the Internet is critically lacking. I believe (without a lot of hard evidence to back me up) there’s a significant chance that the (at the time) 71-year-old Dreyfus read some philosophy books on artificial intelligence, communities on the Internet, then sat down with very little first hand experience with quality communities on the Internet and wrote his luddite screed against learning on the internet. Ironic, since he sees about 25% of his in-person class missing each class he holds in person, in a large lecture hall. It seems his own model is broke, as well.

“I’m pretty honored to take the class, but at the same time, when he does his lectures, it’s not like I’m there with Dreyfus the man,” Diaz said, referring to the impersonal feeling of sitting in a large lecture hall.

Quality communities can absolutely exist online. To say they do not is simply misinformed. It’s hard to say exactly what Dreyfus said from reading a book review alone. Did he mean communities cannot thrive, or they cannot thrive to the extent that they can be effective enough to promote learning at an advanced level? The bigger question I feel is, “Can quality online communities form quickly enough to be an effective environment for a limited-duration online class?”

By Brian Christiansen | Also posted in 619 Class Blog, community, learning | Comments

Michael Wesch’s Modern Teaching Techniques

Thursday, 25 October, 2007 – 12:00 pm

My first introduction to Michael Wesch was through a video posted on YouTube entitled “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” I wasn’t the only person introduced to him that day. What started as a video discussing digital communications with his colleagues, was within a few short days the most talked about video on the Internet, and has now been viewed literally millions of times.

I didn’t realize until later that Michael was a college professor. One who was really rethinking his role as a teacher. Many of Professor Wesch’s ideas meld neatly with the andragogy that we investigate in our Adult as Learner course.

This October, I was reintroduced to Wesch through another video which was making the rounds on the Internet. “A Vision of Students Today” was video made by Wesch with his introductory anthropology seminar, engaging the participation of his students. All couple hundred or so of them. Clearly, this was no traditional lecture class.


After viewing this latest video through the lens of a graduate program in instructional design, I determined I needed to discover a little more about Professor Wesch. With a little digging, I discovered a guest blog post of his at a blog called Savage Minds. “A Brief Philosophy of ‘Anti-Teaching’” is Wesch’s description of the techniques he is auditioning on his students at Kansas State University.

He found himself teaching two and four hundred students at a time. The only tools he was given was the tradition of college lecturing. And much of his audience was only there because the course fulfilled requirements for graduation. Many didn’t not know what “Anthropology” even was before stepping into the classroom. Student motivation was clearly low, and participation seemingly oppressed by the logistics of an en-masse classroom environment. Anyone brave enough to ask a question, would also have to be brave enough to ask it in front of 399 of their neighbors.

Wesch wanted to convey information about anthropology, yes, but more so, he wanted to create “active, lifelong learners, with critical thinking skills.” Critical thinking requires asking great questions, and answering great questions with more great questions.

Unfortunately such great questions are rarely asked by students, especially in large mandatory introductory courses. Much more common are administrative questions such as, “What do we need to know for this test?” This may be the worst question of all. It reflects the fact that for many (students and teachers alike), education is a relatively meaningless game of grades rather than an important and meaningful exploration of the world in which we live and co-create. I don’t think it is the student’s fault for asking this question. As teachers we have created and continue to maintain an education system that inevitably produces this question. If we accept Dewey’s notion that people learn what they do, the lecture format which is the mainstay of teaching (especially in large introductory courses) teaches students to sit in neat rows and to respect, believe, and defer to authority (the teacher). Tests often measure little more than how well they can recite what they have been told.

Clearly, this format is losing college-aged students’ interests, just as we see that non-participatory formats don’t motivate adult learners. To motivate the students, we find Wesch establishing inclusion and enhancing meaning with his techniques, a la Wlodkowski’s Motivational Framework. [Source, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults ( or Amazon link)]

But while the sheer numbers of students are a burden in one sense, there is also tremendous potential. Think of the knowledge and life experience that is in that single room, if only I could find a way to harness it! I wanted the students to be fully engaged, talking to one another, grappling with interesting questions, and exploring any and all resources to find answers (and more questions).

Wesch takes his position as “teacher” and converts it to a learning manager, aggregating information his class created and directing a product of their experience, the video “A Vision of Students Today”. He clearly takes what could be a bad situation, an enormous class with the potential loss of human connectivity, and made the best use of the situation. This inclusion makes all the difference.

Wesch cites Postman and Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity (or Amazon link) as a major influence of his, and I now have that high on my own reading list. The authors make the argument that teachers should concentrate on the learning environment they create at least as much as the content, or message, they have set out to express.

The classroom is the means, not the ends, of the information that circulates within it. So teaching to the test is a good idea… when you realize the test isn’t multiple choice, it’s life.

By Brian Christiansen | Also posted in classroom, community, instruction, learning, teaching, video | Comments

Andragogue as linker

Monday, 10 September, 2007 – 6:25 pm

In my first reading assignment on “The Adult as Learner,” I’m discovering andragogy. Andragogy is a term that compliments pedagogy. If pedagogy is “the art and science of teaching children,” then andragogy is “the art and science of teaching adults.”

It seems though, that the two terms represent more than simply what their Greek roots translate to. Pedagogy has been a term attached to a style of teaching which is more top-down, where the teacher is the focal point of classroom activities, dispensing the majority of information and guidance, as well as the gatekeeper of grades. If you went to public school in the United States during your formative years (or in most of the modern world, I would guess) you probably experienced this as your norm.

Andragogy is a different method where the teacher is not the focus. Malcom Knowles (no obvious relation to Beyoncé) gives us this definition of the andragogical method:

In contrast, the basic format of the andragogical model is a process design. The andragogical model assigns a dual role to the facilitator of learning (a title preferable over “teacher”): first and primarily, the role of designer and manager of processes or procedures that will facilitate the acquisition of content by the learners; and only secondarily, the role of content resource. The andragogical model assumes that there are many resources other than the teacher, including peers, individuals with specialized knowledge and skill in the community, a wide variety of material and media resources, and field experiences. One of the principal responsibilities of the andragogue is to know about all of these resources and to link learners with them.

That’s a lot to chew on in one paragraph. I experienced a shift from peda- to andra- in college to some degree and I think that may be a large factor in my greater enjoyment of college. But let’s take a look at a few things. See my added emphasis in the same paragraph below.

In contrast, the basic format of the andragogical model is a process design. The andragogical model assigns a dual role to the facilitator of learning (a title preferable over “teacher”): first and primarily, the role of designer and manager of processes or procedures that will facilitate the acquisition of content by the learners; and only secondarily, the role of content resource. The andragogical model assumes that there are many resources other than the teacher, including peers, individuals with specialized knowledge and skill in the community, a wide variety of material and media resources, and field experiences. One of the principal responsibilities of the andragogue is to know about all of these resources and to link learners with them.

Step back and ask yourself, especially with those items emphasized, what does that sound like? To me, that screams “the Internet.” But specifically, it says “social media” and blogs and bloggers specifically meet a heck of a lot of those criteria. Many bloggers who focus on a topic may not be the world’s preeminent voice in their interest, but they can tell you who the authorities are, link to them and compare and contrast the information that can be gleaned from these sources. I learn so much from blogs, it’s almost embarrassing. I find Wikipedia also functions in the same way. Linking makes the web go ’round.

However, there’s one nugget to squabble over here: authority. Anyone can have a blog or edit Wikipedia. You need to verify your resources before trusting them. Most books and peer-reivewed journals are just that: peer-reviewed. Luckily, through the wisdom of crowds if you can see that many in the interest community you’re exploring respect your resource, it is probably a safe bet. It’s easy to tell: who is your source linking to, and who links to your source? Of course, this wouldn’t apply to new or yet undiscovered resources, so these would need to be treated with some sort of intellectual probation.

I think this underscores the sheer power of the web as a learning tool (if this was ever in any doubt) and has certainly helped reassure me that I am personally on the right track pursuing this masters in instructional design.

[Quote source: Andragogy in Action by Malcolm Knowles, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.]

By Brian Christiansen | Also posted in design, instructional design | Comments