Lisa’s CCK08 Edublog

how I learned to stop worrying and love CMap.

Actually, I don’t love it at all, especially the way it automatically puts in a link idea mid-arrow. But I am getting used to it. And I realize this isn’t really a concept map: it’s more of a chart with connecting links.

One thing about concept maps — I can’t have one for the whole course (due in November). Each set of ideas I’m making into its own map.

My own (so far small but global) network came into play with this one. After meeting in Webex with Steve Mackenzie and Maru del Campo on Sunday, I added the all caps words to the bottom of each column.

(Click on it to see it bigger — it’s too hard to read here!)

I do notice as I make these that the process is forcing me to see things differently. I have to find ways in which things connect, and if I “think” they do but they really don’t, I have to abandon the idea or clarify it. It reminds me of when I was writing big history papers and laid all the index cards out on the floor and moved them around (although, technologically, that was easier to do than this is).

I know, it was last week’s topic. But I didn’t really have a grasp of it before reading Steve’s post on Wednesday in the Moodle forum, and thus the article by Kop and Hill. And besides, it was Cmap.

One possibility that’s occurred to me this week is that we may be in transition from a world where knowledge is determined by a small group of university-trained elites to one where it is developed by small groups of attention-challenged and uneducated enthusiasts. This is worrisome.

When I first read Dave Cormier’s Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum upon its publication this summer, I was intrigued by the metaphor and saw that it helped provide a needed connection between connectivism and community. Now that I’ve done a great deal more reading on connectivism, and responded so negatively to some of its premises as portrayed by Barry Wellman, I have a much more pessimistic view, unless we limit Cormier’s arguments to new disciplines only. Even then, I’m concerned.

Iconoclasm concerning new disciplines is OK

Right up front Cormier seems to restrict his thesis to “new and developing fields”, and that’s exactly where it should stay. “Disciplines” such as educational technology are in the infant stages, and like infants have a great deal of exploring to do before they come into their own. New journals and blogs spring up overnight from people who are doing extraordinary things with the web in expanding educational opportunities and connecting in fascinating ways. M.A.s and Ed.D’s are popping up all over, with certain individuals and their ideas (Siemens, Downes, Cormier, Couros, etc.) rising to the top through both popularity and usefulness in today’s world. Their community is their curriculum, for sure. Their curriculum is based on recognizing, creating and sustaining community among others interested in a very fringe field dedicated to very large concepts. I love living in that community myself, but I am aware that it is new and trendy, and subject to its own changing norms. In last night’s Elluminate meeting, Cormier was fine with admitting his idea might not apply for all fields. When talking about the field of educational technology, it makes perfect sense to attack traditional authorities, identify rhizomatic models as “overtaking traditional models”, and see the “old notion of knowledge” as “frozen in time” with its gate-keeping publication restrictions. Publishing on the web is open, and the freedom is somewhat dizzying.

The problem with interpreting these ideas beyond ed tech

So dizzying that it’s tempting to apply Cormier’s approach to the rest of the disciplines. The assignment of his article as a reading in this class suggests that it should be interpreted more widely than just in new fields like educational technology. So does his occasional broad reference (he mentions websites that create collaborative “snapshots of the knowledge of a particular field”, but all those websites are about educational technology). If one applies his argument at a larger level than new fields, one comes to the conclusion that it is promoting rhizomatic, community-developed knowledge as the response to the speed of change in today’s world, the impossibilty of traditional verification through disciplinary experts, and the almost instant obsolesence of new understandings. No need to kill the gate-keepers; just go around them.

My discipline (history) is very old, even though many of its current methods are new. It is grounded in a tradition, however inconsistent, of the university elites who seem to be under attack in these theories that not only try to describe our changing world, but justify it. Cormier consistently attacks “canonical” sources of knowledge, and all traditional fields have a canon which is not quite as “fluid” as that of the new disciplines. But even with the new areas, frankly, if there is a “delay” that “could make the knowledge itself outdated by the time it is verified”, then it isn’t knowledge at all — it’s a fad. And if groups of voluntary participants “not only explore an established cannon but also…negotiate what qualifies as knowledge”, what’s to keep them from ignoring the canon all together? Nothing; the “rhizomatic knowledge-creation process is already overtaking traditional models”, curriculum itself is “constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process.”

My discipline of history needs expertise and reflection before it needs a network

Some history students are very “engaged” in the learning process. A certain number come to class as history enthusiasts. They’ve read a lot of sources and secondary popular books, and spend much time watching the History Channel. They are history buffs. Most cannot construct a historical thesis, much less prove it with evidence. Doing so is the heart of the elitist canonical system historians endure. Enthusiasm is great, but is it not knowledge and does not substitute for knowledge. As in many fields, one uses a pattern of data, to information, to understanding, to knowledge, which can then be applied beyond the discipline. Historians negotiate this understanding and this knowledge in those nasty peer-reviewed journals, where deep differences of opinion lead to reassessments, rexamination of facts, research, and the development of new paradigms arising out of conflict. History is not at all a static field, and its methods are a fairly consistent combination of scientific inference, externally verifiable sources, and the internal goals of the historian. It is not rapid, it is deliberate and requires reflection. As my colleague Ignatia notes in her blog, “reflection demands time”. Quality may not require time in the field of educational technology, but it does in history.

Networks can subsume expertise to inappropriate negotiation

Networks may or may not have any canonically trained “experts”, and if they do it’s possible that no one would listen to them anyway. Historians tend to be pretty boring, not usually the type of internet participants prone to flaming and attention-mongering. The buffs will be the ones verifying, negotiating, “testing” the ideas. Knowledge that is “tested” in a community of enthusiasts unfamiliar with traditional methods and canonical works that came before them is not tested at all. It is shared, collaborated, socialized, negotiated, patterned, and developed, but it isn’t knowledge. To say that a voluntarily networked group of enthusiasts create knowledge would be going beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt. It would be like doing history without historiography (the study of previous historians’ ideas over time). It might lead to an understanding of historical perspectives, but it could as easily lead to a consensus that extraterrestrial aliens built the pyramids. It’s already possible to use historical sources in a semi-scientific way to argue some bizarre things (FDR knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed ahead of time and didn’t tell, the Holocaust didn’t happen). Faulty analysis needs only a bit of encouragement (a Hollywood movie, an internet community, a title like “Institute of Historical Review”) to justify its existence. My discipline has enough problems without bringing in every idiot who saw “Troy” and thinks Achilles had a California accent. To point to the ed tech community, which is enthusiastically led by people who are the products of the very same closed educational system they seem to wish to tear down, and use it as an example of connectivism, is a false lead. Dave Cormier is, I think, aware of this. We must be very careful where we apply the theories of networking.

A side note: It really disturbs me that this class is making me look like Edmund Burke and others who argue that traditional foundations are important. I myself have continually tried to “work” the educational system; I don’t have a PhD for precisely the reasons of traditional, canonical gate-keeping that all these wonderful innovators are arguing against. I am one of the most technologically and web savvy individuals at my institution. The result is that I’m having an online identity crisis.

So far, the most practical element I’ve gotten from the reading is Downes’ idea that teaching is modeling and demonstration, and learning is practice and reflection. I have taken it so much to heart that it is changing how I do my job in my face-to-face classes.

Like many institutions, we have been under pressure to develop Student Learning Outcomes that can be assessed. As a great proponent of academic freedom, I have helped developed for my discipline some very broad outcomes that give each instructor the opportunity to assess similar skills while each using their own examples and tests. I am thus free to create my own evolving list, in addition to the formal SLOs, of things I think students should be able to do as a result of taking my history class.

I’ve begun a pattern of lecturing with slides every Monday, after they’ve done their homework. Their homework consists of reading a chapter from the text and writing a mini-essay with a clear thesis, supported by information implied by the list of chapter terms. This way they have to use the material, not just read it. Then I’ve been making the lecture available in audio also, which I hadn’t planned to do, but my little Phillips MP3 player, Zoho Show, and Slideshare has made it drop-dead simple.

But on Wednesdays, I find myself (yes, that’s really how it feels) doing other things that are more modeling and demonstrating. One of the skills is text glossing, and instead of explaining it, I photocopied a scene from Oedipus Rex onto a transparency, and sat at the overhead glossing it with their help. Here’s what we developed:

I’ve also handed out maps, have them try to place things on their own, then encourage them to compare what they’ve done with not only their book but with their colleagues, to consider their colleagues as sources of information. I’ve handed out a document, given them class time for reading and reflection, then had them take those ideas to their groups. My attitude is good, I have lots of energy doing all this, and the students seem to be responding, although I can tell the class is very difficult for some of them.

So although some of my posts may make me appear overly skeptical, I am learning a great deal that I’m applying right away, even within the context of our assessment-bound, expert-ruled, poorly connected, industrialized community college experience.