,
12 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
Seen an interesting divide in my Twitter feed to this story. Tech-skeptics (primarily faculty) tend to say "no duh, this thing was doomed." Admins and edtech folks admire the attempt at experimenting around increased access. insidehighered.com/digital-learni…
I'm much more inclined toward the skeptic crowd, but I take the point of the pro-experimenters. Universities should be exploring new avenues for teaching and learning. That's part of the mission.
The pro-experimenters point out, correctly, that these programs were low-risk for students enrolling in them. They weren't charging a bunch of up-front money for a potential positive outcome. Students only paid if they saw value in what they were asked to pay for after the fact.
But with these experiments, I always think of what's not being invested in if the institutions choose to invest in this. At ASU right now there are front line instructors with too many students who are also poorly paid. That problem is not being addressed.
ASU is in no way unique in that position, but I always wonder what the focus on innovation crowds out in terms of support for what's already happening. Funds are finite, and choices must be made. Are institutions considering all aspects of these choices?
I teach writing, where there is no technological innovation necessary to realize immediate improvement in the quality of teaching and learning. Reducing the load so no instructor has more than the recommended disciplinary maximum of students would be transformative.
Yesterday @dowellml and I were talking about how many conferences you can do in a day. The max for reasonable effectiveness is 15. 10-12 is more reasonable. For a huge # of instructors, doing individual conferences at 10-12 per day would take two weeks.
@dowellml Can't cancel two weeks of class to do individual 10-12 conferences per day, so you do 20-25 per day. The quality is inevitably compromised. Students get less attention than they need and deserve. This is utterly common, ubiquitous.
@dowellml Several years ago when ASU was unilaterally trying to increase the teaching load of their comp instructors an administrator called the maximum recommended teaching load a "luxury" the institution couldn't afford. This is the tension when investing in these initiatives.
@dowellml Acceptable teaching loads are unaffordable, but speculative swings at technological innovation are invested in. In my view, this makes the bar very high for that kind of investment, which is why I ultimately tend towards the skeptic side. All I see is what else could be happening
@dowellml It's also why I strongly advocate against tech that seeks to substitute for human labor by diminishing and degrading what it means to teach. Algorithms can score essays, but only if we draw a very tight ring around what an essay is and forget that feedback matters.
@dowellml Anyway. I appreciate the perspectives of those admins and tech people, but I hope they also appreciate the perspectives of people like me who don't have any access to the places and powers where these decisions are made.
