I'm Still Here: ETMOOC Weeks 3 and 4 and EDCMOOC Week 3

I'm calling this a placeholder post. My teaching has taken priority as the term begins to heat up, so I haven't been able to blog much about my #etmooc or #edcmooc reflections. I am still working through the material though, and equally important, keeping up with my blog reading. It's a momentary lurking interlude, and the material produced by these two learning communities is challenging, enlightening, and most importantly, inspiring. This brief post is my message in a cyber bottle to the members of these two communities: I'm still here, still reading, and still being inspired. So thanks! :)

Next week is Reading Week, so I hope to be more explicitly engaged -- and certainly more prolific in my blogging.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

William Gibson's "The Winter Market" and #EDCMOOC Week1

One of the blog prompts for this week asked us to reflect on utopian/dystopian representations of cyberculture on film.  After working my way through the recommended video clips and readings for the week, my thoughts are focused on a short story -- William Gibson's "The Winter Market."  The story was one of the first encounters I had with  an artifact that interrogated cyberculture and therefore, it holds an important place in my thinking about it.

The assigned artifacts for this week of EDCMOOC made me think of "The Winter Market" because each of the artifacts, as the title of this topic suggests, embraces either a utopian or dystopian view of technology and cyberculture.  Conversely,  Gibson, in my opinion, effectively negotiates the complexities of cyberculture in this short story.  On the one hand,  there are all sorts of troubling questions raised by Lise's "crossing over" into the net.  Most significantly the story asks, what happens to her humanity?  To her ability to relate to other people?  For Lise, what are the consequences of assuming a "pure" consciousness, free from the perceived interference of a broken, addicted, and insensate body?  Indeed, one of the central themes of this story is the failure of the human body in contrast to the limitless but disturbing potential for experience offered by technology. The story seems to offer rather bleak commentary in response.  On the other hand, the "real life" environment of the short story offers little comfort to its inhabitants, and a strong argument can be made that technology offers Lise the choice to exercise her own agency, whether her friend and "cyber lover," Casey, the narrator, fully supports or understands that choice or not.

The short story raises many of the themes addressed in this week's artifacts:  agency, consciousness, human interaction, humanity, even, though to a more subtle extent, the environmental repercussions of technology.  And yet, it offers no easy answers, no firm closure to say that yes, technology is an evil, or yes, technology promises the next utopia.  "Real" life, in this story, is not posed as superior to digital "life." As I was working through this week's artifacts, I continually stumbled on my own low-grade frustration at the persistence of these good/bad, real/unreal dichotomies, and the ways in which they seem to perpetually inform discussions about technology in general and educational technology specifically. The resolute messiness of Gibson's "Winter Market" is what makes this story stand out for me.  It suggests to me, that with digital technology, like other tools humans have developed (and worshipped, and denigrated) there are difficult complexities that must be addressed. Technology--any technology--does not exist outside the human context. There are proponents and detractors. There are pitfalls that must be mapped.  And there are positive applications that can make meaningful differences.

(Does my text-based analysis of a textual artifact mark me as a digital immigrant, I wonder?  Is the digital immigrant/digital native dualism even meaningful? This dichotomy, too, is one I need to consider in more detail.)

Questions about Rhizomatic Learning from a Connected Learning Convert: Reflections on #ETMOOC Week 3.

Week 3 of ETMOOC is complete, and once again, I am thrilled to find myself with some answers -- but equally as many questions.

I finally stole an hour to watch the archive of Dave Cormier's session on Rhizomatic Learning.  In the Q and A following the session, Dave talked about how responses to this theory tend to cluster in two camps:  those who aren't thrilled by it, and those who recognize their own beliefs and practice in it.  I definitely fall into the latter camp.   I recognize in this theory not only an approach to learning, but also a broader philosophy about how people can (and maybe should?) interact.  When Dave said he does not want to create a dependency between himself as teacher and his students as learners, it was a moment of recognition for me.  Having said that, however, I still have many questions, most of which probably stem from the fact that my academic background is not in Education. I am going to focus on two here for now.

Who Are the Ideal Learners in Rhizomatic Learning?
One of my current interests as an online facilitator, instructor, and perpetual learner is Adult Education, and especially, online learning and the adult learner.  I am working toward completing my CACE (Certificate in Continuing and Adult Education).  Because I see in my online classes increasing numbers of mature students, as well as undergraduates who I would characterize as non-traditional (i.e. young adults whose education competes with increasingly "adult" roles such as parenthood, employment, and/or caring for elderly or sick parents -- roles that necessarily influence emotional and intellectual development, in my opinion), I am interested in tailoring my teaching methods to address their different learning needs.  What kinds of strategies can I utilize that will allow me to balance the needs of the different types of learners in my classroom? Thus, the different characteristics of adult versus youth learners is a topic to which I keep returning. 

For other non-teacher educators, and for reference sake, here is a useful table that explains, in a very general way, the differences between  "adult" learners versus "youth" learners. In particular, after watching the archived version of Dave Cormier's session on Rhizomatic Learning, I have been thinking about the paradigm's ideal learners.  Is this paradigm better suited to some learners rather than others?  Although I am unsettled by the firm distinction between "adult" and "youth" learners, I still see some ways in which adult learners might be better suited to learn through this approach, and other ways in which youth learners might prove more successful rhizomatic learners.

For instance,  the literature suggests that adult learners are more successfully self-directed learners, which seems like a prerequisite for success in this approach.  However,  adult learners also prefer to be able to see the relevance of what they are learning to their own lives -- which may not be compatible with the focus in rhizomatic learning on learning "which has no answer" in Dave Cormier's words.  Conversely, while youth learners seem more dependent on their teachers, and are hesitant (perhaps developmentally unable?) to assume responsibility for their own learning, the entire premise of their learning is based on uncertainty -- they learn despite not necessarily knowing for what purpose their knowledge will serve.  

So, in keeping with the conversations that were occurring in the session I watched, I am left with the question: are some learners, at different developmental stages, better suited to this type of learning?  Which students are more likely to avoid the "mile wide inch deep" pitfall -- the solution to which, to me at least, seems to hinge on adequate learner motivation.   Or can the approach be modified appropriately to suit learners at different levels?

Can practices inspired by this learning theory coexist, within one course, with more traditional instructional practices?
My second question is a practical, though at this point, hypothetical one.  I'm imagining a hypothetical course in which there would be two organizational components:  1) a structured component in which I assume a more traditional instructional position, and provide a foundational space for students; and 2) a more open learning space, modelled on a cMOOC, informed by rhizomatic learning/connectivism.  In this open space, students will explore issues that are immediately relevant to them and their communities. Ideally, they will then return to the more structured space and share what they have learned from their own contexts.  As a class, ideally, we will begin to examine the individual experiences within disciplinary methodologies.  Is it possible, I wonder, for traditional teaching methods and poststructural teaching methods to co-exist in the same space? Are there potential pitfalls to this hypothetical design?