[Xmca-l] Re: A new-ish learning platform that may be a way to save adjuncts?

Fri Mar 23 12:01:56 PDT 2018

Hi Alfredo! And salutations to all,

Greg's post reminded me of his interest in Miles Horton:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Horton

Here you have someone who just did it. This school experiment seems to have turned out an MLK and a Rosa Parks to name a few great movers and shakers of American culture.

Given that the Internet is just one giant distribution point of textual material and almost anyone can publish on it, the problems it generates is editorial curation. People who unite around a fire of one website, or one listserv, or one discussion board, these add and take value accordingly. This listserv is one mighty example of commanding the respect of its own institutional staying power.

If we are talking about teaching and learning, then I imagine we want to distinguish ourselves from those who say they offer quality learning, but are actually just selling student loans to keep individuals who want to learn, who are curious, who want to better themselves, strapped to the chain of debt. Debt has a way of killing the mother of invention. Professors are not really exposed to the realities of student debt unless they were a student who took out loans. Or they hear about it anecdotally. But it's not typically a life experience they live in the same way as the student who carries debt because of a promise "You will get an education, and you will be a better person, a better citizen, and you will incidentally increase your earning power).

Professors in established universities do not have to dirty their hands with the chores of collecting tuition, or other tasks of administration, they just teach. That's the ideal, but what teacher hasn't had to bridge the gap to do what had to be done next so a class of students would come together and teaching could take place?

How much does it matter that we adhere to particular sets of rules, or theories, if we can show that learning can happen? Isn't this just a way to give credit to say, "This is bona fide learning," vs. "This is not bona fide learning."

We often evaluate the quality of something based upon its context, or its affiliations. What peers say about a teacher and her work.

We also evaluate on expectations well met, that people do what they promise to do. Teachers and students.

That relationship must be there before quality learning can happen.

What a great teacher offers is a series of clear expectations and delivery. What will someone learn during the time spent in the classroom? What kinds of experiences will be provided that will enrich and transform? Such as interacting with other students and enjoying the diversity they bring. In a sense, this is a feature, not a bug, of learning in a classroom, that is, to make acquaintance with others who could become lifelong associates in a life of practice.

If the fee for being a part of the class is not prohibitively expensive, let's say $1.00 to attend the class, is it possible that it is no longer a class being consumed, but a teacher being supported to continue teaching?

What makes teaching class a product? And what makes it an experience?

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2018 11:27:23 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: A new-ish learning platform that may be a way to save adjuncts?

Thanks for posing those questions and inviting everyone to share visions, Annalisa.

Mine will sound like a cliché to many here, familiar to the sort of discourse that emerged around situative learning theories on learning as apprenticeship... But, that vision of research institutes as handcraft workshops, where more and less experienced apprentices participate together in doing a form of craft, is my vision. I am a newbie teacher and all my efforts go into thinking, "how can I make this lecture/class/seminar be a workshop useful for producing the sort of things I am producing?" I find this approach useful for three interconnected reasons: (1) it forces me to make the product of my craft, of my research activities, and therefore also the procedures, relevant not only to myself or academic journal readership. If whatever I am producing with my research is not relevant for the students, if it cannot be something that would engage 30+ people and make them want to learn the skills to come out with similar types of products, then probably I should reconsider my object of
 study/teaching. (2) it overcomes the commodification issue that has been discussed; for it is the craftmanship and skill what is offered, and that is not somehting that can be sold for "consumed", it is rather what sets production-consumption systems  it is something that needs to be cultivated and that therefore generates culture. (3) Finally, I think that when you do (1) and (2) properly, then your research craftmanship, the practice you are setting up, cannot stay self-contained but needs to be some hybrid form of scholar and non-scholar work. Here in Reykjavik, for example, they run this platform-centre for supporting and investigating ICT and teaching that is hybrid in two senses: (i) first involving a digital forum as well as a set of physical meeting places in which teachers come to share, discuss, challenge, try out, teaching ideas, issues etc. and then (ii) hybrid because it is not teaching practice itself, nor is it scholar practice itself. It is not the scholars who organ
 ize the meetings, but the teachers, who actually come to the university not to get a degree, not even to get better at what they do, but rather to get better things done. That is a nice vision, I think.

Alfredo Jornet
________________________________
New article in *Design Studies* "Imagining Design: Transitive and intransitive dimensions"
Free print available: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1WhHg_,KmyN6Dr

________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: 23 March 2018 17:23
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: A new-ish learning platform that may be a way to save adjuncts?

Thanks Greg and Anna, and salutations to others,

Thanks so much for the discussion.

I agree that one of the unattended issues is not about how much money one could make doing one's own courses. They spend a lot of time on the idea of raining money in that promotion video. But try to look past that. (And yes, commodification of anything tends to suck the valuable essence out of things).

We have the world we are given and we must try to transform it with the soil and seeds that we have here. Let's not wait for Godot.

Why not start an accreditation association, something like TrustE does for vetting responsible websites. If you have been accredited, then it can attest for quality. Certainly this isn't far from the peer review model.

To speak to Greg's skeptic, there is already a form of this market pressure and commodification of "sexy" courses in universities, in terms of any course offering and getting enough students to sign up. If you don't have enough that sign up, the university cancels the class, which puts professors in a bind with teaching requirements. That dynamic is already there.

But if a professor had a core class that contained lessons that don't need updating all that much, that frees up a lot of time that the professor can spend working more closely with students, one-on-one, because the time to organize  and produce coursework has been negotiated  and processed already. This seems to be a more personable way of teaching, where the website platform is just another kind of book that the professor teaches from.

Just like GCAS is creating a collective of educators all over the world, professors can travel and teach anywhere and as more time goes one, the itinerant sage can meet all sorts of diverse students, and other teachers in conferences, who have come to appreciate what they offer in the learning traditions. Conferences are already an established academic forum.

I don't really understand the contract labor argument because that is already happening with adjuncts in established universities, and we already know what is wrong about that. I don't think academics write books because they are contracting their labor for constructing interesting and entertaining sentences.

But there is nothing keeping people from creating collectives and establishing their own associations and promoting themselves as a school of thought coming from a particular lineage or tradition of learning. These alternatives are just not associated with a brick and mortar institution.

These are some imaginings.

What do you think? If you could prefigure your desired educational forum, what would that look like? If you could have your own research institute,  and study what you wanted, what would that look like?

You must have many many ideas!

How about we hear about that? I'd love to know what they are. I'm sure there can be really exciting conversations on that topic alone.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2018 5:22:14 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: A new-ish learning platform that may be a way to save adjuncts?

Annalisa,
I have two thoughts, the supportive and the skeptic:

1. The supportive: If you feel confident that great things can be done with
this, then go out and do it! Be the change and all that. (I would add that
self-publishing a textbook, e.g. as a pdf that you sell for $30 or so, can
be another way to gain an income from even a free online course - if you
can get 100 students each time you teach a course and they all have to buy
your textbook, then that's $3,000).

2. The skeptic: My caution would be that this is still caught up in
neoliberalism and perhaps the worst form of it - the contract laborer
selling their wares. This means that you are subject to the whims and
interests of the student-as-consumer. The precarity of this arrangement is
one thing, but the real trouble is that the student-as-consumer's desires
are what drives education. That means that adjuncts teaching programming
will probably do a lot better than adjuncts teaching Vygotsky. But that
seems like an empirical question, so prove me wrong!

Both points seem to come down to: discover what can be done and we will be
convinced (and note that this is coming from naysayers who are implicated
in the system that is being disrupted by these new technologies, so perhaps
the worst people to talk to about such an idea!).

-greg

On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 12:54 AM, Anna Chronaki <chronaki@uth.gr> wrote:

> Thank you Annalisa!
>
> This seems like a serious grassroots movement, but one that, nevertheless,
> uses again the intellectuals and their ‘power’ to do things with us all and
> mainly with students.
>
> As you say, these all initiatives cannot be ignored, but a closer analysis
> seems necessary. Do they actually emancipate people? Or, do they work
> within the circle of neoliberal and market related practices of need today?
>
> For example, when one sees that a Deleuzian interactive seminar costs 50
> Euros or dollars, why then to bother buying a book or turn to study a
> theory?… the whole story of knowledge and studying changes here… and, to my
> view, it starts becoming more and more vividly and visually insignificant
> commodity compared to other more serious demands in our lives.
>
> all the best and thank you again!
> Anna
>
>
>
> > On 23 Mar 2018, at 06:31, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Hello skeptics and venerable others,
> >
> >
> > Advocating for ignorance is one thing, but let's not get up on our high
> horses, shall we?
> >
> >
> > It is really easy for people to dismiss changing paradigms, and then the
> tide comes in and increases to a depth where one is caught unawares. I
> would say this is the moment you might be paying attention and watching
> what is happening and make your own connections. This is the only reason I
> made the post.
> >
> >
> > Namely: make your own connections. Play with the tools, see what they
> can and cannot do. Study them. Improve them. Discuss their merits and their
> shortcomings. But be involved!
> >
> >
> > Thomas Edison once thought that motion pictures would end the
> traditional forms of teaching and instruction, and he ended up being wrong,
> but there is something that enriched learning by having media like film
> available to classroom instruction. Or just being exposed to worldviews
> through the eyes of another.
> >
> >
> > If you do not mind, I would push back to the push back that we actually
> do know how to make learning happen on these platforms, and we are learning
> what works and what doesn't. People have been doing that for a long while
> now. It's likely different. I never said it was the same or better. I don't
> need a degree to sort out that this isn't the same as a core
> college-lecture-hall-delivered course, or a tutorial with a one-on-on
> tutor, or anything on that spectrum.
> >
> >
> > I do not see it replacing classroom teaching, like Edison did; I see it
> as *different*. That's all. Offering learning in a different package. There
> is no one way of learning.
> >
> >
> > Here's the thing: For real niche classes it's possible to create
> innovative coursework because the constraints are simply not there.
> >
> >
> > (For example check out GCAS)
> >
> > see: <https://thegcas.org/> https://thegcas.org/welcome
> >
> >
> > They have Alain Bardieu as their university president.
> >
> > https://thegcas.org/alain-badiou
> >
> >
> > The founder is Creston Davis:
> >
> > https://thegcas.org/creston-davis
> >
> >
> > This online university is a very intriguing innovation because they are
> starting centers all over the world. The online presence is a way of
> connecting them together.
> >
> > They have also begun a new concept called a blockchain university:
> >
> > "GCAS is forming a Blockchain University in Ireland so students can earn
> money pursuing their degrees and when they graduate they become co-owners."
> >
> >
> > These are great ideas! Will they work? I don't know. But can't you
> admire these innovators for trying to get out from under the neoliberal
> yoke that has dominated so many universities?
> >
> >
> > I want to make clear that I'm not saying this is the ultimate
> bread-slicer. I'm saying here is evidence of people putting their careers
> on the line and making something happen, and trying to do something else
> for the very reason they are upset with where university education is going.
> >
> >
> > Will it work? How should I know. Typically in evolutionary processes,
> experimentation and imagination are critical to moving forward and enabling
> new paradigms to develop. What is wrong with that?
> >
> >
> > Study the experiment and make it better.
> >
> >
> > Just because Open Source MOOCs show a hokey rendition of online learning
> doesn't mean online learning does not work and should be totally dismissed.
> I'm really surprise to hear so much skepticism.
> >
> >
> > I do agree that the marketing is silly (particularly with the idea of an
> business entrepreneur living on a yacht in the carribean! That is just dumb
> marketing from a low-imagination vantage point). Don't get so caught in
> those details. Try to consider the implications. Or don't.
> >
> >
> > The idea is this: This absolutely can be a way for an educator to be
> innovative and fund one's own research using existing know-how and
> expertise in teaching. If course material is created with video lectures,
> homework, and quizzes, the learning involved can ultimately reach many
> people all over the world. No traditional university has ever been able to
> do that.
> >
> >
> > Once a curriculum is created, that can be online in perpetuity, and
> people can purchase the access to the course as long as it is current. Or
> it can be distributed free, or with a request for a donation to pay what
> you want to pay.
> >
> >
> > Imagine if Vygotsky had done effective online learning using his
> theories, and we could access his original lectures 100 years after he is
> gone. Imagine that the rights to the material could continue to his estate
> or to the public. It certainly couldn't have been banned.
> >
> >
> > The point is there are better choices today (than say 10 years ago) and
> a wider distribution when it comes to online learning.
> >
> >
> > The problem with most online platforms is that the designers and
> programmers typically do not confer with instructors, tutors, or teachers,
> when they design the platform software. From what I have seen, Blackboard
> being the absolute worst, Academy of Mine is effectively removing the
> complexity of putting courses online and providing instructors a revenue
> stream. I'm still learning about it, but it's actually pretty good. It is
> effectively cutting out fat-cat administrators and the university's demands
> for a lion's share of research funds or other forms of financial support.
> >
> >
> > What if you all could be funded by your students tuition directly to do
> the research that you wanted? And your findings could be produced as online
> lectures that go directly to the public at large? It starts a virtuous
> cycle upwards. It's a different form of publishing your work.
> >
> >
> > Would you want to be an independent researcher? Or do you need to have
> the security blanket of an established university who will not allow you to
> teach the topics you want in the way you want to teach them?
> >
> >
> > There are 7.6 billion people on the planet, and they say half of them
> are on the Internet. That's 3.8 billion. What if you had an audience of
> 200,000 for your well-produced online course? If they paid you $1.00 that
> would be $200K going to you, with a small percentage of that going to your
> production costs, and payment acquisition. Even if 25% went to that, that's
> still $175K to you, far better than the typical university salary. And this
> is just for one class.
> >
> >
> > Isn't THE POINT of tenure track positions to ensure academic freedom?
> Tenured positions are disappearing, they likely aren't coming back. I am
> sad about this, but what can be done if the paradigm is dying? Universities
> are replacing tenure track professorships with adjuncts, didn't you know?
> >
> >
> > This possibility might just be a way to push back, by just doing your
> own school, or an academy of yours. Just like you would write your own
> book. What if you could design your own curriculums, isn't that the freedom
> that you want? What would that look like?
> >
> >
> > With regards to an LMS vs learning. I didn't say that the LMS was
> learning. It's just a publishing tool, and it's up to the educators to find
> a way to use them. What is wrong about that?
> >
> >
> > That's like saying a book isn't learning. Who doesn't know that? And a
> big book isn't more learning than a small one. The book is simply a tool
> for distribution and the book is one component used to aid in learning. Why
> can't the same be said for an LMS? Why couldn't it be a way that makes it
> easy for instructors to ensure payment for their hard work? Like publishing
> a book?
> >
> >
> > I'm not really surprised by the negativity. I am surprised by the lack
> of imagination.
> >
> >
> > Put your thinking caps on!
> >
> >
> > How could this actually work and be rewarding for all involved? You
> can't tell me there is no way?
> >
> >
> > Is that what you are saying?
> >
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> >
> > Annalisa
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Greg Mcverry <jgregmcverry@gmail.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2018 9:21:14 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: A new-ish learning platform that may be a way to
> save adjuncts?
> >
> > Advocating for ignorance always seems to be a strange position to take.
> > Though it is a position those in power have often adopted through out
> > history.
> >
> > I would also push back that we have no idea how to to make learning
> happen
> > in these environments. What we might say is we have no way how to make
> > learning happen in these ways that is both scalable and profitable with
> > hockey stick growth.
> >
> > There are many folks in Open Source communities who have long created
> > classes nothing like MOOCs. What is StackOverflow but a large (and
> > sometimes rude) learning community? Cormier's #Rhizo classes, #DS106,
> > #walkmyworld are all small scale classes in the education and art spaces
> > that have been researched (though more comparative case studies and
> > autoenthographies).
> >
> > I also think we need to stop the false distinction between our offline
> and
> > offline learning environments. I think part of the reason hybrid learning
> > comes out favorably in meta-analysis isn't just because of the role of
> the
> > instructor but the computer aided yet tactile environment is an
> interesting
> > artifacts of tools.
> >
> > Finally the only way an app would help adjuncts would be if it had two
> > buttons, "Pay me a living wage" and "create a "Tenure Track Position"
> >
> > On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 2:44 PM Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Annalisa and all others interested,
> >>
> >> Thanks for the link to the video, but I have to say it is pretty
> >> problematic.  First it calls itself a learning management system when it
> >> really has nothing to do with learning.  It is instead a course
> management
> >> system.  So why do people use the phrase learning management systems -
> >> because companies that sell learning management systems want them to.
> >>
> >> The distinction is important because while all this hardware and
> software
> >> is really wowsa, we pretty much have little idea how to use it to create
> >> actual learning experiences. We just think it will happen because
> person A
> >> has knowledge, person B could use knowledge, transfer knowledge, done
> and
> >> done.  I tend to think of the transfer model as being not very good as a
> >> teaching learning model.  But there are a whole bunch of other issues
> which
> >> we are just beginning to explore like teacher presence in online
> >> situations, student relatedness (the four walls actually do play a
> part),
> >> individual agency, collective/collaborative agency, cognitive presences
> -
> >> the list just goes on.  The guy on the boat (you have to watch the
> video)
> >> probably isn't going to be that successful.  Who is going to be
> successful
> >> - why academy of mine will be!
> >>
> >> We went through this with xMOOCs. I'm old enough to remember when they
> >> were going to be the new model for education.  I still have discussions
> >> with people who say MOOCs do good things. They reach all these people
> with
> >> information from experts.  I ask, is there a good thing?  People say, of
> >> course it's a good thing.  I ask is there any evidence of this? They say
> >> well it's better than not reaching them with information.  I ask are you
> >> sure. There actually is some evidence that it's not that good a thing
> from
> >> Participatory Action Research. I think one of the things we have to
> >> question ourselves about is why this sounds so good to us.
> >>
> >> This is not to say the Internet is not going to have stunning effects on
> >> the way we teach and learn.  We need to do the hard work of figuring why
> >> and how.  But this....
> >>
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> >> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Annalisa Aguilar
> >> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2018 12:56 PM
> >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> >> Subject: [Xmca-l] A new-ish learning platform that may be a way to save
> >> adjuncts?
> >>
> >> Hello Xmcars,
> >>
> >>
> >> A few days ago I learned about this new online learning platform
> "Academy
> >> Of Mine"
> >>
> >>
> >> I think that it portends what future learning might entail. It may be a
> >> way of bypassing the calcified learning patterns that no one seems to be
> >> able to escape, thanks to the neoliberalization of higher learning.
> >>
> >>
> >> This platform is also about doing business in education, but something
> >> about it seems more palatable than paying presidents and other
> >> administrators several hundred thousand dollar salaries to run a
> university.
> >>
> >>
> >> Here is an intro video for the platform, which I think is using
> wordpress
> >> for its online architecture.
> >>
> >> https://vimeo.com/92334633
> >>
> >> [https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVP.rKgA__knRtrA5l2yfST4XAEsCo&pid=Api]<
> >> https://vimeo.com/92334633>
> >>
> >> All-In-One Learning-Management-System - Academy Of Mine<
> >> https://vimeo.com/92334633> vimeo.com If you're going to be offering a
> >> course online you'll need Learning Management System Software (LMS) for
> >> your online educational environment. But if you're an ...
> >>
> >> This might be a way in particular for adjuncts to "hold on" to their
> >> course material, and perhaps at some point monetize their courses in
> such a
> >> way they can create another income stream.
> >>
> >>
> >> I've not really thought this through, but I think this could be
> >> paradigm-changing because Academy of Mine seems to really address the
> >> technology difficulties for non-technical instructors and teachers.
> >>
> >>
> >> I am curious what you think.
> >>
> >>
> >> I am not affiliated with Academy of Mine, but I have an opportunity to
> use
> >> the platform and am just learnign about it. I was so impressed I
> thought I
> >> would let you all take a look.
> >>
> >>
> >> It might make possible courses that are hybird in nature, and it could
> >> possibly make experimental learning easier to set up, which would allow
> >> educators to do the things they have always known works with successful
> >> learning experiences, and just walk around the Maginot Line of
> university
> >> hegemonies.
> >>
> >>
> >> Kind regards,
> >>
> >>
> >> Annalisa
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
>

--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson