Mike Wesch, professor at K State and paragon of digital anthropology has done it again.
His video “The Machine is Us/ing Us” provided brilliant oversight on what this whole cult of 2.0 is really about; separating content from format and coming away empowered by the process. The 4-and-a-half minute film really makes you think about how humans think, create, collaborate, and organize. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend checking it out.
What I really want to talk about is a video that came out last month, “A Vision of Students Today” created by Wesch and 200 students enrolled in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. You can see it (and the rest of his videos) here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch
What really strikes me about the video, which is another of the brilliance in under 5 minutes variety, is not the overwhelming number of statistics presented that tell me our students are totally not listening but rather the hope it gives me that if we can only pry ourselves out of our boxes we can still reach them.
[Stop reading here, watch the video, and move on with your day unless you really want to read my thoughts on so-called Millennial student learning styles.]
The video begins with a quote from Marshall McLuhan, “Today’s child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules.” Although McLuhan said this forty years ago it could easily have been said just the other day. To acknowledge the existence of varied learning styles only to then insist that our students do it the way we like best is a shame and a disservice to our students and our profession.
Whoa, okay, backing off of my soapbox… but really, doing this is like going to a really expensive hair stylist. You tell the stylist what you want, because after all it is your head and one hopes you know it best. Sure you expect them to tell you that cutting bangs will make your head look like a potato and not be especially flattering. But you also expect them to understand the difference between “take a little off the ends” and “scalp me.” When your stylist veers off the beaten path without checking with your first you have a right to feel both uncomfortable and underserved. This is no different in our profession. Sure I will tell my students that checking their MySpace during my lecture is likely to result in them missing some key elements of the lesson because it’s just common sense and part of my job is to impart those little gems. I also point out that I will only see them this one time, for 50 minutes, which creates a “blink and you missed it” aspect to library instruction.
I also have to acknowledge to myself that I earned a masters degree by sitting in class with my laptop open to no fewer than 5 websites at a time, two word processing panes, a One Note file going for my lecture notes, and crocheting afghans and various Xmas goodies. And really? I didn’t miss much. I took the time and courtesy to notify my professors that I am a fidgeter and apt to disrupt class with bouts of talkative if not allowed to let my fingers roam around. I asked for feedback and made it clear that I would discontinue any of my sporadic learning-related (to me) activities if asked to do so. No one asked.
Certainly there is merit to some claims that students are lazy and suffer from an extreme lack of work ethic, prompting them to sit in class watching the world go by on their laptops. I believe it is just as likely that their instructors just do not “get” them and that by stubbornly refusing to move away from the chalkboard (chalk! egads!) they are going to do nothing but lose those students who have embraced alternate modes of learning. For instance, I recently taught a WR 115 class in which a number of students were clearly exploring other things besides research on the Internet. I was concerned about this but when the writing faculty and I debriefed after the class we found that some of the best interaction came from a kid who was hunkered down in the back row watching skateboarding videos on YouTube for at least half of my lesson…
Now having said all of this, how do we deal with the fact that our community college students are as diverse as they come? That some students are as likely to have never used a web browser as others are to have their own laptops is a complication to say the least.
The end of all of this for me is a circle– understanding that education is complicated. Teaching is complicated. Learning is complicated. That we repeatedly confuse these terms. Showing up is not the same as coming prepared to learn. Simply showing up and talking a lot at the front of the room does not really constitute teaching; although it certainly does pass for education in many places. Challenging ourselves to out-perform MySpace is daunting, but not too different than trying to keep students from staring out of windows… I can’t outshine the sun, no matter how hard I try…but I can certainly challenge myself to be engaging on a daily basis. Is that enough? I don’t know…
