meat in the sandwich; and which relish would you like with that?

William Doll's approach to curriculum is very much one of relating, something neither he nor I see a lot of in a functional approach of outcome based ideas married to assessment processes; easily audited but loses the plot.
To instead take Dewey's vision of integrating education, schooling, curriculum and community into a seamless whole, would require conversation. A willingness to engage with those involved, with authenticity.
Taking Daniel Pink's suggestions in arguing the economical transition needed, for conceptual rather than knowledge workers similarly emphasises the relational also.
But that would take some fundamental shifts that valued communication skills; listening and empathy. Such skills seem to my mind to be in diminishing supply in the university that is increasingly focused on technologies mediating its purpose. Such devices as ppt and content management systems can be useful, but its worth looking at how such shaping impacts on teaching and learning...not just at a technological application level but a level that looks at the sociotechnical relationships that evolve. Jan Nespor does a fine job of this bringing together an analysis including the wider picture of how come there was a readiness for this evolution in current teaching and learning practices in the university. I'm enjoying his writing style with personable quips such as "how had my work ended up as meat on somebody's lunch line?" A sentiment I can relate to.

despondent; change is so challenging

Deja vue.

I look at it and think, there's got to be reasons for it...maybe they dont know or that they forget?
But adding in wisdom externally doesn't effect the change.
And the medium doesn't create wonders of its own accord. Innovation does not diffuse itself.
There's an opportunity for change in an online teaching and learning environment, to use the medium fully, for the attributes the medium is best for... to construct, connect and engage...useful attributes for a higher ed sector, but instead what's being asked for might as well be an essay, the marking grid reflects attributes valued in the essay. That there's logical flow, spelling that's attended to...so why blog it???

Really profound change can’t be directed; it has to be nurtured.
No top-down impositions, uniform and simultaneous.
There seems a need for discovery, that conditions for innovation and the passion of individuals in a context of trust and creativity, be nurtured. Top-down solutions don't tend to reflect this.

Leverage for change requires engagement (and even of those who may not be recognised as such, human and otherwise) in creating something new.
In examples of innovation in teaching and learning, if you come back later, oftentimes things are right back where they used to be. So I wonder about the enormous forces that maintain the status quo and actor-network theory seems a really useful one in attending to the details of what shapes things.

A major leverage point on the education status quo is beautifully spotted by Senge, "We all went to school together... we all share strong common assumptions about how school is supposed to work. It is not only that we want our children to learn, we want them to learn in the way we think they should learn, or more correctly, in the way we learned."

And so we might have students learn in groups, wikis, write on blogs ... yet what's 'always been' remains influential. "The disciplines want essay writing"...and the marking grid develops in kind.
So I find myself with a marking grid that values spell checking instead of hyperlinking of ideas, or of involvement.

And shaking my head cant but wonder at how artefacts of assessment shape the learning that will occur.
And we are back to same old same old...

Off to read more Senge on nurturing change coz i dont think i can take much more of this.
Plus, have a look at 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life posted by Gary Hamel, its got a few reminders of attributes needed in the 21st century that far outweigh essay writing and spell checking :)

7 memes for (successful) PhD / thesis writing

Borrowing heavily on the writing of Irene Goodman (author of 7 steps for highly successful authors) as well as ideas from thesis authors I have known and have read...rather than from any personal experience of completion :)
and therefore with very limited credibility but with a lot of interest in completion and therefore reading about such things...

1. Dont give up.
Bruno Latour in Aramis also identifies this critical factor in the making of a project, to hold it together, one must not stop holding it together.
2. Write.
Got nothing to write about?...Put readings (which you write about in the notes section) into the endnote library, blog about writing it, rearrange the data collected- might be construed as data analysis if the words aren't too scary... make writing enjoyable, an hour of journal reading and entering same into endnote while at a cafe is one of my strategies for making writing pleasurable,
I also practice the writing style of authors I enjoy or who have the profound ideas... seems to help new understandings flow. However, this is the opposite to Irene Goodman's advice, hers is to find your authentic voice and stick with it. I'm not there, yet.
3. Schedule the thesis into your life. Mine takes up a lot of my life. Apparently highly effective authors are disciplined writers and will treat the writing as their work. Enjoyable or not, they will write. They will also have a life.
For some it works same time every day.
For others its the reading when the kids are awake (as its easier to pick up and put down) and writing when they are asleep.
I settle for what feels like all the time outside of the day job and sometimes inside of the day job. It actually isnt this. But its an omnipresence that I am happy with. If I didnt like it, this would be a serious problem.
4. Plan.
I have a few.
There is what I tell myself is pure fabrication that I write for the annual review.
Then there's the one that I am comfortable with, based in what Sherry Turkle calls a triumph of tinkering. Citing Claude Levi-Strauss on bricolage, she describes an arranging and rearranging "Bricoleurs approach problem solving by entering into a relationship with their work materials that has far more the flavor of a conversation than a monologue".
Where the writing of a composition comes first and then the plan; a softer style of bottom up rather than top down.
I do plan to finish, i have semi inflexible dates in my head, this years for data collecting, but its also got some writing, and some rewriting. Next year is for writing also, but its an analysis focus, in the absence of funding the year after is the end point as it will be the writing and the rewiriting. Tinkering and polishing. There is still an end insight I have heard stories of those who might polish and edit down to the blank page. I do not intend to be one of the,m. I am aware that I can get lost in wordsmithing and I take heart from Latour, "a good thesis is a finished one".
5. Want it.
Other factors in your life may have to move around this one, which comes first? The thesis or the job? The personal fitness or the thesis? The social life or the thesis? What do you still want at the end of the thesis? My family. I know my bottom line.
6. Stay with, and work, what works for you.
Supervisor, methodology, friends, subject and even the technology. Having the advantage of actor network theory is a convoluted double take, I can look out there with it, and i can also look in here with it; this is a retake on the first suggested strategy; it takes work to make it coalesce.
7. Here to there
Write to your audience. Terry Evans (co-author with Carey Denholm of Doctorates Downunder : keys to successful doctoral study in Australia and New Zealand. Camberwell, Victoria, ACER Press, 2006.) told me its an incredibly selfish undertaking writing for oneself, one's supervisor and one's markers. 3 readers guaranteed. They want to know that you can take it (and them) from here to there. New knowledge. coherently.

If you are/were writing a thesis what would be your 7 memes?

memes (a virus for the www?)
Memes; the word rhymes with dreams and is short for mimemes, from the word mimetic. Infectious ideas; a micropersuasion, spread from person to person.

9 big class learnings (2008)

To give some context: I teach students communication skills, this runs for 12 weeks and involves 772 students in a Health faculty. This group is split into 4 lecture groups, each receiving one 2 hour lecture per week, and a one hour tutorial (in group sixe of approx 30)

1. Some things take no longer in a big class than a small one;
the lesson learned is be selective.
Favourite task for checking everyone's 'on the same page' regarding concepts crucial to the course and taught within the first couple of weeks. This one came from a MOE literacy cluster. On a word doc make 3 columns, in the first column put the title 'words' , in the second column put a title 'definitions', in the 3rd column again title it 'words'. Then put about 5 words crucial to your topic in the first column, leaving a few lines between. In class give out one of these between 2, have the pairs select to be a or b. Then instruct the a's to define these words, writing their understandings in the 2nd column. Then fold the paper vertically so the partner b cannot see the first column. Their task is to discern what concept was being defined. Provides an opportunity for peer teaching, 2 way, understanding as well as clarity of meanings...

2. Solicited written feedback is richer; I used Stephen Brookfields 5 questions critical incident questionaire. My experience is students like shaping courses.

3. Do the big delivery stuff, but also do the talk with the people next to you.
Tasks in pairs help engage people with the content. My experience is that trust is made on the smaller scale. Speaking out seems easier when the classes engender speaking...

4. Use the big impact of the big venue. I recommend in your face imagery, loud noise dramatics, use of voice; not as gimmicks but integral to content. Helps to use photos over clip art.
My favourites this year include:
The use of strong graphics, red white black...stats that were damning, use of visual images supporting these. (Lessons learned online from death by ppt by Alexei Kapterev, presentation zen, Seth Godin, youtube- how not to make a ppt presentation by Don McMillan...) I have had to rethink my ppts but they are so much better. The medium carries the message, the power of strong visuals wins over lines of writing on a screen.
Use of graphs; my favourite was on how empathy commonly decreases with each year of education that appeared to be drawn insitu. (Inspired from TEDtalks Hans Rosling)
The use of loud noise during a creative visualisation demonstrated the application of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) as a prompt to consider what goes on in thinking, emotions, behaviours and physiology. And therefore led into a discussion of what might be changed.
The mexican wave affirmed that big classes are better at some things :)
a demonstration piece of verbal and non verbal communications ( I really do need visual imagery of classes, some creative editing and a promotion panel... )

5. Make learning an easy choice. A lesson learned in health promotion. I am not suggesting all learning should be easy or fun, but it helps. The ppts are online, as is a podcast. Talk the content. I think students come because its about engagement.
(the online ppts have fewer graphics to keep the file size down)

6. I tell stories. Transforming knowledge by demonstrating application, and modeling the critique of these, engaging students with questions of the good the bad and the ugly.

7. Plan but also stay flexible. What you want and what you get resource wise will always be less than promised and less than ideal.

8. Stay idealistic. I invest in seeing what's possible and adapt to what's possible.
Stephen Downes site Oldaily is great for updates.

9. Post the great ideas, either blog them under big class teaching or post to del.icio.us that way others share too :)

titillating classes in highered

I have been meditating on my teaching having read really bad powerpoint, death by powerpoint and presenting me!
I come to the conclusion through all my summer navel gazing that at least in part my goal is to titillate: to excite pleasantly.
I am not suggesting a voyeuristic approach as I do not believe that education is a spectator sport.
I have erred in trying to make education more palatable, more pleasurable. Titivation (to smarten up, make pretty) is not enough, it needs to be meaningful.
I am back to 'what is it that they need to know/want to know...and whats the best way of our getting there.'
And given its about teaching and learning communication skills, communicating as a two way occurrence seems necessary, form and function should align.
I have reread Parker-Palmer's the courage to teach: and do not want to be the person with the ballooon bubble that gets in the way of engaging; air bags are better in car crashes, than for cushioning out engagement.
However, student numbers in excess of 700 and staffing at something over 2.3 fulltime staffing equivalents creates a 'challenge'. Compounding this further is that the course be accessible to distance students.
So, Monday brings a new vamped course; titillation with podcast supported through a blackboard medium. Lectures with 200+ students attending and with 'small group' (n=30) tutorials.
Maybe the courage to teach isnt enough.

Taking wisdom from an unlikely source: the wizard of oz

(Cowardly Lion)
Yeah, it's sad, believe me Missy
When you're born to be a sissy
Without the vim and verve
But I could show my prowess
Be a lion, not a mowess
If I only had the nerve

I'm afraid there's no denyin'
I'm just a dandylion
A fate I don't deserve
I'd be brave as a blizzard

(Tin Man)
I'd be gentle as a lizard

(Scarecrow)
I'd be clever as a gizzard

(Dorothy)
If the Wizard is a wizard who will serve

(Scarecrow)
Then I'm sure to get a brain

(Tin Man)
A heart

(Dorothy)
A home

(Cowardly Lion)
The nerve

Maybe the emerald city needs fixing....