hi George, et al<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 16 September 2011 03:25, George Siemens <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gsiemens@elearnspace.org" target="_blank">gsiemens@elearnspace.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<p>I'd be interested to hear comments from list members on where we find the value point for education today...i.e. why go to university instead of a diy approach?</p>
<p><span>My thoughts are here: <a href="http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2011/09/15/duplication-theory-of-educational-value/" target="_blank"><span>http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2011/09/15/duplication-theory-of-educational-value/</span></a></span></p>
<p></p></blockquote></div><div>I am currently wondering similar questions, though in the specific context of media education and practice. I'm also writing a presentation that is going to be a bit of a riff on this idea for a conference in October here in Australia. But my answer is pretty simple. I'll stick to media as it makes my argument easier, but I think it translates pretty well (YMMV).</div>
<div><br></div><div>1. you once went to uni to get access to equipment that were otherwise scarce:</div><div>i. video cameras/edit suites (very expensive, big, etc)</div><div>ii. expertise in how to use such things</div><div>
<br></div><div>2. you once went to uni to get access to resources that were otherwise scarce:</div><div>i. reference books</div><div>ii. journals</div><div>iii. a decent library that had books in your area of interest</div>
<div><br></div><div>3. you once went to uni to get access to expertise that was otherwise scarce:</div><div>i. experts (academics)</div><div>ii. content via these academics (lectures, classes)</div><div><br></div><div>In this model (these are the reasons I had for going to university, and I was mature age, and largely self taught around cinema studies) quantity matters. How big is the library, how significant the academics, how good the cameras. You learnt, you didn't, but the 'experience' of going to uni was as much access to this stuff as it was about anything else. In other words access was what generated the quality of the experience, the institution in many ways didn't actually have to do a lot, except be.</div>
<div><br></div><div>This model is now redundant for all the reasons that I think are obvious to us. So, if I don't need a university for access to equipment (I have a video camera in my pocket, my laptop is an edit suite, and I can distribute to the planet via the web), or for high quality commentary and knowledge (free journals, library access, MIT courseware, blogs, specialist online forums), and I can now email these very academics, practitioners or just listen to podcasts of very high quality content, why would I go to uni?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Stephen Downes answered this very well recently, along the lines (I am paraphrasing) of "learning how to become". The scarcity model is gone, but it is still about quality and the quality is in enabling for students a shift in their understanding. Of themselves as thinker practitioners (or practitioner thinkers), of their discipline, of their relation to all this stuff out there, of their role in a knowledge economy where knowing how counts for more than knowing what. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I've no idea how much sense that made, as I'm still distilling this. But increasingly I understand that the difference I have made that made a difference was never been about content, about teaching *more*, but in providing, mentoring, modelling a variety of things that are more abstract, and teaching myself how to help students to find and learn these things themselves. What Schön would characterise as some sort of reflective practice, the sort of 'back talk' that you do and need to learn to find and listen to to be a good theorist, maker, learner. So the qualitative change is not in them coming to learn more, that's a collateral outcome that's going to happen anyway. It is a qualitative change in their own understanding about something that will matter. Or, as I mention above, learning how to become. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I could go on, but that's enough. However, I will finish by saying that the contemporary university is in general not like this, and to do this you more or less find an eddy for yourself in the university and do it because the university as an institution is stuck in about 1980 (on a good day) and as far as I can see still thinks my points 1 to 3 above are what matter.</div>
<div><br></div><div name="mailplane_signature">an appropriate closing<br>
Adrian Miles<br>
<a href="http://about.me/vogmae">about.me/vogmae</a></div>