[iDC] Discussion: The Edupunks' Guide

Mon Aug 8 10:08:54 UTC 2011

Hi Anya

Given that teaching is only a proportion of what education is about, and undergraduate teaching a small proportion of that, I wonder how you see the larger socio-economics of education working?

The main work of higher education institutions is research, the making of knowledge. Most of the work involved in this is undertaken by academics and research students (who will be the next generation of academics). Whilst there are questions to be answered, as to how efficient universities are at doing this work, this is and will remain expensive work. In the US this work is paid for by a mixture of corporate and state funding. In Europe the investment overwhelmingly by the State.

Research is done for is own sake but also contributes to the cultural, economic and industrial development of a society. It also provides the context for the teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate students. If you are an undergraduate at an institution that is not research focused you may not be aware of how central research is to higher education but even in teaching oriented institutions there is usually some research going on. Generally, although not always, the more research going on in a department the better the department. There are many factors involved in why this is so, a major one being the money that research brings in, paying for resources and the academics who will, when not doing research, do some teaching.

For research focused institutions it is not unthinkable that teaching be removed from their activities. Undergraduate teaching, at least in the UK, is generally unprofitable, if not loss-making. Not having to spend resources on teaching could save some institutions a lot of money and allow them to get on with their main work, research. If self-education was to become a successful movement, that resulted in most students deciding to not attend university, many institutions would not find this a problem and some would financially benefit.

However, to remove teaching from higher education is to miss the point of what higher education is about. The university is about creating a culture where the making and sharing of knowledge is the focus. Students benefit from studying in an environment where the people who develop and implement the infrastructure around them are the experts in their field - not just knowledgeable of the subject but determining the extent of that subject. Even when students have little direct contact with these people they are nevertheless benefiting from being in the same environment. Similarly, students bring new ideas and priorities into the institution, constantly renewing the environment, sometimes in very unexpected ways. Some of them will progress to be the next generation of academics.

If one considers learning to be the only function of education then your key question could be reasonable and the sort of answers you propose might be viable. However, as education is about so much more I wonder how you propose to assure the future health of a sector of our culture that many would accept is essential to the overall health of our society. Your vision of education, focused on what's in it for the student and how what they learn can fulfil their needs, could, in this context, be considered dangerously instrumentalist, reducing education to simple training and skills acquisition.

best

Simon

On 8 Aug 2011, at 00:00, Anya Kamenetz wrote:

> Hi Marco,
> Thanks for your response. 
> My basic feeling is that the ideas contained in the word "edupunk" are too important to remain in the subculture indefinitely. I wrote the guide for a bright person of little means, at 17 or 25 or 35 years old, to help them answer the question, "What can I do RIGHT NOW to learn what I need to know, to accomplish the goals I set for myself, to take charge of my own destiny both educationally and personally?"
> 
> For a large proportion of people right now--as for a large proportion, if not the entirety, of the people on this list--that journey will include earning a credential from a recognized institution. In the future, there will be more alternatives, which is why I include a tutorial and sections on "demonstrating value to a network" of practitioners, aka joining a community of practice, which I represent as being as important as any diploma. 
> 
> As for the "wider field of power relations." I'm not naive about this. Let me break it down from experience. People in the for-profit higher ed world have been cordial, but back off when I state in no uncertain terms that I think their models are rife with fraud, corruption, and exploitation; The Edupunks' Guide explains that for-profit and online education are not synonymous, which many students don't understand, and warns students off the former. 
> 
> Independent innovators in the open education world I largely count as allies and I believe the feeling is mutual. 
> 
> The folks representing and supporting public higher education in this country, like the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and some people in the Department of Ed, and not a few community college leaders across the country, have been quite friendly to what I'm saying. They want to figure out ways to use technology to give students more options, better learning experiences, and of course to cut down on runaway costs. Government cuts to higher education are the reality of the world we live in, and DIY approaches can help maximize the resources that remain. The people on this list have been lamenting the state of the humanities; I believe that the DIY approach can also help heal the rift that has opened between mainstream society and the academy because it connects students' experience in the classroom more closely to the broader world. 
> 
> So who's really uncomfortable with what I'm saying and how I'm saying it? A small subset of academics. People whose paychecks are currently signed by the academy. People for whom the transformation of education is a matter of academic interest in the narrow sense--you may be interested in informal, uncodable and untranslatable forms of self-learning, Marco, but there is no indication on RateMyProfessor.com that you refuse to give grades or credits. 
> 
> http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=865558
> 
> So let me ask all of you who play by the academic rules whilst researching and theorizing the transformation of the academy--is that really punk rock? 
> a
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Marco Deseriis <deseriim at newschool.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> When I read the title of the book, I immediately thought this was yet another example of how (formerly radical) subcultures are put to work to valorize and bring the practices of everyday life under capital. 
> 
> It would be interesting to know whether and how the author of this book addresses this potential contradiction. Personally, I see punk and other oppositional subcultures as expressing and disclosing forms of life and self-learning that are powerful precisely because they are informal, uncodified and untranslatable into student credits.  
> 
> In this case, there is also the additional risk that the DIY attitude may be mobilized as a form of endorsement "from below" of the rising online education industry sponsored by Republican governors such as Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry. Or even worst to justify government cuts to spending in lower and higher education. After all, if we no longer need schools to learn why should we use taxpayers money for education? I am sure Anya has all the best intentions, but every reform movement falls into a wider field of power relations that should not be overlooked or underestimated, IMHO.
> 
> This could be an interesting conversation and I am looking forward to hearing what Anya and other iDCers have to say.
> 
> Marco Deseriis
> 
> Marco Deseriis, PhD
> Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
> Department of Culture and Media
> Eugene Lang | The New School
> 65 West 11th Street
> New York, NY 10011
> Email: deseriim at newschool.edu
> 
> 
>   
> 
> On 8/5/11 12:36 PM, Stephen Downes wrote:
>> It would be better to quote Jim quoting Jim. 
>> 
>> In any case, the use of the term is probably still wrong.
>> 
>> And those of us actually working in the field now talk about someone coming along and "pulling a Kamenetz" - appropriating our work and making it some kind of pro-business thing.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- Sent from my Palm Pre
>> 
>> On 4 Aug 2011 11:15 p.m., Anya Kamenetz <anyaanya at gmail.com> wrote: 
>> 
>> Quoting Mike Caulfield, quoting Jim:
>> 
>> "I often take credit... for this concept of Edupunk. I put out a term. And within 24 hours Mike Caulfield had theoretically made that term relevant,  and [he] actually exploded it. I took all the credit, but actually Mike Caulfield made it sensible." -- Jim Groom, May 12, 2010, in his introduction to my plenary at UMW Faculty Academy.
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 5:58 PM, Stephen Downes <stephen at downes.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> For the record, Jim Groom didn't "help" coin the term 'edupunk', he coined it, pure and simple, by himself, not             "helping" some undesignated other.
>> 
>> The major popularizers of the term were probably Gardner Campbell and myself, which is why we were the ones on the SXSW edupunk panel eith Jim.
>> 
>> We have our disagreements, but I think we'd all agree that if Jim says a use of the term is incorrect, it probably is.
>> 
>> -- Stephen
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- Sent from my Palm Pre
>> 
>> On 3 Aug 2011 9:09 a.m., Anya Kamenetz <anyaanya at gmail.com> wrote: 
>> 
>> Hello all!
>> I was asked to try to start up a discussion for this week. This happens to be the week that my new e-book is being released, titled The Edupunks' Guide to a DIY Credential. It's the first-ever book underwritten by the Gates Foundation, and a follow-up to my 2010 book DIY U. Where DIY U made historical, economic and political arguments about the future of education, this is a guidebook. The premise is that learners who are curious and lacking in resources (money, time, physical access to a campus) can use the guide to create the future of education for themselves right now, by writing a personal learning plan, recruiting mentors and a personal learning network of peers, participating in online communities, and using open courseware. There are also profiles of a variety of institutions, organizations, and networks that specialize in catering to the needs of learners who are nontraditional in some way, and helping them to do all of the above and in many cases receive accreditation for learning done in nontraditional ways and contexts. The writing style is simple and assumes little prior knowledge of anything, even Google. 
>> 
>> As a guidebook, the arguments made by this book are implicit. One is that anyone can be an edupunk, as long as they feel their needs are not being met by the current education system. Among those who have objected to this appropriation of the term is Jim Groom, who helped coin it (although Mike Caulfield, another person instrumental in popularizing the term, agrees with my usage). 
>> Another is that rather than engage directly with reforming the system, change can be made by learners pursuing their own goals with the resources available to them now. One of the more prosaic changes I'd like to see is for colleges to review their prior learning, portfolio credit, and transfer credit policies to allow more students to receive credit for learning achieved in open environments. I believe this might happen if more students were aware of the options and petitioned their colleges to accept these credits. 
>> 
>> You can download the PDF here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/60954896/EdupunksGuide and an e-reader compatible plain-text version here http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/77938. In a couple weeks there will be a better-looking Kindle version and an EdupunksGuide.org site with community features launches in September.
>> 
>> I'd love to hear what people think about the implicit arguments I've articulated here and anything else you find worthy of note in the book itself.
>> Thanks so much,
>> Anya
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> New ebook! The Edupunks' Guide 
>> Fast Company column Life In Beta
>> Tribune Media column The Savings Game
>> Book DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of  Higher Education 
>> Blog DIYUbook.com 
>> Twitter @Anya1anya
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> New ebook! The Edupunks' Guide
>> Fast Company column Life In Beta
>> Tribune Media column The Savings Game
>> Book DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of  Higher Education 
>> Blog DIYUbook.com 
>> Twitter @Anya1anya
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> New ebook! The Edupunks' Guide
> Fast Company column Life In Beta
> Tribune Media column The Savings Game
> Book DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of  Higher Education 
> Blog DIYUbook.com 
> Twitter @Anya1anya
> 
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
> 
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> 
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> 
> RSS feed:
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Simon Biggs | simon at littlepig.org.uk | www.littlepig.org.uk

s.biggs at ed.ac.uk | Edinburgh College of Art | University of Edinburgh
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