TechWag

Image via Wikipedia How or what is the best approach to using Web 2.0 style applications, processes, and information sharing to deliver a better quality education in the college realm. What I am learning is that there are ways of adding value to education by using the tools and techniques that students are using to bring the teacher closer to the students. There are also significant downsides when it comes to managing time when dealing with students.

Like many people, there are differing levels of commitment on the part of the student, and on the part of the instructor to teach, learn, and grow. These differing levels of commitment can often make it difficult for the adult student to engage in “web 2.0 extra activities” when their family needs them, or there is a vacation happening today. The same holds true for the instructor, they are paid for a level of commitment, anything after that is non reimbursed by the college. The college will love the extra effort, and might give out a reward at the end of the year, but odds are likely that it will fly under the radar and not be noticed.

There are additional concerns here as well, and that is the clash of two distinct cultures, one dynamic, and free flowing the other very hierarchical. Education is a very hierarchical business, there are distances that student, and teachers must maintain to make sure that nothing inappropriate happens on or off campus. There are technophobic people in education, there are people who are open to ideas but have no idea where to start, or have no immediate desire to start on anything. There are those that essentially should really have a pen and paper or typewriter rather than a computer.

With the potential to do good here, educators must also look at what the impacts are going to be on teacher student relationships. Making up a situation here, if you look at ratemyprofessor.com, which is a site where students can rate their professor incognito, some professors who are on the list can be shocked and outraged that anyone would do this. Even though the reviews were good, nothing negative, even positive information made the professor very angry that someone would do this. Of course, this included the usual knee jerk reaction, immediate take down of information where that was not possible.

One of the other things I have noticed about education is that we seem to be a conflicted business. We are there to teach people new stuff so that they can move on with their jobs or careers. We are also there to make enough money to keep on going, and in some cases, those two missions can become conflicted to the point where one or the other suffers. Adding that general dichotomy to a public discussion on friend feed or discqus, or a twitter stream, the professor who needs to get the grant might not have time to fully engage with the 400-student classroom, and the GA (Graduate Assistant) might not have all the answers for the students. There are still things that only the teacher can answer.

Adding Web 2.0 components means adding overhead to the classroom that needs to be paid attention to by both students and instructors. If you move the conversation out of the on line classroom, or to another site, then those resources must be added to the classroom at some time so that people who do not participate have access to the information being provided.

Using Friend Feed to add stuff to the classroom, using other systems like Stumble upon and others would also allow for the addition of information to be added on the fly as needed when needed. Instructors in many ways, either through the adjunct model or through the FTE model or combination of the two are paid for their time in the classroom. Nevertheless, adjuncts have no real reason to engage the students outside of the classroom, on their own time, because they are not paid for it. FTE’s are often so over worked, that taking time to address what could end up being 60 students’ comments, or concerns would fill up an entire day. That overhead is going to have repercussions in the use of social components within the classroom setting.

Add to that the politics of the educational setting, where we are teaching towards discreet goals, measurable results, teaching units where the classes are lock step rather than free form, web 2.0 which is extraordinarily dynamic has a hard time accommodating the ridged structures that are found in the classroom setting.

The question that we need to be asking ourselves, and one that besets business as well, is how long do we have to wait until we can make new ways of reaching students a reality? How do we socialize Web 2.0 tools into the classroom, both on and off line classrooms? We need to change how we do things to reach the students that grew up with the internet. Why learn when my “Google brain” has all the answers?

Tags: education, web 2.0, project, classroom, fte, adjunct professor, teaching, teacher, class, people

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