Tools
Instructional technologists like to say "technology is just a tool." With good reason, they don’t want to be perceived as promoting "whistles and bells" with no clear educational purpose, but I think some of them have bought into the line a little too deeply. I gave a talk at a conference once that presented empirical evidence that, in some fields of study, technology has profoundly influenced not only the means of instruction, but also the very purpose of some courses. An instructional technologist came up to me after the talk to tell me I had it wrong because technology is just a tool.
Last week, a friend e-mailed me about a presentation she gave at the ELI session on assessment in Boulder that was based on presentations we had given together at EDUCAUSE and AIR. Ironically, minutes before, I had received an invitation from a graduate student in my Curriculum in Higher Education class to visit a wiki he had created for the class. In a blog-like entry in the wiki, he had asked “Where does the wiki fit in curriculum?” He wrestled with trying to classify my wiki assignment within one of five “perspectives” on the purpose of the college curriculum proposed by Posner, whose work we had read and discussed in class. Good question! Over time, I usually develop some intended outcomes and guidelines for my assignment options, and—when I’m really on top of things--I even use different grading rubrics for each assignment, which I make available to students at the beginning of the term. I’ve also taught classes on assessment to community college faculty, so I don’t think anyone would say I’m an assessment laggard.
And yet, there’s nothing quite as exciting as the first time I offer an assignment option and someone takes me up on it. I don’t really know what they’ll get out of it, but something tells me “this could be really good.” I simply have to trust them to make something worthwhile out of it, and they simply have to trust me to focus on the learning process and not the product if things don’t go well. Bereiter & Scardemalia, in their book Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the Nature and Implications of Expertise, talk about a type of expertise they attribute to artists that they call the expertise of promisingness (or something like that)--that is, the ability to sense the promise of a particular creative pursuit without having planned out the product in advance. I think when we talk about the “art” of teaching, this is largely what we mean: the expertise of promisingness. Assessment is part of the craft of teaching, and as such it can be a great tool, but it’s just that: a tool. In the age of the internet and rapidly multiplying means of social computing, saying that technology is just a tool that I use to accomplish some end without recognizing it also as part of the context that makes up my reality is a little like saying that the dream is just in my head but I am not in the dream. It might sound right, but it’s not how many of us experience it any more.
[Originally posted at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/CBriggs, September 30, 2006]
Last week, a friend e-mailed me about a presentation she gave at the ELI session on assessment in Boulder that was based on presentations we had given together at EDUCAUSE and AIR. Ironically, minutes before, I had received an invitation from a graduate student in my Curriculum in Higher Education class to visit a wiki he had created for the class. In a blog-like entry in the wiki, he had asked “Where does the wiki fit in curriculum?” He wrestled with trying to classify my wiki assignment within one of five “perspectives” on the purpose of the college curriculum proposed by Posner, whose work we had read and discussed in class. Good question! Over time, I usually develop some intended outcomes and guidelines for my assignment options, and—when I’m really on top of things--I even use different grading rubrics for each assignment, which I make available to students at the beginning of the term. I’ve also taught classes on assessment to community college faculty, so I don’t think anyone would say I’m an assessment laggard.
And yet, there’s nothing quite as exciting as the first time I offer an assignment option and someone takes me up on it. I don’t really know what they’ll get out of it, but something tells me “this could be really good.” I simply have to trust them to make something worthwhile out of it, and they simply have to trust me to focus on the learning process and not the product if things don’t go well. Bereiter & Scardemalia, in their book Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the Nature and Implications of Expertise, talk about a type of expertise they attribute to artists that they call the expertise of promisingness (or something like that)--that is, the ability to sense the promise of a particular creative pursuit without having planned out the product in advance. I think when we talk about the “art” of teaching, this is largely what we mean: the expertise of promisingness. Assessment is part of the craft of teaching, and as such it can be a great tool, but it’s just that: a tool. In the age of the internet and rapidly multiplying means of social computing, saying that technology is just a tool that I use to accomplish some end without recognizing it also as part of the context that makes up my reality is a little like saying that the dream is just in my head but I am not in the dream. It might sound right, but it’s not how many of us experience it any more.
[Originally posted at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/CBriggs, September 30, 2006]
posted by Charlotte at 9:27 AM
1 Comments:
Your example of SPSS is a good one. Others are graphing calculators, which made it possible for calculus courses to address higher level concepts due to time saved on mere calculating processes, and computer aided design (CAD) programs that have changed the goals of many art and graphic design courses away from the development of hand drawing skills.
Post a Comment
<< Home