The ISSOTL conference, not being a technology conference, it was not an opportunity to see what the latest and greatest in technology integration ideas. It was however an interesting opportunity to see (in the technology sessions that I was interested in) how technology was being adopted by the cream of the crop of progressive instructors. These instructors are not always early adopters but they are the champions that many of us in the Ed Tech world would want to recruit. So to paint in a broad stroke, the sessions were interesting to attend to see how the trailing edge of the bleeding edge (the leading edge?) adopts and really brings to fruition many of the ideas that one might see in tech conferences potentially years before.
The opening keynote was for me, the highlight of the event. The ideas that Marcia Baxter Magolda put forward regarding the way that students in higher ed start to construct knowledge and truth as they move through their post secondary experience. Starting with their early years, coming out of high school, students are almost bound to the idea that knowledge and the associated truth is determined by an external agent when it comes to their academic life, likely having never been “allowed” to think that knowledge or truth came from anywhere but a text. This was not true for the personal lives of many of these students as they were able, in their personal lives, able to start to self-author ideas of truth at this early stage. As students progress in their personal and academic lives, they start to be able to self-author truth in both their personal and academic lives, though not always within the time they spend doing their post secondary studies. To help them along, it is the instructor that should help guide the student to understand that knowledge is socially constructed (and that every discipline has its own culture/society, hence touchstones of truth in knowledge). Once a student understands this, teaching and learning can become a partnership as both parties are able to interact with knowledge and truth. This is all fine, but I want to see how fast the mountain that is “text is god” will move over in higher ed when instructors are squeezed for time and resources to even deliver the content that they are required to, especially in the first couple of years while students are working through junior courses in classrooms of hundreds.
Moving to the presentations, one idea stuck out – why are we treating the “millenials” any different than any other group… and how many classes out there are composed only of millenials? Thinking about the second point first, it is likely only in the intro level courses that one could expect a clear majority of millenials, after that, there is increasingly a mix of generations within the classroom, and this is especially true online. So even though this younger generation is defined by their use of technology. They, like generations before them, learn socially, are aided by reflection and appreciate genuine interaction with their instructors. Working from this perspective, the “rising spectre” of the millenials does not seem as intimidating.
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