There is some talk in the edblogoshphere right now about Open Education, and I have to admit that I haven’t been following it very closely for a lack of time of late. But regardless if the release of this book is responsible for it or not, I found something interesting in the executive summary (TOC and sample chapters) that almost exactly describes what many people working in PD or ID in Science Faculties likely feel:
Change Education’s Culture and Policy
…higher education places a high premium on originality, whereas adapting or improving another’s educational materials is rarely understood to be a creative or valuable contribution. Thus, while scholars are expected to build on the work of others in their disciplinary research, teaching is largely treated as a private, highly territorial enterprise.
If teaching isn’t seen as a dirty “add on”, I really agree with this statement. It is often an intensely territorial enterprise, motivated by what seems to me to be a remnant of the way that researchers are trained and socialized into their profession. Academics are socialized to be “islands” that on occasion will allow visitors from other locations, and then only to certain parts of their territory, and while there are often bridges or links constructed, it seems that these are as often as not, for show only. I don’t think that there is anything really wrong with this – research is the way to get grants and grants are the way to get more research done, and if you give everything away you are not going to get the grants, so there is no research and no job. It is a vicious cycle to be sure. It seems that the same (or at least a similar thing) seems to happen for teaching resources.
I think a reason for this might be that profs are worried about being “outed” for holes in their teaching, and given academic freedom, some might feel that they are allowed “not to collaborate”. But what I hope is the truth is that teaching, as a secondary function of academic life, it is not treated as the science/art fusion that it deserves to be. It is often (or feels to be) the case that teaching is not considered to be something with legitiimate scholoarly practice behind it. Because of this, it is might be kept hidden as not to tarnish the sheen of peer reviewed academic work that profs want to show the world, and specifically their chairs.
A potential solution to this is to look at how teaching is rewarded through the review process, or to make a priority, the planning and design of courses. This means more than just a committee that looks at the syllabus, it means looking at the individual assessment and content items of a course to make sure that they are inline with the vision of the department. It means helping instructors find their own style in the classroom – and potentially their own classroom of need be. It also means looking for more than the textbook or individual research for content.
I have heard many times that this is indeed the case, that departments are truly interested in their courses, but judging from what I see, that assurance is truly only lip service for many universities.
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