Dr John Persyn from the Dean of Academic Operations started up a study group to look at what InstructorNet could/should/might/ought be. He made the mistake of asking me to think out loud. If you don’t disagree with anything that follows, or at least wonder what I am smoking, then I have failed
I take the InstructorNet working group inquiry questions to include:
1. What should InstructorNet be and why should we care?
2. How can we give Voice (and action) to instructors to better align resources with efforts
3. How do we improve the connections among the members (nodes) of an Instructor Net (I am thinking of this as a utility function: bringing electricity/water to rural areas) 3. What technologies will unleash classroom excellence?
4. How do we eliminate the boundaries of walls, bricks, mortar and time to support lifelong learning across the force (for our demographic to begin with)?
5. How do we shift from an Industrial Age frame of education to a Network-centric, connectivist frame?
(a short oversimplification and misstatement of Connectivism: the knowledge resides dynamically in the network, its participants and their connections, and has a shelf-life; the network adapts its tacit knowledge much more quickly than its explicit knowledge in response to an increasingly dynamic environment, and so we need nodes of cognitive excellence creating knowledge artifacts rigorously, but connection modes and tools that facilitate making the tacit knowledge explicit AND the ability to sense educational needs and assemble rapid response teams of connected nodes from across the network, etc) (I’ll develop this definition better later)
Useful metaphors:
1. An “InstructorNet Mall” of available resources in one spot for instructors to meet their needs
2. A Google “Knowledge Map” of available content that’s searchable, zoom-able, and subscribe-able thru RSS so the network alerts you for items meeting your interests instead of waiting for you to craft a search every time you feel a conscious need.
3. The Amazon/EBay “smart network” that automates the search and recommend function based on stated interests AND by remembering searches & paths
4. Customer Service center for instructors seeking help
5. Tour guides/Marketing Aide to demonstrate “How to use these resources”
6. Magazine model of info mgt/distribution: a targeted demographic, whose readers shape the course of the magazine/tools (Dear Readers! We listened to you!) Lean 6 Sigma techniques have a way of accomplishing this, and a partnership with an LSS project seems like a natural one
Other work to be done:
1. Considering how we encourage/reward professional writing like lesson notes, course content, blog/wiki work that contributes to the practice of knowledge, in the same way we have tied promotion and retention to academic writing.
2. An FDP that incorporates more ideas related to “Master Classes in graduate teaching” on a regular basis. Some ideas include:
a. Group learning vs Team-Based learning.
b. RSS in the classroom (and blogs and wikis and podcasts…oh my)
c. Live dialogue mapping skills to frame group discussions better (Google “Compendium” for demonstrations)
d. How about giving Voice to faculty to let them nominate classes they want to receive, or challenges they face, and target the top vote getters?
3. An InstructorNet Mall should have a “store” that has searchable index of available, recorded FDPs with quick summaries of what’s available for the individual instructor looking to sharpen his practice.
4. UCTV (University of California “TV”) is a branded channel on YouTube with thousands of hours of content of their best instructors delivering on their best topics.
a. Why don’t we have Geoff Babb’s China lectures recorded and available in a catalog of Quality? Or Chris Paparone giving his best pitch on technical rationality and ADCON?
b. Why doesn’t the college actively seek and reward these mini-centers of excellence? The Foundation should give cash awards to the mini-lecture each month that has the most (downloads x the highest quality rating) (like Guitar Player of the Year)
c. MIT has put their entire curriculum online. We need to do a better job of finding the tacit expert knowledge and making it explicit. We have replaced the value of SME for an industrial Age approach to standardizing curriculum delivery around uniformity, discipline and control, at the expense of risk, artistry, and informed speculation (some evidence that is loosening up I assert, by looking at Dr Kem’s study group pilots, and Dr Paparone’s innovative use of the Blog of Log to engage student critical thinking and professional writing in the new milieu under control)
d. The students should be able to give cash awards to their picks for instructor of the Section. Or POGs redeemable for valuable cash prizes at the PX. Or student nominations for Excellence in Innovation, or for Trying Really Hard Even Though The Experiment Blew Up In The Lab But Didn’t Hurt Anybody (the TRHETTEBUITLBDHA award)
e. Students should be able to record a 20 second praise for instructors or AAPs, filed by AAP and instructor to guide next cycles towards our real excellence, that is searchable only by students. Need more emphasis on Rate Your Instructor mechanisms
5. I think we need a DDE rep on the team to assist the inquiry
6. I think the instructor needs survey is essential
7. I’d like to see a process map of instructors of all forms for CGSS: an operational graphic, who, where, what, and their AO and AI. We write curriculum for them in a vacuum; they have little to no voice in our design decision-making
8. The instructors need a persistent forum for nominating “the policy that most gets in the way of my effective teaching is…” with room for public, persistent dialogue, instead of periodically asking for feedback snippets that get lost in the OPTEMPO
9. Personal Learning Environments (PLE):
a. Officers and faculty should have a profile page in their Personal Learning Environment that identifies, in one place their research interests and their research offerings.
b. It should have links to their writings on blogs, papers, wiki’s available, with their ability to make their writings public or private from their personal page.
c. It should have an RSS aggregator/reader integrated that automates a wide daily search of the early bird, BCKS AKO, DKO, Joint knowledge online, Small Wars Journal; in fact a listing of highly recommended sources they can check off for inclusion in their search, with the list expanding as a function of the community-wide ratings hit a threshold.
d. It should have a world class search engine that truly gives us ask once, search many capabilities; unlike AKO. All you need to know about AKO search is that when you search for “FM 3.0 download”, the first link is NOT to where you can download the manual. (I have a current screen capture, but don’t make me use evidence, because I will if pushed to the limit)
e. The amount of information being added to the Web each day is so large that we cannot afford bad “Search” AND we cannot afford to wait for people TO SEARCH, especially since we can give them a Voice in creating their default, persistent, context sensitive, active search profile on a Personal Learning Environment
As part of the InstructorNet workgroup, I am focusing my personal efforts on:
1. a short summary of various educational applications of wiki, blog, podcast, RSS with bibliography
2. If I can find some practical details PLE (personal learning environment)info, I’ll do that as well
3. Creating a departmental resource catalog to support the ideas noted above.
4. Encourage the shift from Industrial Age to Network Age education