Two things happened in the last 24 hours that made me think about my profession (teaching) a bit differently. I shared a brief conversation with an elderly neighbor in our elevator. He asked me about my job and our school (just being polite, I guess) and offered a brief story of how the university worked in his days (my estimate: 50 years ago). In passing he mentioned that when his school started to enroll older students with working experience, the younger inexperienced students could not compete with them. Today it’s mostly the other way around!
I put it down to:
1. THE RELEVANT SOCIAL CAPITAL. Younger students are better at playing “the university game”, because they generally have more contacts to share information with (lecture notes, past exams, cheating on tests, etc.) and are better equipped to tackle the system (have little to loose, have fewer limitations, etc.)
2. THE TRANSFORMATION IN KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE. For most of the managers the work has become so unpredictable and varied that there is no single set of precipices and concepts to draw from anymore. Hence they know a lot and learn a lot from their experiences, but their knowledge often doesn’t translate into our “university language”.
The second thing was reading Grant’s post on the future of Universities. In his vision, the university continues to produce knowledge (research and writing) and perhaps also certify it (marking, handing out degrees), but due to technological developments isn’t needed anymore to distribute knowledge. People can learn individually and can learn more promiscuously (from various sources, without the filtering of a single professor).
The proposed move toward a more open and less institutionalized knowledge distribution and subsequently toward a more individualized and self-conducted learning has interesting implications. A more open system of knowledge distribution will likely lead toward a more open system of knowledge production, motivating the masses of experienced managers to find ways to “package” and share their knowledge. The line between learning and teaching becomes increasingly blurred (as it should). Much of the energy that now goes into figuring out and cracking the relatively stable “university game” will be reverted to tackling the chaos of open learning.
On the flip side, we need to start thinking of the university more as a network than a place. In fact, the future university will need to be both: a place (taking advantage of direct contact, social activities, etc.) and a network (finding its role in the info-networks of tomorrow).
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Thanks for pointing out the striking differences in faculties. I do prefer to think of myself as a mentor (a knowledge taste facilitator) as opposed to a gatekeeper or a distributor of THE truth. Unfortunately, there are few students (even professors for that matter) who appreciate this. I like your metaphor of moving the motivational force. The net is ultimately doing that – but probably in both directions. It weakens the center (the authoritative teacher), but it also replaces it with new ones. The later (can among other things) be attributed to the very forces that make many students unappreciative of my “mentor” approach: laziness, the anxiousness caused by having multiple possibilities and lacking a clearly outlined set of routinized tasks, etc.
By: Domen on September 25, 2009
at 12:26 pm
Any sufficiently difficult faculty (speaking for the only one I know…) does not impart or distribute knowledge. It merely gives a taste of it. In high school, what you hear in class is usually enough to get you top marks if you pay attention and make notes. In the university, I’ve always considered the professors as merely persons who give life … Read Moreto knowledge — it’s up to you and your “free” time to actually absorb and integrate it.
A good human professor with didactical experience, in-depth knowledge of his subject and a charismatic presence can be a central driving force for young people to follow in developing an interest in the subject. They often do not have a developed vision as to how the acquired knowledge will benefit them — the only use that was short-term enough for me was impressing the professor at the time of the exam.
As naugty as promiscuous learning sounds, removing the motivational force of a respected central teacher may lead to reducing the overall motivation to learn, soon followed by the actual content learned, and eventually due to political pressure, a lowering of standards. When I complained to my Analytical Mechanics professor that his course was too hard, he said, “Well, yes. People must be put through the crucible. It transforms them and only then something can become of them.” Because it was a person saying this, I was determined to prove myself to him. Had it been an impersonal set of graduation requirements, who knows?
By: Andrej on September 25, 2009
at 12:11 pm