Life in the Matrix

Although I have followed the student protests in Montreal peripherally I, like many have not fully appreciated the implications and ramifications of what is happening with these protests. Thanks to a Tweet from Stephen Downes (@oldaily) I have been pushed to read and attempt to understand this issue more. Here is the interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-biggest-student-uprising-youve-never-heard-of/46100

As I read this and other articles as well as this article from (CBC news) it says to me that the Quebec government may have blinked and I sense that the students know this as well and will now push even harder.

What is not being talked about but has to be lurking around the corner is whether this apparent local Quebec issue will begin to trickle out beyond Quebec’s borders and start a larger conversation about the cost and value of education in Canada, the US or even globally. We must not be sidetracked by the great differences in costs for post-secondary in Quebec versus elsewhere in Canada or beyond (see this CBC article). This cost disparity will be used as a red herring in the discussion and we must not be drawn into this distraction but head to the real issues that governments have not wanted us to talk about with respect to the cost of education. There needs to be greater transparency around government policy that encourages and supports great mountains of debt for post-secondary students. Tuition costs have risen significantly in so many jurisdictions and the smoke-screen,  end-run continues to be the apparent open-door availability of student loans. Wow have we been had. There are many examples of individuals completing credentials with horrendous student debt entering marginally-paid work worlds where they can never in their lifetime ever pay off the debt. This is a good thing for society right? Well I guess the cynical part of me says from a government perspective this is a good thing because these debt-saddled individuals are less inclined to protest or speak out and become a thorn in society’s side. Wow that might sound like a load of hooey but I think that there is an element of this thinking in many government and corporate circles.

Is it possible that enough enlightened, informed or just plain p*@sed off people might finally start a conversation on our doorsteps outside of Quebec? Why not – it is long overdue. When it comes I hope we can find appropriate ways to engage the conversation such that people are heard and respected in the process not like the way that access and copyright has been unceremoniously jammed down our throats – but that is for another post. (Stop the Canadian University Copyright Disaster)

I know I talk a lot about the process of knowledge creation and my belief that this is a social process; the coming together of individuals to build and share ideas, insights and understandings but earlier today it struck me that much of our world is really not a very social place. I think that culture and societal norms play an enormous part in this yet in the first world where we pride ourselves in our level of education and knowledge we have a long way to go to bridge the social gap.

It is a beautiful sunny spring day on the west-coast and I was running a few errands downtown and as I came out of an office building into the lovely sunshine I came across an older couple walking towards me holding hands. In a cheerful voice I wished them a good morning and was met with the coldest set of stares I have encountered in a long time. Not too far past them there was a middle aged gentleman coming towards me so I tried again and this time I got a grumpy “what’s your problem?” look. So I tried a third time as I came to the door of the parkade and thanked the person who held the door open for me but it was as though I should have just walked in and said nothing as it seemed that I was disrupting this person’s day by asking him to acknowledge me through my thank you. Now I am sure I may be challenged on these perceptions but I have always seen urban west-coast Canadians to be insular, aloof, and stand-offish. My granddaughter always asks me why I try to talk to everybody and I continually explain that it is a really important way to reach out and build a community. She tries and she gets ignored or outright shunned and this makes me sad and upset.

I remember the first time my wife and I drove to Southern California. It was a hot and sunny summer afternoon and we had been driving for about 6 or more hours and decided to stop in a tiny town off Interstate 5 in northern California. The AAA guidebook indicated that there was a suitable motel with a pool and as the temperature was in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit this seemed ideal. We stopped at a little strip mall and as we got out of our car a gentleman walked up to us, greeted us and welcomed us to his town (based upon the nature of the community and his clothing he may have been a farm worker). We were greeted this way by everyone we met. Later that afternoon we stopped a police officer to ask if he had any suggestions about a place to have dinner in town and he drove us to his recommended dining spot, got out, shook our hands and thanked us for stopping in his community. San Diego was our destination that summer and everywhere we went (small towns or large) we were greeted in a similar rich and embracing manner. We soon began to realize that it was rude to not say hello to people you passed on the street and almost everyone was willing to engage in a cheerful conversation. This was so novel but so very cool and when we got home we decided that we needed to try this public “hello” and “stranger talking” in our community. Well I remember that it was met with strange looks and curt rebuffs such that we just decided to stop putting ourselves out and being seen as social misfits.

I don’t get it. I didn’t get then and I still don’t get it. How can we build rich and informed communities if we won’t talk to each other? There are a million excuses and none of them hold any water. I try to get my students to engage each other and work collaboratively to learn and to work to sufficiently understand the processes involved in their learning such that the process of socialization becomes the norm and not some freak-show that happens once or twice in a class and then gets forgotten. I love spending time in Mexico because no matter where you walk everyone is so engaged and eager to talk and to be a part of an enriching experience. Yes it is their culture but why can’t we learn the value of this form of engagement? If my students came to me less insular and less “me – product” focussed then maybe their appreciation of the social experiment in my classes might be better understood and they might be more receptive to the process. Let’s get out and push the bounds of our public conversations a little more. Social networking is not a new phenomenon. Come for a walk with me someday and let’s meet people who could use a little socialization. Maybe, just maybe we could warm the community up a little.

I met a man yesterday who represents so much of what I have want to believe about the world I inhabit. We are challenged daily with so many things that cloud our vision and it was so refreshing to run into someone who reinforced my belief about the connections that we all have and need to maintain as we build communities and support each other. I flew into another city for the day to attend a meeting and I grabbed a cab at the airport to take me to my meeting. My very affable cab driver introduced himself as Ali and we began a conversation covering a broad range of topics. (He arranged his driving schedule so that he also picked me up at the end of the day and our conversation stretched throughout both of the cab rides). I came to learn that he had emigrated from the Indian subcontinent over 30 years ago to the Middle East where for 25 years he worked in a highly skilled area of transportation and his wife also held a professional position. Over time his personal and professional contacts advised him to move his growing family out of this part of the world and to come to North America. It took 6-years for the immigration process to be complete and he was able to bring his family to Canada. He and his family lived and worked in Eastern Canada for 3 years and for the past 3 years he has lived and worked as a cabby in this large western Canadian metropolis.

Ali is articulate, passionate, and talks with great love about the value of family and community: not just his own but with a desire to be a permanent and contributing member of the larger Canadian community. He indicated that he and his wife are doing what they must in order to offer the next generation a better life. I suppose this is the typical immigrant story. He talked about so many immigrant professionals who, with deference yet with pride and belief in their future, willingly work long days in less then ideal conditions relative to their professional backgrounds in order to build a new world for themselves and their families. Ali’s smile, his curiosity about the English language usage, and his genuinely engaging personality opened a small window into a part of our Canadian fabric that I might otherwise have moved past without a second glance. As we chatted he asked questions about the words I used, what they meant in context, and how he might be able to use these words as he spoke. He asked if I could suggest ways for him to improve his English so that he felt more at ease as he worked and engaged in his daily life. He talked about his children attending university and how their worlds were changing the dynamic of his family and throughout all of this I was briefly invited into a part of our broader Canadian home and shown a world we might talk about but one I have not engaged in this way before.

I am a fifth generation Anglo-Canadian with only faint whispers remaining that give any hint of life being carved out in a new country. I know no different – everything about my ancestors is just words and blurry, age-stained photographs. What a pleasure spending a few moments with an engaging gentleman who, although admitting to the physical toll that 12 hours a day sitting in a cab is having on his body, says so with no apparent remorse or despair about life in his new home. I am sure there are many immigrant stories that run the gamut from success to much less than success but for a few moments Ali invited me in through this serendipitous encounter and I am richer as a result.

The other day I stumbled upon a YouTube of a 1945 movie titled “The True Glory” an official Anglo/American government documentary outlining the events of World War 2 in the European part of the war. It is a little over 1 hour and 20 minutes long and I found it quite fascinating and reasonably reflective of the events seen through the eyes of the winning side. Taking everything as much as possible into context and recognizing that this was produced in1945 and knowing that the impact of this 6-year war was still very raw and current for the audience I found much that might still be relevant today. The music is overdone and the narration is very typical of the propagandist statements of the time, yet throughout the movie there are comments and reflections from service personnel, nurses, and other participants that help personalize the story.

I would like to watch it several times because I think that there are multiple levels and possible lessons within the overall story. One part in particular really spoke to me regarding today’s world of technologies and our understanding of them in both our daily and our academic lives. It is early in 1945 and Patton’s army has moved at breakneck speed towards the German border and they come to a halt outside of Metz, France because they have outrun their supply lines. There is a US Army Officer being interviewed and he says, ‘I will be happy to get back to the Library of Congress where maps are permanent and have meaning’. An amazing statement given what we know of maps today but even more so is that this officer goes on to talk about the allied advance being so fast, heading toward Metz, and that this and other points where they had arrived were off the map and by the time new maps would arrived, these new destinations were also off the maps. What a way to run a war and yet when we examine our use and understanding of technology, particularly in education today – have we not moved so far and so fast that we too may be off the map? I am not suggesting that we live in a world of war (some could argue either side of this) but it is fascinating to see that over 65 years ago we were struggling with the impact of the speed of change and the attempts to manage global chaos. What are we doing today?

I hope others can see beyond the surface of this movie.
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Introducing online learning into a traditional face-to-face world is a reoccurring challenge across the spectrum of conversations from K-12 through graduate schools. My community college, like most is defined as a face-to-face institution however it has encouraged faculty to develop and offer different forms of DE or online courses for a number of years. This has been met with varying degrees of success primarily due to the perseverance and dedication of the faculty in pushing the bounds of their discipline and willingness to offer the best product they can to their students.

We are venturing into alternative delivery models with limited pedagogical understandings and structural supports to guide the building of either fully online or blended and in most of the examples I have seen to date there is an “ad hoc” nature about it: This is scary. I have grown to understand that this is neither bad nor good – it is just the nature of how many institutions are responding to challenging budgets and an ever-evolving set of expectations from the marketplace. So how can we continue to offer quality programs with standards that we believe our existing programs meet yet venture into this very different world of teaching and learning?

Small steps. I am using a combination of resources to attempt to build a set of process models that all faculty can use as they plan and build their blended or fully online offerings. I am using examples from Garrison and Vaughan’s (2008) book, Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines. I have begun to use them to build a question and answer process for faculty. I recently spoke with Norm Vaughan and he also recommended the following two resources >> Blended Learning Toolkit http://blended.online.ucf.edu/ and Hybrid Courses http://www4.uwm.edu/ltc/hybrid/

In time I think we can build a set of custom online/blended design models that can allow faculty to ask questions most pertinent to their design goals and in the end have a set of models that can be a blueprint for future course offerings. I know there are lots of models and ideas out there and many institutions have well supported functional areas to help make this work but there are many of us who have well intentioned yet limited institutional resources and support -  so ideas from the blogosphere would be grand.