It's a Mash-Up, Google/Amazon/Netflix World -- Data-Driven Instruction

         Something very odd happened when I finally got around to updating my Facebook profile: suddenly the ads appearing at the right hand side of my wall were, shall we say, just a little bit more targeted. The mention of my love of sailing produced ads for tee-shirts with sailing themes. My use of the word "education" produced a slew of ads promoting degrees and lesson plans. And, of course, the politics -- the suggestions for interested "likes" and connections were selected through Facebook's best prediction of what I already believed and thought. The same has been true of my perusals through the pages of Amazon.com, where "suggestions" are obviously coming from data gathered from the very few things I've purchased, and the dozens of things I've examined. (I'm one of those who uses user reviews there to help evaluate things I really have no interest in buying.) Netflix is also trying to do that as well, though it's even further off the mark.
        I admit to the traditional conspiratorial take on such processes, but I also know that, since I am aware that's how such things work, I can avoid the problem by simply avoiding the services. After all, since I use them to gather data, it is probably unfair to assume that these services don't have a right to gather data from me. I also have never purchased a tee-shirt suggested by Facebook, so I do not feel a loss of control simply by the ad's presence.
        But there are implications there for how we do the business of education. After all, as education professionals in the world of "data-driven instruction," high-stakes student (and teacher performance) assessment, so-called classroom performance systems, and lots of other data-gathering tools, we are, in fact, encouraging our teachers to produce and analyze such data about their students, and then using that data to drive our interaction with them. Is that a bad thing? No, as long as we know its limits. And, even more important, as long as we know the implications such data-driven activities have for the nature of learning, interacting, and being human.
        A brief article in this week's New York Times Magazine (Sept. 19, 2010), written by Microsoft engineer Jaron Lanier, helped bring this home for me just a bit. In celebrating the personal way in which his father taught in public schools, he decried how information access seems to be doing damage to the way in which students invent themselves...

We see the embedded philosophy bloom when students assemble papers as mash-ups from online snippets instead of thinking and composing on a blank piece of screen...What is really lost when this happens is the self-invention of a human brain. If students don't learn to think, then no amount of access to information will do them any good (p.35).

But then, that's what we're encouraging our teachers to do with them, and what they're watching us do to them as they negotiate the world we (and the commercial interests we endorse and embrace) present them online.
        It is not my intent to make this yet another call for the teaching of critical thinking (though it is that), or an indictment of our over-indulgence in data-driven assessment cycles (though it is that, as well). What we should do, as teachers, is to take a very long look at the technology tools we choose, and the way in which we choose to use them, to see what sorts of pedagogical and learning level implications they carry.
        A simple online computer does not, in itself, come with much implied pedagogy. But Google, of course, does -- it assumes that the user's interests, needs, and understandings can be well predicted by algorithms written by (as Lanier calls them) geeks pushing key words and concepts around. The kinds of questions Google answers can only be basic and informational, the lowest sorts of learning goals on Bloom's ("taxonomy of learning") or Webb's ("depth of knowledge") scales. At the secondary or post-secondary level, even at an information level, Google won't be able to reach out to the best minds on many topics, even if the student asks a well-founded question of it. But unless the results of this work is used to encourage a student to start with a blank screen, it is unlikely that the results will be reflective of much of a change in the student.
       Probably the hottest types of educational technologies these days are so-called smart classroom tools. These tools are becoming quite clever in their presentation, the types and quality of the questions they present to students, and the speed in which the answers are processed and presented back to teachers. But what pedagogy do they most often imply? What opportunities do such tools present to allow students to invent themselves?
        That is not to say that the questions a classroom performance system asks of a student are not worth asking, or the answers worth knowing. There are lots of pedagogical goals which are excellently served by such systems. But Arthur C. Clarke once stated that "Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!" This rather callous assessment of bad instruction might be revised somewhat...any pedagogical/learning goal which could be best delivered by a machine, should be. Most of the questions a teacher-driven performance system asks could be asked and taught quite successfully in the absence of the teacher. If, however, our instructional goal is for a student to process and present information, opinions, and products drawn onto a blank slate, then a teacher is required, and different tools should be selected.
        This sort of examination of goals and implied pedagogy has, as its core, huge implications for instructional delivery and selection of appropriate tools. It also has huge implications for the current structure of instructional delivery. If we are selecting tools to place them in the hands of teachers to support the ways in which they already teach, then we're missing out on huge opportunities to improve efficiency, and better manage the advantages a teacher brings to a student. If we are selecting tools which simply support a student's ability to mash-up learning fragments rearranged for teacher consumption, then we have squandered an enormous opportunity for students to create, and in creating, re-define themselves.

Digital Natives: Implications for Pedagogy

      There are two subthreads to the whole "Digital Native vs. Digital Immigrant" discussion (see articles by Marc Prensky), with neither having a clear answer. It is clear that our children are very different from us -- at least statistically. (My daughter, previously the anti-computer college student, was quite different from me, the avid digital user. That's atypical. But, then, nobody is actually "average!")

1) Do we have an obligation to teach to these new implied student learning styles?
              From an article written by Prensky ("Do They Really Think Differently?", On the Horizon, Vol. 9, #6 [Dec. 2001]) ..."Children raised with the computer 'think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential'" (p. 4). Does this imply that, in fact, our instructional practice needs to reflect this learning style? What implications do such an approach have for our pedagogy?...our instructional goals?...our interests in differentiated instruction?
        Online instruction, as it is often practiced, can be very much more linear than face-to-face learning experiences. It is sequenced over time, and it's sequenced in terms of instructional goals, whereas face-to-face classes do not require a fixed sequence, making it possible for the instructor to re-direct or branch at will. Although the inclusion of visual and aural content online might help, it doesn't help with linearity. (Many observers note that video and sound content is very much more linear, since scanning, skimming, and jumping around in it is more difficult!) How does asynchronous online instruction successfully address this difference in learning styles?
       Of course, the implications of these remarks is that delivered instruction is consumed instruction. That is true in face-to-face classes, but is almost invariably not true online. There, students can easily follow hyperlinks, provide for multiple browser windows, even include paper-based resources, while still fully participating in the online experience. A spontaneous question can be instantly answered or asked, even in the absence of experts. This is Prensky's "parallel cognitive structure." It also reflects that, in the world of the digital native, access is instantaneous, providing deep implications for what it means to know something. Although a digital native may not be able to recall information quickly, s/he can find it almost instantaneously, if provided the connection. Of course, "accessed" isn't equivalent to "informed." Addressing that problem points to another difference in teaching digital natives, which I address below.

2) Do we have a moral obligation to fit our instructional practice into current socialization patterns, or, do we have a moral obligation to attempt to correct such patterns?
              During the early TV explosion, teachers often felt that their responsibility was to teach to the shortcomings of television-delivered instruction, to correct for their tendency to encourage passive consumption of information and experiences. Do we have a similar obligation now? Should we be consciously attempting to teach linear research and reasoning patterns as an important way in which students can learn and improve...one that's currently missing from their experiences? Or should we simply assume that that isn't possible?
        Linearity, of course, is one issue, and I do feel that we have an obligation to teach the thoroughness and formality that linear instruction implies. But if we always force a linear approach to pedagogy,not only will we confront a serious disconnect between learning styles, we'll also be ignoring the implied power of digital learning, where divergent, self-driven knowledge construction experiences can motivate digital natives, and improve their participation in the learning process.
But there are important shortcomings which the phrase "digital native" might imply, and we have an obligation to address. Current research shows that digital natives may have improved their access to information, but their ability to differentiate between information sources has not met the challenge -- they tend to consume rather than select and evaluate that which they find. Critical thinking is probably one of the most important learning goals implied by the characteristics of a digital native. Access is merely the first step. Without the ability to critically assess and evaluate what you find, your ability to learn, construct, and decide based on that information will be very limited.
        In addition, digital natives tend to be "short form" writers, reflecting not only limits to text messages, tweets, social networking platforms, and small devices, but the general tendency to ignore subtlety and complexity, a natural extension of the difference between being a digital consumer and a digital user. As teachers, we have an obligation to reflect learning style (parallel vs. linear, access vs. memorization). However, we cannot become simple consumers of all of what we observe in our digital native students. Much of the content we must teach is nuanced and complex, so our approach must leverage how our students learn, without forcing that content into the limits of information consumption and short form expression, the unfortunate side effect of their tendency to be digital consumers.

A Personal Philosophy of Education

        The needs and abilities of students have changed radically in the last few decades. In our new service economy, and in many other professional settings, simple content knowledge must make room for knowledge facilitation as extremely important workplace skills. As educators, we have a responsibility to negotiate that shift for ourselves, and apply it to our instructional practice.
        Our students are living and negotiating these changes, and hence have experience and expertise in a wide range of communication capabilities that did not even exist fifteen years ago. They are often comfortable negotiating environments that their parents are struggling to learn. However, this is not to presume that, for students, these changes will happen without our participation as educators – for two very important reasons:

1. “Skillful” does not mean “effective” -- students are having difficulty seeing how the tools they’ve learned can be used productively, to further their own professional and personal goals, and the goals of the contexts in which they find themselves – family, school, workplace, community, and society.
2. These changes are not taking place uniformly across our society. The students who are easily making the transition to new tools have access to these tools as a natural part of the socio-economic advantage they enjoy. Many other students are at an extreme disadvantage, with no such access. At no time since the advent of universal education in this country has the responsibility of public schools been greater to bridge these gaps, to insure that all students have the access and training they need to succeed in society at large.

        My commitment as a public educator has always been to providing instruction that touches the broadest spectrum of students. In this regard, the technological delivery of information, instruction, and (most importantly) communication has an extremely important role to fulfill. It can serve to provide information, ways of connecting, and even whole course access to a broader range of students than can sometimes be served by most schools -- schools that have so many other pressures (staffing, budget, core content, assessment, etc.) to which they must attend. However, as is true of any shift in the delivery of services, to insure that all students can succeed, we must be sure that such a shift does not ignore the personal, motivational, and learning style needs of those students. After hours of taped and transcribed interviews of distance-learning students for a research project, I can speak directly to the pivotal nature of these issues. Our use of new technologies in student communication and instruction must reflect solid research that reflects not only the successes, but also the failures, of the new capabilities we use.
        We have entered a new millennium in our society, and that change must be reflected in our commitment and practice as educators. However, as a public educator, I believe in the importance of uniform delivery of access, and am committed to the success of all students, regardless of delivery medium.