"In shadowy, silent distance grew the iceberg too": universities, technology, work and life
The discovery that Music for Deckchairs has been described as a top ten “Australian social media influencer” is surprising, to say the least. I know who has influenced me over a long time in the Australian online public sphere, and it’s not me. I’ve been blogging below the radar for less than a year, and have been on Twitter for precisely five minutes. In fact, I’m only on Twitter at all thanks to the colleagues who have travelled with me…
Continue ReadingThis week at Umeå University in Northern Sweden, I was taken to see a class being taught by videoconference. I’m familiar with this way of working; all the students seemed engaged and happy, and the teacher was relaxed and obviously very experienced. The room was a good size, and the class was discussing critical thinking. So far, so routine. But there’s something about the strange warping of distance and time that occurs when you can see someone sitting in a…
Continue Reading“The education space” is an imprecise sort of street address that’s beginning to bother me. It seems to mean something more than itself: not the precise space within which teaching or learning actually occurs, but the larger territory of business operations that brings together all those with an eye on the profits to be had from the future of education as a peculiar hybrid of market and service. And this week, there’s been some agitation in the education space. Firstly,…
Continue ReadingJoshua Kim at Inside Higher Ed feels that those of us who write about ed tech should mind our manners a bit. I want to like this argument a whole lot more than I do. The appeal to collegiality and respect is a winner, and I do agree that right at this moment it could be painful to be watching the global ticker feed on online learning if that’s your line of work, especially if you’re still at the startup…
Continue ReadingTenured Radical is asking the question that should be required reading for every CIO, CTO, LMS suitor, and higher ed tech commentator: if computers are such a blessing to higher ed, how come their use is actively extending the working lives of their users to such a damaging degree? The series of events she describes will have elicited low moans of sympathy from all of us working in writing-intensive courses online: an innovative learning task set up to use a…
Continue ReadingIt’s not really my business, but it seems to me that the promise that competition delivers consumer benefits is in the “If I had a dollar for every time … ” category of overuse. Mostly this proposition seems to be based on the assumption that if I’m selling lemonade next to someone else selling lemonade, we’re going to compete for the lemonade market either by offering superior or cheaper lemonade, and either way, the passing parade gets a better deal…
Continue ReadingI’m struck by the coincidence of Jonathan Rees and Ferdinand von Prondzynski both writing, in different ways, about the significance to academics of being able to set their own compass. Not only do we hope to be able to research and teach in areas that are the best fit with our skills and principles, but we also prefer to work for institutions that are able to determine the best mix of features that suits their operating context. Whether you call this…
Continue ReadingPloughing through the Pew Research report on whether university presidents think the same as members of the general public when it comes to the value of online learning, I’m thrilled to discover that the opposite of online isn’t bricks and mortar any more. Such a relief, as this image is wearing out from its current overuse in Australian media commentary as a symbol of both capital investment in the physical fabric of universities, and cultural investment in traditional teaching practices,…
Continue ReadingOne of the odd features of messages sent to us by our colleagues in administration is that their signatures are showing the work of some pretty committed corporate decision making to advance the brand in all circumstances, even in the very small print at the bottom of an email. It’s a bit like academic colleagues who have taken to listing their latest publication and leadership roles at the foot of every correspondence, a move whose target audience isn’t entirely clear….
Continue ReadingIt’s beginning to annoy me that every time I enter a committee room, I see the same faces, just as they see me. Two things about this bother me. First, as as proportion of the total workforce, there’s a really small number of academics who are willing to do this sort of backstage work. This is work that’s vital for a university to tick along, and in principle academics like the idea of sharing the governance, just to make sure…
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