Learning Technology in Higher Education

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My experience implementing technological solutions in higher ed has been striking: some college professors are surprisingly opposed to technological change. I see some overlap with why K-12 teachers don't want to implement technological education tools such as lack of training, lack of motivation, fear of change, etc. But a few things stand out for higher education specifically:

1. Professor status. Credentialed profs aren't exactly growing on trees. Small schools have a hard time attracting and retaining anyone with a PhD or anyone who has been published in big academic journals or anyone with millions of dollars in grant money. Professor status means that if the proff is breathing and credentialed they can pretty much do what they want with impunity. Their reputation in whatever obscure field they teach precedes them... and excuses them from such bothersome things as learning technology (or good pedagogy and instructional design, for that matter).
   
   

Creation Vs. Consumption

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Education should ideally push students and educators beyond fear to experience the beauty and freedom of original creation. Creation means that students craft organic and uncensored responses to ideas. Creating means critiquing, re-working, and re-creating someone else's ideas into something entirely new, doing original research or putting theory into practice. Encouraging creation, of course, comes with built-in risks for both students and educators.

Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert sums up some of the primary risks for students:

“Let me list for you some of the many ways in which you might be afraid to live a more creative life: You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better."

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Two Alternatives to Indoctrinationatory Pedagogy

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"In an indoctrinatory classroom, the employment of alternative norms or standards is seen not merely as another way of doing or judging however improper or misguided, but as nonsensical." 

- McDonough (2011)

In pedagogical terms, we often observe two extremes in educational philosophy. Liberal educators preach the twin doctrines of "rational autonomy" and "critical inquiry," while traditionalists tend toward a pedagogy of indoctrination, coercion, and rote recitation. Obviously, education exists on a spectrum between these two extremes and no institution perfectly lives up to its ideals whether liberal or conservative.

In this blog post, we will first define liberal educational philosophy and examine whether or not it lives up to its professed ideals. We will then consider an alternative third possibility that lies between the liberal and traditionalist educational philosophies called initiation, as described by McDonough and applied to Christian education by Reichard. Finally, we will consider some implications for teachers and educators at EBI, making practical recommendations for change

Education Blog Purpose Statement

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DiPietro, Ferdig, Black and Preston (2008) claim that, "The skills needed for teaching in an online learning environment support a teacher's function as a point of intersection for pedagogy, technology, and content (Russel, 2004; Savery, 2005)". Advancing the art of blending and balancing the concerns of pedagogy, technology, and content is an urgent task for all teachers at EBI. Pedagogy, technology, and content are three key pillars of all good education. When one or several of these are ignored, missing, or underdeveloped, student learning suffers. 

The teaching style at EBI is often didactic, and our pedagogy is overtly religious. We spiritualize learning and have embraced educational theories and philosophies that support overly simplistic conclusions about how education works. One example: At times we present too much information in a course (or program). We even use the metaphor "drinking from a fire hose" to describe this phenomenon. Sometimes we acknowledge the problem but in the next breath we tell students to “pray“ or “ask God for strength“ to help them understand and learn the material. 

My blog is designed to demonstrate and promulgate the latest research in online course design, blended course design, best practices in online education, educational psychology, and the latest trends in education in order to show that students learn best when course material is carefully designed with learner needs in mind. That is, when the material is selected, sequenced, and chunked appropriately based on learner needs and and then learning is measured against predetermined learning objectives. We should respect students by carefully studying concepts such as information load, course development standards, evaluation, learning objectives, and the latest trends in adult education.

Indoctrination and Intellectual Abuse

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Indoctrination and intellectual abuse can and do happen anywhere, even in secular institutions. Iona and Crasner (2016) describe the difference between education and indoctrination by stating, "Education means critical thinking with regards to the content of ... received information. Indoctrination is intended to influence targets to believe in what they are told without questioning the veracity or authenticity of the conveyed information." The authors go on to relate the dangers of religious indoctrination particularly in the Muslim faith in the Middle East.

Joshua D. Reichard (2013) wrote in the Journal of Education & Christian Belief, "'indoctrination' may be defined as deliberately teaching beliefs without supporting rationalization, deliberately falsifying evidence contrary to stated beliefs, censoring and omitting particular beliefs, or teaching beliefs coercively." He goes on to quote McDonough (2011),

"...indoctrination occurs when all aspects of learning are ‘overshadowed or subsumed by the assumption of a given set of truths’ and students are coerced to speak and act in only one way that is deemed ‘meaningful’” (McDonough, 2011, p. 708). 

This last definition is particularly relevant to our context as our “distinctives” and “core values” certainly overshadow all learning at EBI. Also, we exert overt and covert coercion in an attempt to get students to agree with a certain, narrow doctrinal perspective before they get “recommended on” to the one place that will accept all EBI credits toward a Bachelor’s degree.

Note that the definition of indoctrination from McDonough applies to the overall culture that educators foster as well as to the subject matter that they teach. The ways that students speak and act toward each other are, in many cases, the most important part of the indoctrination process. A general climate full of narrow-minded, bigoted, and opinionated students (as an example) will tend to perpetuate itself and contribute to the indoctrination of future groups of students.

A Historical Perspective