Running with Scissors

Just when you thought the whole “Edupunk” thing was over, Wired had this interesting item included in this month’s “Jargon Watch” feature:

Edupunk n. Avoiding mainstream teaching tools like Powerpoint and Blackboard, edupunks bring the rebellious attitude and DIY ethos of ’70s bands like the Clash to the classroom.

Congrats, Jim – the pebble you dropped in the pond is still rippling out.

For the last two days, I’ve been attending the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s Fall Focus Session on the campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (great town, great campus). The topic of the session is Learning Spaces. We have been seeing and hearing about some interesting projects that other institutions have implemented to improve teaching and learning by creating more technology-rich spaces.
Some of the projects include “incubator classrooms” that are experimental spaces where instructors utilize different types of technologies and pedagogies.

As we see some of these projects, they often require elaborate and/or expensive equipment, along with the support personnel and instructional technology specialists needed to help the faculty member use the space to reach their instructional goals. One common concern from audience participants when seeing these projects seems to be “how do you scale that across the campus?”

On the surface, this seems like a legitimate concern, after all, who has all the time, money and support available to put these systems in the hands of all the faculty in every classroom? But the more I think about it, I’m leaning towards an opinion that this matters less than we think.

The assumption that you have a new experimental system, program, or technique that MANY faculty want to use out of the box is a false one. I’ve often found that with a new technology/technique, no matter how promising, there are some faculty who are ready to jump in and give it a try, there are some on the fence, and some who are simply not interested. This essentially spaces out the demand – you actually don’t need to deploy as widely as you think. And if you are trying new things all the time, you have different faculty ready for different techniques at different times. Thus, if you simply build the spaces that meet the needs of those that will use them, instead of over-building into every space assuming everyone will use it, you will be more efficient with your resources.

I love the idea of different pockets of effective teaching and learning technologies spread across the campus that have been tested and honed in the incubator setting. I know these pockets of technology can cause headaches as far as supporting these systems and faculty, but I believe they would be so effective and so accepted by a number of faculty as to be well worth the effort.