"Problem of Learning in Postcourse Era" Where have all the teachers gone?

Pizza Cartons, Pizza Posters

Invite faculty to students’ pizza/learning parties?











FACULTY INSIGNIFICANT, INTERCHANGEABLE?

Are faculty becoming insignificant or interchangeable?

Am I missing something? Or are the faculty missing from serious discussions of the future of higher education courses? Missing as participants? Assumed to be insignificant and interchangeable? 

POSTCOURSE ERA

"Higher education teaching practices (and curricula) sit at the potentially tense convergence of the power of experiential, ubiquitous and social learning on the one hand and rising pressure to assess and demonstrate evidence of student learning in increasingly visible ways on the other. In this context, what are some of the new and emerging ways we can see evidence of impact of digital learning technologies in the classroom and in student work? Are the places to look changing and are they at variance with conventional curricular structures that privilege courses and the formal curriculum as the center of the undergraduate experience? How might various social media tools help capture "thin slices" of student thinking and longer narratives of intellectual and social development?"

"The Problem of Learning in the Postcourse Era," Randall Bass (Georgetown University), EDUCAUSE  (ID: ELI11_223663) ELI Meetings (02/14/2011)  Slides from session  Videorecording of presentation/session

COURSES NOT DELIVERED

"Pizza & course materials can be delivered. Courses cannot. Even online. 'Delivery' denies interaction.
"In a course, learners have some meaningful access to at least one faculty member and that faculty member has some meaningful access to the learners, too.
"Faculty and students who are misled to believe that in most courses, access to course materials is equivalent to course participation, end up delivering and receiving a diluted education. - excerpt from  "A Course is not a Pizza"  TLT-SWG Steven W. Gilbert May 2, 2011.

"learners can self-organize their own pizza parties around common interests...and in a wider variety of settings.
"This seems to represent a morphing of what we see as traditional 'course-based' learning opportunities. Perhaps we are seeing the early stages of what Randy Bass has termed the 'post-course era'"  - comment by "Jeff" to blog entry "A Course is not a Pizza"  TLT-SWG Steven W. Gilbert May 2, 2011.

Image 

Photo of many empty pizza delivery cartons. "There weren't many leftovers," Nic McPhee, Flickr, http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3066/2954167050_79b2d3b6e0.jpg,
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Pizza Carton Legumes' Wall Decal - 33"W x 36"H Removable Graphic