I am currently working my way through Thomas College’s Distant Education graduate course. It is a great class, I am learning a lot, and I am happy to consider the possibilities.
Three weeks in, though, I have read some disturbing news in this book. As far as I can tell, it is the death-knell of the lone academic.
The land of higher ed has long valued their independent instructors. America, long the patron saint of independents, of course, has since the 1950′s been bent on becoming the institutional equivalent of “The Organizational Man” even as the organization no longer want to support all those people. Today the organization only wants your allegiance, not your liabilities.
OK, for the younger set: I’m saying we are becoming the Borg out of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Except the Borg liked their component parts more than corporate Americans like their fellow Americans. Oops. That’s a different screed!
But as in everything else in America, this land once built by individuals and independents now values only group sessions, creation by committee, and organizational ownership.
The point that started this dark introspection: the Instructional Design model as recounted by the course textbook. I have no doubt that it is accurate, but it is frightening to me in its statements of fact:
“The single mode open universities use the team approach to course design…. [snip] Each course is designed and produced by a team of 20 or more people, of which every member is a specialist.”
They are talking about the Course Team Model, as opposed to the far simplier Author Editor model of distant education course design.
The book goes on, reveling in the greatness of the group model of design, and in the necessity of drafts, meetings, planning groups, the superior results, the need for adhering to a style and a schedule, on and on and on. I get it. I really do. And I am sure they are right. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
Eventually, it gets down to this long two sentence paragraph. Ready?
“Managing the course development process in a course team is a very complex business, with many tasks to be accomplished by different people. It is usually desirable to have a senior academic to head up the team and steer the process, and an administrator to be responsible for ensuring each task in the development schedule (which often lasts 1-2 years) is completed on time.”
I bet.
And, I cannot imagine a more accurate version of Dante’s rings of hell.
I have taken, delivered, written, created and sold online courses. I was present at the creation of some of the first two way TV conferences that acted as high tech DE in the 1980s. I helped out on live satellite, or live broadcast conferences. I created video ‘how to’ courses for a college. I helped design some teleconferencing rooms for DE for schools, and made much of it possible by helping create the grants and delivering the tech know-how to make it all happen.
There are many things I’ve done that I’ve not enjoyed, but the above description of creating an online instruction would certainly would quality as a bad day x 730 in my book. Ugh. Just ugh.
I can’t help it – in my mind all I can see is a vision of a modern day chain gang, shackled together, swinging sledge hammers high, stuck going as slowly as their slowest detail-consumed associate. All in pursuit of … academic excellence?
I know the book is right. I know it is likely the only way to do this.
But gosh, I hate to hear it.
As in everything else in America, the independent is being pushed out, and the team approach is the only approach. Sigh.
“Respect my Author-i-ty,” says a media icon.
Ah, the reality of it all. I guess it means education, and America, are growing up.
Oops – wait a minute! Buried down below, in the middle of a subsequent paragraph, is this caveat:
“In America universities [snip] it has proven, so far, impossible to find an organizational structure that can demand more of [the faculty's] time than that required by the author editor model.”
I think that unwieldy sentence might be saying their lauded, wished-for Course Team model might not yet be the law of the land!
Oops. Maybe a different media icon is still in the saddle! Individualism still reigns in America!
Though what I keep hearing is, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” It is not a real victory of independence – simply just a delay of a few more minutes before the game clock runs out on American Individualism….
But for right now, academic freedom lives to fight another day! (smirk!)
