Changing Education is Education

[So Lifelong Learning is No Longer an Option, It’s a Requirement]

Steven W. Gilbert

SIDE BAR

Moore’s Law about the development of microprocessors explains the accelerating arrival of new applications of information technology that have fostered accelerating change in the core activities and products of many industries. Similarly, Moore’s Law and the rapidly spreading use of personal computers and related telecommunications networks explain the accelerating pace at which new technology-based options for teaching and learning emerge. Many of these new options appear to offer significant benefits for higher education. However, education’s core activities of human learning and creativity depend primarily on individual human beings’ mental capabilities – not on microprocessors. So far, those capabilities have not doubled in any 18 month period, nor are they likely to. Consequently, expectations about change that are based on the accelerating pace associated with Moore’s Law are bound to result in frustration -- not fulfillment -- when applied to educational processes and institutions. [See my column about Moore’s Law in Syllabus magazine earlier this year.]

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New Options, New Challenges

Prior to the 1980s, the possibilities for changing traditional procedures for teaching and learning in higher education were scarce and difficult to implement. New structures for instruction involving the use of new media arrived slowly, if at all. Faculty members and those who helped them had little need -- and commensurately little opportunity -- to learn about or try alternative approaches to teaching and learning that would use new media and require new patterns of communication. They also had little reason to consider seriously what was already known about the value of providing information in a variety of modes to match different learning styles and abilities. To attempt such matching would have required access to materials often unavailable and a commitment of extra time and effort beyond the capacity of most faculty members. Even if learning materials about a particular topic were available in a variety of media formats, it was unlikely that the faculty member would have easy access to the equipment for examining them or that he/she could rely on most students having the equipment necessary for using them.

All that has changed rapidly in the last few years. A great many faculty, staff, and students (well beyond 50% nationwide) now have convenient access to microcomputers or terminals, word-processing, email, and the Web. The development and distribution of new teaching/learning applications based on these tools alone has exploded and shows signs of continuing. Teachers at many colleges can rely on their students’ having access to these and other basic computer-based tools and telecommunications options. [NOTE: Meanwhile, the “digital divide” is widening the gap between individuals and institutions – and even between departments in some colleges.]

Traditional course structures are now often enhanced by faculty and student access to information technology. It is no longer so difficult to imagine a course in which students have convenient access (via the Web) to several different media versions of essential information. As the flow of arriving technology-based instructional options accelerates, most of them now seem more feasible within the technology infrastructure available at many colleges and universities – and in homes.

Consequently, many faculty members and other academic leaders are paying more attention to the potential educational benefits of using such instructional options. It is no longer only the pioneers among the faculty, staff, and administration who feel the need to become involved with the new options.

New Responsibilities, New Choices – Without More Time

Many professionals in higher education are feeling more responsible for finding, learning about, selecting among, and implementing new instructional options – especially those arriving so quickly from the information technology industries or built on information technology applications that have become widely accepted and used.

This applies most obviously to the faculty, but increasingly it also applies to academic support professionals (librarians, faculty development specialists, technology support staff, and others), and academic administrators as well. Each is being asked (or asking themselves) to take on new responsibilities in addition to their continuing ones. They feel compelled to try to keep abreast of new options that arrive faster than they can manage. Some of these new choices will alter their central professional activities – activities that may be intertwined with their self-image as teachers, librarians, or other support professionals. But they feel pressed or eager to make these choices and to implement them. However, these choices often involve committing already scarce resources (money, time, space, etc.) without any guarantees of results.

While fulfilling their continuing obligations, these professionals cannot keep up with the new options, cannot feel confident of their decisions, cannot clearly justify committing major personal or institutional resources, cannot rely on a reservoir of relevant experience, and often don’t know whom they can trust for good advice and good judgment. Just keeping up with “old” responsibilities in a fast-changing environment is difficult, enough, but faculty, support professionals, and administrators are now also trying to deal with new kinds of choices.

Faculty

Most faculty members were never introduced to or trained to use mental constructs or related tools that might help them manage these new challenges effectively. Faculty members need a conceptual framework, taxonomy, set of labels , and an introduction to relevant models. They also need guided practice at using these new intellectual tools. They need to know how and where to find the options most likely to be relevant to their own instructional goals and their institution’s educational mission. In fact, academic support professionals and administrators have very similar needs.

New Collaboration

Many of the most educationally attractive new options require something new: they require collaboration. They require resources and expertise beyond the reach of individual faculty members. Many new initiatives require institution-wide support for successful implementation. Getting a diversely representative group to suggest and endorse a recommendation may also lead to the kind of widespread engagement necessary for success. As expectations for implementing new educational uses of information technology rise, the demand for related support services grows dramatically.

Academic Support Professionals

But the “traditional” workloads are growing for technology support professionals, librarians, and faculty development specialists as the information and technology infrastructure keeps getting richer, more complex, and less stable. And with the growing possibilities for linking information systems of more components of an entire college or university, the list of offices or departments that control resources relevant to teaching and learning also grows. The time available to these support professionals for fulfilling their new expectations is shrinking.

Administrators and Institutions

And academic administrators fare no better. They are being confronted with increasing pressure to make major resource allocation decisions about new uses of information technology throughout their institutions. Decisions for which they also have had no preparation and where they don’t know whom they can trust to guide them. Most of these administrators have advanced in their fields in part due to their expertise and self-confidence – their mastery and knowledge of a field. Now they find they must continue to meet their traditional responsibilities while also dealing with new kinds of challenges. Ones that make them feel as if they are once again beginners – and unable to take the necessary steps on their own. Top-ranking academic administrators are especially vulnerable to these pressures and paradoxes.

No single individual or single institution can do everything that would be desirable with new instructional options for using information technology. But the rising competition among colleges and universities for students, faculty, and grants is now believed by many to be dependent in part on their ability to use information technology to improve teaching and learning. Fear of competition has spurred many to commit to move forward. None can just wait. Consequently, none can entirely avoid risk.

All of the Above Are Already Busy and Need Additional “Deep Learning”

Most of these people are already busy. Their “traditional” job responsibilities are not diminishing. They are unlikely to have (or take) the time necessary to learn independently about the new options and how to use them -- except for the pioneers among them who enjoy engaging with new technologies and pedagogies on their own. The non-pioneers (the “mainstream”) have neither the time nor the preparation to respond effectively to this growing sense of responsibility to learn about viable new instructional options. They cannot keep up, nor can they slow down.

To take full advantage of -- even to cope with – the exciting new opportunities for improving teaching and learning with technology, not only do all these people need to acquire new knowledge and skills, but they also need “deep learning”. In effect, the faculty members, support professionals, and administrators are being asked to think in new ways and to behave in new ways – almost a definition of “deep learning.”.

Conclusion – “Changing Education is Education” and the Need for Lifelong Learning

The magnitude of the challenge of improving teaching and learning with technology makes it impossible for most individuals and most institutions on their own to keep up with the relevant options -- or to meet their own fast-rising expectations. The pace of change based on new educational uses of information technology is not going to slow down in the foreseeable future. The need for new knowledge, skills, and “deep learning” among faculty, support professionals, and administrators will increase. Therefore, the process of changing education more widely and deeply is, itself, an educational process – a transformative one. Changing Education is Education.

Changing education in this way IS a transformative, permanent, learning experience for everyone involved. So, lifelong learning, for educators, is no longer a choice, it is a responsibility. And, finally, professional educators should apply all their skills and experience to providing the kind of education for themselves and their colleagues that will most effectively meet these new internal challenges of change – consistent with the educational missions and resources of their institutions. [And that might very well include using new educational applications of information technology!]

If changing education is education, then it cannot be done quickly, casually, or easily. It will require much good will, direction, and hard work.

This is not really a new argument or description of what is necessary to improve education. However, the new options provided by information technology have raised the stakes and the workload. Increasing the quality and accessibility of education and information will be worth the effort – it already is.

For more discussion of these ideas and for an overview of related recommendations, subscribe to the AAHESGIT listserver (information available at WWW.TLTGROUP.ORG) and see the “Dimensions of Change” chart at <http://www.tltgroup.org/gilbert/VWWTCyclesofChangeChart3-30-01.htm>.

SIDEBAR

We’re riding in a car on a nightmarish freeway. There are only fast lanes. Someone is shooting and pieces are falling off vehicles all around us. Our car makes peculiar noises and lurches. People on the median are yelling at us to keep going, not to give up, not to slow down. Our radio blares a message that we cannot continue on this route. We need to take some new turns and repair our car -- while accelerating.

Can we form a convoy? With enough drivers, passengers, and vehicles together so that some can drive/steer/lead while others are making the repairs? And still others are figuring out how to modify our car and find a new route without ever slowing down.

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SIDEBAR

“We’re just too tired to fight anymore.” Was the explanation given at one university I visited last year. I had asked a group representing diverse offices and departments why they seemed so unusually effective and congenial about working together – a rarity in my experience.

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