How many mailboxes, email accounts, voice mailboxes, etc. do you have? How many of the messages you receive can you read/listen and respond to within the same day? Do you ever feel both overconnected and disconnected at the same time?
Also see the Overloaditorium blog at
www.tltgroup.org/overloaditorium.htm
Introduction Beyond
Information Overload
Getting Beyond
Overconnected and Disconnected?
Connected
Education: New Options, Pedagogical
Consciousness, Safe Classrooms
Work and Information
Overload
Support Service Crisis
Collaborative Change
The Fundamental questions
"I'll be staying at
home tomorrow I really need to get some work done." How many times have you heard this from
colleagues and friends in the last year?
How many times have you said it yourself?
"We've been playing catch-up so long. Until recently, we always knew what we _had_ to do. But now, the opportunities to make really
bonehead choices have multiplied enormously.
And we have even less time left over from our ongoing routine
responsibilities." Phil Long,
MIT.
Do you ever make a list of
priorities in the morning for your work, and then at the end of the day notice
that you havent begun the first item?
· Getting Beyond Overconnected and Disconnected? |
1. How can each of us, individually, avoid being both overconnected
and disconnected? That is, how can we
each find a reasonable balance between taking advantage of the increasing
variety of brief, asynchronous communications without losing too many opportunities
for more meaningful face-to-face or direct voice interaction?
2. How can information technology's new capabilities be used to
improve teaching and learning without impeding our efforts to achieve the old
educational values we cherish most?
·
Connected Education:
New Options,
|
3. What can be done to help faculty members who become "pedagogically conscious"? I.e, faculty members who
- are aware of the rapidly multiplying number of attractive pedagogical options available and
-
feel responsible for making conscious and conscientious choices about teaching and
learning?
How can they be rewarded for
making such efforts? [How can they at
least avoid being punished for acting on such concerns?]
4. What are the characteristics of face-to-face interactions that we
need to recognize and take advantage of as educators? In what ways can electronic media be used to foster (the same?
other kinds of?) "human moments"?
There are certainly moments of intense human connection that can be
mediated: love letters being a time-honored example. Should we reserve the term "human moment" for instances
that involve face-to-face interaction (even across twenty rows of seats)? See work of Edward Hallowell, e.g. at,
http://www.tltgroup.org/OK/SessionMainPage.htm#_Toc528580883
5. How do we change the
classroom so that it becomes a connected, safe place, where cynical behavior is
not rewarded? How can a faculty member
maintain the rigor of learning an academic discipline while developing an
environment that fosters connectedness?
Tom Marino of Temple University Medical School says: "I have found that as we try to change
the classroom and try to foster collaboration, connectedness, safety, that at
least for many of my students, they translate this to mean a weak,
wishy-washy, non-challenging classroom. When you then ask them to work hard they are
surprised and angry."
· Work and Information Overload |
6. How often do you hear colleagues say "I'll be staying at
home tomorrow because I really need to get some work done"? What conditions does that reflect? Do you see anyone who is exempt from the
rising workload?
7. Are there people at your institution who have developed effective
ways of managing a large number of electronic mail messages each day? What are their secrets?
8. What existing services and expertise could help those who are suffering
from the consequences of an increasing workload, changing conditions, and new
expectations? What new services or
resources could you imagine would help?
Anything via the Web? Anything
that might be developed and sustained by inter-departmental collaboration?
Inter-institutional
collaboration?
· Support Service Crisis |
9. Are expectations about improving teaching
and learning with information technology rising rapidly at your
institution? Are the resources and
services available to faculty for this purpose increasing as rapidly? At all?
Decreasing? Can you describe
some local symptoms of this "Support Service Crisis"?
10. What are some of the unique resources that
might be mobilized to combat this crisis?
Students (as technology and pedagogy assistants)? Faculty who are able and willing to help
their colleagues ("Compassionate Pioneers")? Expertise of academic support professionals? Others?
11. What might be done to help everyone see how
to match expectations more closely with available resources? How can academic leaders more realistically
anticipate and prepare for the consequences of encouraging more faculty members
to become more deeply engaged with instructional uses of information technology?
· Collaborative Change |
12. In many
institutions of higher education it seems that a certain level of
depersonalized disconnectedness is essential for effective operation of the
system. Is this a mirage or an
essential characteristic? What can be
done to enable more people to participate more effectively with less fear and
cynicism?
Excerpt from Hallowell's book _Connect_: "If an individual tries to create a
connected atmosphere in a disconnected workplace, he must be prepared for the
group to attack him. The members of a
disconnected workplace often have hidden reasons for wanting the workplace to
stay the way it is. This is why, early
in my training, I was taught the adage. 'no good deed goes unpunished.'"
13. How and when can you enable more people to
discuss these questions and act on the implications of their answers?
As all this change
continues,
14. What do you most hope to gain?
15. What do you cherish most and hope not to
lose?
16. How much can you work for these goals?
17. Who can help you?
18. Whom can you help?