And finally, the last post for this batch of reflections. I’m going to focus on my particular interest: how the look and feel on an online digital environment aligns with the content of the educational project. I’m deeply interested in the phenomenological reading of online digital environments and thinking about how these enhance and enrich the educational endeavor, or how they distract or constrain the user’s experience.

As a direct result of my experience of WebCT and this course, I have undertaken a scholarly investigation into this subject. It isn’t that this experience has been the single motivation for this work, it is more that this experience has acted as a catalyst of a subject that I have been talking about for some time and now the talk is moving to a new level of action and research.

My interest in the subject translated into a presentation at the recent conference on Complexity Thinking and Educational Research held here at UBC http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/conferences/2007/information.htm. I asked the question, if not WebCT, then what? With that question in mind, I started an online environment for the presentation that incorporated some of the elements that I feel deprived of.

Here is the link to that site, a word of instruction – the hand written text on the left of the screen are links and lead the reader to different pages on the site. The site is not finished, you will know when you get to the unfinished parts.

http://www.jennyarntzen.com/complexityconferenceve/

In the discussion in class, it seemed that the questions and answered were guided by an assumption that WebCT was the only application or instructional approach that could be used, and that there might be ways to improve access to the application or make suggestions to WebCT for changes to incorporate.

My point is that we need to expand our notions of what is possible for providing online educational digital environments. We don’t need to use a one size fits all approach, we don’t need to use the same thing everytime. From a pedagogical, aesthetic, phenomenological and curricular perspective, I wouldn’t bother making suggestions to WebCT for change, because the software itself carries embedded assumptions of the dominance of text, authorization, control and expertise.

My proposal is that anyone that wants to take the trouble to figure out how to use WebCT might be the same person that could figure out how to create their own online teaching and learning environment.

Contrary to popular opinion, our occupation of digital online environments does not have to be driven by templates and ideas of ‘expert’. I encourage everyone to explore their beliefs and assumptions about what is possible in constructing online learning environments, especially ideas about what looks ‘professional’.

I had a lot of problems with this presentation on the millenial learner. I found the presentation assumptive of both the class and the characteristics of the learner being presented. As an older student in the class, it seemed that the questions and generalizations made to the class were based on the characteristics of the class being of a certain age group, of which I felt excluded. I finally withdrew from participating in the question/answer portion of the presentation because I realized my age and experience were not being taken into account.

I also had problems with authoritative, essentialist tone of the presentation. I didn’t sense acknowledgement of the diversity of any given age group, that these generalizations might apply to some aspect of the learner profile, but one cannot assume that all students that fall withinn the millenial age group are going to have all the characteristics presented. In addition, I found the characteristics specific to a socio-economic group, those privileged to have helicoptering parents and opportunities to participate in extra curriculular activities.

I sensed a judgemental tone, a bootcamp attitude toward these students, that they are somehow lacking and it is up to the instructors to show the students where they are deficient and then pull them up by failing them. I have huge problems with this approach. When we talk about the barriers for diversity, inclusivity and academic success, a strategy that fails students to somehow build character traits seems cruel and unjust. Not only does it ignore the context of individual learner locations and what they need to engage in post secondary education, it also applies a one size fits all solution, a standardized instrument, to bring a complex student body to a new level of functionality. One of the assumptions that I found particularly troublesome on this point was the complete lack of instructional practices reflection. Given the nature of the millenial student characteristics, what is the best way to ensure engagement and academic succes? Are our methods and approaches useful to both the students and the institution?

Another point that bothered me was the notion that only the best will be hired. The best at what? Being able to provide the right answer, the answer an instructor expects, on an assessment instrument? This has been disproven many times. Where is the appreciation of emotional intelligence? Creativity? Leadership? Teambuilding? Critical thinking? Why assume that assessment methods and procedures of the past continue to be appropriate today? I found this part of the presentation deeply disturbing, when we take into account all the students that are either visibly or hidden disabled, ESL or socio-economicall disenfranchised. In this aspect, I found the presentation one sided, hegemonic and institutionally centered.

Finally, if we are going to learn anything from where we have been, I think it is to understand that there is no one truth, no one answer, that we are learning to live within a complex, integrated world, where individualistic notions of dominance must be questioned. I did not sense any of this self reflective analysis in the presentation. I found it judgemental, condescending and positing a privileged perspective out of touch with the wide range of contexts, juxtapositions and constructions of meaning that we all negotiate on a daily basis.