It’s an interesting point that you bring up about distortion, falsifying and validity of OER content. There was a great deal of similar concern about wikipedia a few years back, but apparently the transparency of the editing system and the gradual community push to use more citations acted as a firewall against sabotage and fakery. I’m not sure if the same can be applied to OER in general. I think ( like the users of the old web 1.0) we are living in the golden age where every contributor to the open pedagogy realm is a good-intentioned one.

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Hey Heath,
You beautifully captured many emotions here. There are many thoughts that came up while reading your post. First of all, the Central Authentication System. Yes, it is a great system for security but has many lapses. My friend was visiting India and he became technologically handicapped as he could not access any university system because his phone was broken. After trying multiple sources he was able to contact help desk. So, they should definitely have a temporary pass or something. Second, I really liked your statement, “Perhaps instead of having technology policies in our syllabuses, we should treat those policies as an evolving contract with the class, one that may require renegotiation as the semester progresses”. This is such a basic requirement. Restricting something completely sometimes have a far worse effect. It should evolve as per requirement.
The last point is about values. You have described it in such a brilliant perspective. No matter how advance is the technology, we should never ever forget that it is created by humans and that it should never have the upper hand. Mix and match however much you like but ultimately you should be in control. And as long as humans are valued, I am sure the society will progress in a positive manner. Thanks for the blog!

I think sometimes we do forget that others may interpret our efforts to make a course better through trying new techniques may not be well received. I think your comment about “some parents would not be thrilled to learn that their child “was the guinea pig” in Fall 2018 Intro to Biology” is equally applicable to some students. When people have certain expectations of how they will experience something, it can be very uncomfortable for them to have “everything” changed. (Who Moved My Cheese gives a simple look at this discomfort.) We also can see that discomfort in new teaching techniques in the push back to ‘new math.’ I had no idea what this new math was, but I heard about how ridiculous it was for years before I finally found out that it’s just an awesome, innovated wa of teaching math without memorization… But we as teachers need to be aware that we sometimes may need to engage in some PR before/as we’re trying new things.

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I also sometimes need to ‘stop thinking about a solution’ in order to get the solution. One of my favorite techniques is to go do something else unrelated that is not mentally taxing. (Walking/running/washing dishes)

But usually, I experience very little of my day without some outside ‘entertainment.’ I’m listening to an audiobook or reading something or surfing the internet. or have the TV on in the background. When I do ‘nothing,’ it’s almost always with intent. It’s almost not possible for me to have accidental ‘nothing’ time and simply experience the world in the moment/with mindfulness. It’s a bit scary to think about how differently we’re changing our brains to experience the world than generations before.

Being an international student, I sometimes hear phrases that I don’t know the meaning of, or sometime I need to quickly check the pronunciation of a word before speaking in class. Being able to use my phone is extremely valuable to me at these instance and it effects my confidence for participation in class discussions greatly. I am sure I would the ever-quiet student if laptops and phones were banned in my classes.

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I really like it when it is formulated as a professional conduct issue that we all have to work to maintain. This way we are not forced into defining strict boundaries for what type of technology is considered good or bad or how much use is frowned on. Because these are mostly determined in context and not by strict rules.

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Thanks for sharing these pieces of information. It was a comprehensive and useful post. It was also nice to read the academic rankings in each country based on their own terminology.

I would like to point out that the increase in available technology has also resulted in shorter attention spans among students which makes learning, in many cases, more difficult. That is not to say that technology improvements in higher ed can’t be helpful because it can. But it must be managed appropriately to achieve the most benefit.

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Hey Ruixiang,
I understand your thoughts. I agree that the emotions that a teacher can bring in the class can’t be imitated by a machine. I generally lean anti-technology. However, playing the devil’s advocate here, I would like to bring another perspective. With the development in the field of Artificial Intelligence, I think the day won’t be too far when the robots will have equal emotions as human beings. I am not sure if you got the opportunity to hear the demo of google assistant making an appointment (https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332070/google-assistant-makes-phone-call-demo-duplex-io-2018). I thought it was quite realistic and firmly believe that there is more to come. I relate to you when you say, “machine are tools, and tools can only be tools” but if the tools become equivalent to humans, I am not sure what future holds for us.

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I think you are right that non-tenure track faculty are looked down upon by those with tenure or on tenure track – this is based on my experience as faculty. Although the tenure track faculty don’t necessarily make their opinions known because they are too busy doing all of the things you mention in order to earn tenure. I can see the point that hiring lecture and research faculty can help relieve some pressure from tenure-track faculty but feel that we need to be careful. Students are often attracted to R1 schools because they want to work with amazing researchers that are at the top of their fields. If the students don’t get access to those faculty researchers when they get to university, they they could feel it unfair. We MUST maintain a balance of both types of faculty in order to give the students the education they are paying for and helping tenure-track faculty manage their work loads. Perhaps the answer is abolishing tenure!

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