This session was absolutely excellent!! (and very humbling) Gardner Campbell and a couple of undergrads who have taken his New Media Studies course. Gardner kicks off by saying this is a curricular innovation planned not realised, although it has run at least once on his own programme, I think the "not realised" bit is about getting it across all UG curriculum. He talked about why traditional “info fluency” won’t bridge the gap:
Bolted on, not baked-in (-> oooh look a DF baking analogy has leaked out of our session and trickled into the next session)
Academic skill (serving studies) not academic inquiry (an object of study)
Tend to bypass core academic commitment: curriculum
Talking about first year writing course – and the aim to move from a service course (skills and proficiencies) to habits of mind.
Recommended text (and endorsed by the audience) The New Media Reader (Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort) - anyone read it? Sounds pretty good.
He also talked about the importance of information fluency, that it isn't (can't be) bolt on - it is about supporting “the fish that doesn’t know it is wet”. He is proposing to introduce a new media studies class positioned instead of the slightly stale general education class. Information fluency is currently interpreted by many students as finding out “learn how not to cheat on the net”. Then he emphasised the importance of “the presence of digital fluency within the curriculum” [Oh yes, there it is!! An expert has just used our term!!]
Student projects were to "make something that demonstrates what you have learned in the course and shows you have understood, using any media/web2.0 tools that are appropriate". Final project presentation night on youstream.tv as they made their presentations, and got comments across a global new media community. Yes, scary, a multi - media assessment task.
First student, David Moore, talked about "in.genio.us – a framework for intelligent online discussion boards". If an online discussion board is unregulated and open to the general public it will result in idiocy, so his project was to develop the idea of a online forum space for intelligent conversation (effective and self-regulating, identity, constraints, reciprocity) and in particular looked at how the quality of the postings was influenced by the use of reputation/contribution ratings. A bit like Vineacity - a measure of earned reputation in the Newsvine environment
http://berry.newsvine.com/_wine/vineacity
Yes, another manteau - horray!!
Second student, Serena, not going to say too much about her input but will try to track down a link to the video she showed which probably speaks for itself.
Showstoppers? Dealbreakers?
- who will teach these courses?
- what do we hope students to come away with? - can write learning outcomes, but constraining as part of the exercise (and the digital age reality) is to see what such a course or experience could possibly offer? not knowing where it is going is part of the experience - emergence
- what learning environments are most conducive to these courses? mobile/wireless
- how can we ever sell this to the faculty?
Reference: "Fate and the Possible" in On Knowing: essays for the Left Hand (Jerome Bruner, 1979)
Some thought provoking comments:
"The opportunity (and curse, sort of) is that New Media is not yet owned (and therefore stifled) by a particular discipline domain."
"The broad topic for the first year experience will be New Media, now go and make this work in your own disciplinary."
"Could use current cohort students as mentors teaching staff for next cohort for academic credit."
The syllabus of the course is available at http://www.gardnercampbell.net/syllabi/index.php?title=Introduction_to_New_Media_Studies_Spring_2008
Definitely, definitely check out the student blog from the Spring 08 cohort on the Intro to New Media Studies course. http://intronewmediastudies08.umwblogs.org/
Associated del.icio.us tags: unw_nms_s08
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4 comments:
gardner campbell rocks :)
you mention the potential difficulty of selling it to staff - do you have any insights/thoughts on how it could be sold to students so that it's not 'just another thing to learn' on top of subject specialist knowledge? just thinking back to yesterday's ci meeting where we were talking about students feeling like guinea pigs...although that conversation revolved mainly around introducing group work, it just makes me wonder.
sounds like an excellent session, anyway.
hmmm - good question. I was thinking about this after the session and how it would translate into UK HE structures. Gardner was talking about having Intro to New Media Studies as a core first year course, it was really fascinating but I did wonder how that make it significantly different from a general education/academic writing course but I think I was misunderstanding the nuances of the US curriculum. I think the killer app of this would be to combine the sentiment of the New Media Studies with the comment from the preconference about "becoming authentic in the discourse of the domain". I think interpretation of new media within the disciplinary context would help sell it. I think that (sometimes) groupwork is introduced to students just as a curriculum tool or a way of varying the learning experience, rather than exploring how groupwork operates within the discipline (in the workplace or in research) - just my opinion tho' what does anyone else think?
and yes - he rocks!
I think you raise a good point Louise about the need for authenticity in group work. However, it is more difficult in courses where students might not be taking that course to go into the discipline (one of the complaints from Ellie re motivation and interest of fellow group participants). Ellie said it felt like ticking off a box (employers like groupwork - tick) rather than groupwork for a purpose. She also pointed out that having 50% groupwork for your final year is high stress given the importance of the marks.
Your right Brian. I think there is a different way to approach this -"you're not a psychology student right now you are a psychologist engaging with the discipline and researching it and psychologists do it this way because it is the way you "do" psychology" (if that is groupwork then that's fine, if it isn't then don't) - if you see what I mean
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