From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments

• Essays
• Teaching and Technology
• anthropology
• Assessment
• information revolution
• multimedia
• participatory learning
• Web 2.0

Thereis something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digitalartifacts of over one billion people and computers networked togethercollectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information persecond. While most of our classrooms were built under the assumptionthat information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire bodyof human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in oneform or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, andiPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritativeknowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitousdigital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authorityis continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.¹

This new mediaenvironment can be enormously disruptive to our current teachingmethods and philosophies. As we increasingly move toward anenvironment of instant and infinite information, it becomes lessimportant for students to know, memorize, or recall information, andmore important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share,discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move frombeing simply knowledgeable to being knowledge-able.

The sheer quantity ofinformation now permeating our environment is astounding, but moreimportantly, networked digital information is also qualitativelydifferent than information in other forms. It has the potential to becreated, managed, read, critiqued, and organized very differentlythan information on paper and to take forms that we have not yet evenimagined. To understand the true potentials of this “informationrevolution” on higher education, we need to look beyond theframework of “information.” For at the base of this“information revolution” are new ways of relating to oneanother, new forms of discourse, new ways of interacting, new kindsof groups, and new ways of sharing, trading, and collaborating.Wikis, blogs, tagging, social networking and other developments thatfall under the “Web 2.0” buzz are especially promising inthis regard because they are inspired by a spirit of interactivity,participation, and collaboration. It is this “spirit” ofWeb 2.0 which is important to education. The technology issecondary. This is a social revolution, not a technological one, andits most revolutionary aspect may be the ways in which it empowers usto rethink education and the teacher-student relationship in analmost limitless variety of ways.

这是一场社会变革，而不是技术变革。它最重要的创新或许是它授权我们在几乎没有任何限制的各种方式中重新思考教育和教师与学生关系。

Physical, Social,and Cognitive Structures Working Against Us
But there are manystructures working against us. Our physical structures were builtprior to an age of infinite information, our social structures formedto serve different purposes than those needed now, and the cognitivestructures we have developed along the way now struggle to grapplewith the emerging possibilities.

Thephysical structures are easiest to see, and are on prominent displayin any large “state of the art” classroom. Rows of fixedchairs often face a stage or podium housing a computer from which theprofessor controls at least 786,432 points of light on a massivescreen. Stadium seating, sound-absorbing panels and other acoustictechnologies are designed to draw maximum attention to the professorat the front of the room. The “message” of thisenvironment is that to learn is to acquire information, thatinformation is scarce and hard to find (that's why you have to cometo this room to get it), that you should trust authority forgood information, and that good information is beyond discussion(that's why the chairs don't move or turn toward one another). Inshort, it tells students to trust authority and followalong.

This is a message thatvery few faculty could agree with, and in fact some may use the roomto launch spirited attacks against it. But the content of such talksare overshadowed by the ongoing hour-to-hour and day-to-day practiceof sitting and listening to authority for information and thenregurgitating that information on exams.

Many faculty may hopeto subvert the system, but a variety of social structures workagainst them. Radical experiments in teaching carry no guaranteesand even fewer rewards in most tenure and promotion systems, even ifthey are successful. In many cases faculty are required to assesstheir students in a standardized way to fulfill requirements for thecurriculum. Nothing is easier to assess than information recall onmultiple-choice exams, and the concise and “objective”numbers satisfy committee members busy with their own teaching andresearch.

Even in situations inwhich a spirit of exploration and freedom exist, where faculty arefree to experiment to work beyond physical and social constraints,our cognitive habits often get in the way. Marshall McLuhan calledit “the rear-view mirror effect,” noting that “Wesee the world through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards intothe future.”²

Most of our assumptionsabout information are based on characteristics of information onpaper. On paper we thought of information as a“thing” with a material form, and we created elaboratehierarchies to classify each piece of information in its own logicalplace. But as David Weinberger and Clay Shirky have demonstrated,networked digital information is fundamentally different thaninformation on paper.³ And each digital innovation seems to shake usfree from yet another assumption we once took for granted.

Even something assimple as the hyperlink taught us that information can be in morethan one place at one time, challenging our traditional space-timebased notions of information as a “thing” that has to be“in a place.” Google began harnessing the links andrevolutionized our research with powerful machine-assisted searching.

Bloggingcame along and taught us that anybody can be a creator ofinformation. Suddenly anybody can create a blog in a matter ofseconds. And people have responded. Technorati now reportsthat there are over 133 million blogs, almost 133 million more thanthere were just five years ago. YouTube and other video sharingsites have sparked similar widespread participation in the productionof video. Over 10,000 hours of video are uploaded to the webeveryday. In the past six months more material has been uploaded toYouTube than all of the content ever aired on major networktelevision. While such media beg for participation, our lecturehalls are still sending the message, “follow along.”

Wikipediahas taught us yet another lesson, that a networked informationenvironment allows people to work together in new ways to createinformation that can rival (and even surpass) the content of expertsby almost any measure. The message of Wikipedia is not “trustauthority” but “explore authority.” Authorizedinformation is not beyond discussion on Wikipedia, information isauthorized through discussion, and this discussion isavailable for the world to see and even participate in. This cultureof discussion and participation is now available on any website withthe emerging “second layer” of the web throughapplications like Diigowhich allow you to add notes and tags to any website anywhere.

Andas we note and tag these sites, we are also collectively organizingthem, so that the notion that this new media environment is too bigand disorganized for anybody to find anything worthwhile and relevantis simply not the case. Our old assumption that information is hardto find, is trumped by the realization that if we set up ourhyper-personalized digital network effectively, information canfind us. For example, I have set up my own Netvibesportal so that the moment anybody anywhere tags something withcertain keywords I am interested in I will immediately receive a linkto the item. It is like continuously working with thousands ofresearch associates around the world.

Taken together, thisnew media environment demonstrates to us that the idea of learning asacquiring information is no longer a message we can afford to send toour students, and that we need to start redesigning our learningenvironments to address, leverage, and harness the new mediaenvironment now permeating our classrooms.

总之，新的媒体环境向我们表明，作为获取信息的学习观念，不再是我们能够送给学生信息，而是我们需要开始重新设计我们的学习环境去，以解说、改变和利用现在遍布我们教室的新媒体环境。

A Crisis ofSignificance
Unfortunately, manyteachers only see the disruptive possibilities of these technologieswhen they find students Facebooking, texting, IMing, or shoppingduring class. Though many blame the technology, these activities arejust new ways for students to tune out, part of the much biggerproblem I have called “the crisis of significance,” thefact that many students are now struggling to find meaning andsignificance in their education.⁴

Nothing good will comeof these technologies if we do not first confront the crisis ofsignificance and bring relevance back into education. In some waysthese technologies act as magnifiers. If we fail to address thecrisis of significance, the technologies will only magnify theproblem by allowing students to tune out more easily and completely.With total and constant access to their entire network of friends,we might as well be walking into the food court in the student unionand trying to hold their attention. On the other hand, if we workwith students to find and address problems that are real andsignificant to them, they can then leverage the networked informationenvironment in ways that will help them achieve the“knowledge-ability” we hope for them.

We have had our why's,how's, and what's upside-down, focusing too much on whatshould be learned, then how, and often forgetting the whyaltogether. In a world of nearly infinite information, we must firstaddress why, facilitate how, and let the whatgenerate naturally from there.As infinite informationshifts us away from a narrow focus on information, we begin torecognize the importance of the form of learning over thecontent of learning. It isn't that content is not important;it is simply that it must not take precedence over form.But even as we shiftour focus to the “how” of learning, there is still thequestion of “what” is to be learned. After all, ourcourses have to be about something. Usually our courses arearranged around “subjects.” Postman and Weingartner notethat the notion of “subjects” has the unwelcome effect ofteaching our students that “English is not History and Historyis not Science and Science is not Art . . . and a subject is somethingyou 'take' and, when you have taken it, you have 'had'it.” Always aware of the hidden metaphors underlying our mostbasic assumptions, they suggest calling this “the VaccinationTheory of Education” as students are led to believe that oncethey have “had” a subject they are immune to it and neednot take it again.⁵

Not Subjects but Subjectivities
As an alternative, Ilike to think that we are not teaching subjects but subjectivities:ways of approaching, understanding, and interacting with the world.Subjectivities cannot be taught. They involve an introspectiveintellectual throw-down in the minds of students. Learning a newsubjectivity is often painful because it almost always involves whatpsychologist Thomas Szasz referred to as “an injury to one'sself-esteem.”⁶ You have to unlearn perspectives that may havebecome central to your sense of self.

To illustrate what Imean by subjectivities over subjects, I have created a list ofsubjectivities that I am trying to help students attain whilelearning the “subject” of anthropology:

• Our worldview is not natural and unquestionable, but culturally and historically specific.
• We are globally interconnected in ways we often do not realize.
• Different aspects of our lives and culture are connected and affect one another deeply.
• Our knowledge is always incomplete and open to revision.
• We are the creators of our world.
• Participation in the world is not a choice, only how we participate is our choice.

Even a quick scan of these subjectivities willreveal that they can only be learned, explored, and adopted throughpractice. We can't “teach” them. We can only createenvironments in which the practices and perspectives are nourished,encouraged, or inspired (and therefore continually practiced).

My own experiments inthis regard led to the creation the World Simulation, now thecenterpiece of my Introduction to CulturalAnthropology course at Kansas State University. As the name implies,the world simulation is an activity in which we try to simulate theworld. Of course, in order to simulate the world, we need to knoweverything we can about it. So while the course is set up much likea typical cultural anthropology course, moving through the samereadings and topics, all of these learnings are ultimately focusedaround one big question, “How does the world work?”

Studentsare co-creators of every aspect of the simulation, and are asked toharness and leverage the new media environment to find information,theories, and tools we can use to answer our big question. Eachstudent has a specific role and expertise to develop. A world map issuperimposed on the class and each student is asked to become anexpert on a specific aspect of the region in which they findthemselves. Using this knowledge, they work in 15-20 small groups tocreate realistic cultures, step-by-step, as we go through eachaspect of culture in class. This allows them to apply the knowledgethey learn in the course and to recognize the ways different aspectsof culture--economic, social, political, and religiouspractices and institutions--are integrated in a culturalsystem.

In the final weeks ofthe course we explore how different cultures around the world areinterconnected and how they relate to one another. Students continueto harness and leverage the new media environment to learn more aboutthese interconnections, and use the wiki to work together to createthe “rules” for our simulation. They face the dauntingtask of creating a way to simulate colonization, revolution, theemergence of a global economy, war and diplomacy, and environmentalchallenges. Along the way, they are exploring someof the most important challenges now facing humanity.

The World Simulationitself only takes 75-100 minutes and moves through 650 metaphoricalyears, 1450-2100. It is recorded by students on twenty digital videocameras and edited into one final "world history" videousing clips from real world history to illustrate thecorrespondences. We watch the video together in the final weeks ofthe class, using it as a discussion starter for contemplating ourworld and our role in its future. By then it seems as if we have thewhole world right before our eyes in one single classroom - profoundcultural differences, profound economic differences, profoundchallenges for the future, and one humanity. We find ourselves notjust as co-creators of a simulation, but as co-creators of the worlditself, and the future is up to us.

Managing a learningenvironment such as this poses its own unique challenges, but thereis one simple technique, which makes everything else fall into place: love and respect your students and they will love and respect youback. With the underlying feeling of trust and respect thisprovides, students quickly realize the importance of their role asco-creators of the learning environment and they begin to takeresponsibility for their own education.

New Models ofAssessment for New Media Environments: The Next Frontier.
All of this vexestraditional criteria for assessment and grades. This is the nextfrontier as we try to transform our learning environments. When Ispeak frankly with professors all over the world, I find that, likeme, they often find themselves jury-rigging old assessment tools toserve the new needs brought into focus by a world of infiniteinformation. Content is no longer king, but many of our tools havebeen habitually used to measure content recall. For example, I haveoften found myself writing content-based multiple-choice questions ina way that I hope will indicate that the student has mastered a newsubjectivity or perspective. Of course, the results are notsatisfactory. More importantly, these questions ask students towaste great amounts of mental energy memorizing content instead ofexercising a new perspective in the pursuit of real and relevantquestions.

Of course, multiple-choice questions are an easytarget for criticism, but even more sophisticated measures ofcognitive development may miss the point. When you watch somebodywho is truly “in it,” somebody who has totally giventhemselves over to the learning process, or if you simply imaginethose moments in which you were “in it” yourself, youimmediately recognize that learning expands far beyond the merecognitive dimension. Many of these dimensions were mentioned in theissue precis, “such as emotional and affective dimensions,capacities for risk-taking and uncertainty, creativity andinvention,” and the list goes on. How will we assess these? Ido not have the answers, but a renewed and spirited dedication to thecreation of authentic learning environments that leverage the newmedia environment demands that we address it.

The new media environment provides newopportunities for us to create a community of learners with ourstudents seeking important and meaningful questions. Questions of thevery best kind abound, and we become students again, pursuingquestions we might have never imagined, joyfully learning right alongwith the others. In the best case scenario the students will leavethe course, not with answers, but with more questions, and even moreimportantly, the capacity to ask still more questions generated fromtheir continual pursuit and practice of the subjectivities we hope toinspire. This is what I have called elsewhere, “anti-teaching,”in which the focus is not on providing answers to be memorized, buton creating a learning environment more conducive to producing thetypes of questions that ask students tochallenge their taken-for-granted assumptions and see their ownunderlying biases.这就是我在其他地方所称的“反教学”，它关注的不再是提供用于记忆的答案，而是创建学习环境以更有利于提出各类问题，它要求学生向他们认为理所当然的设想进行挑战，并观察他们自己潜在的偏见。

The beauty of the current moment is that new mediahas thrown all of us as educators into just this kind ofquestion-asking, bias-busting, assumption-exposing environment.There are no easy answers, but we can at least be thankful for thequestions that drive us on.

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