A Collision of Technology and Policy
Given my complaints that TEDxNYED was an echo chamber, I hadn’t planned on reviewing the talk with which I most agreed. Plans change. I find myself struggling with policy that restricts my openness, and, worse, encouraged others to be less open. So, I pulled up David Wiley’s talk.
I won’t go over his premises. I admit that his definitions of “open” and “education” are debatable, but the parallels he draws between policy reaction to the printing press and policy reaction to new media is pitch-perfect. According to David’s account, when the printing press made information cheaper and easy to distribute…
Instead of obliging the demand that exists, [policymakers in the Church] ramp up production of indulgences…. and they push for stricter laws against access to vernacular copies of the scriptures.
Though their punishments were more severe and wielded with more authority, this reaction is very similar to how many institutions (including mine) are stumbling into online education.
In my experience that’s only half the problem. Policymakers eventually must allow – even encourage – faculty to explore the world of online education, but in a way that embodies the worst of colonialism and embrace-and-extend. Policymakers scaffold the transition to online learning with assumption-laden guidance that perpetuates the worst instructional paradigms. And there is always an expansion of control, which is the antithesis of openness.
Yes, I liked David’s TEDxNYED talk, but I would like to think that it wasn’t just because I agreed with it. (There were plenty of other talks with which I agreed, but still didn’t like.) I think it was because he brought something new to the discussion. I’m fairly plugged into the open ed world and I had never heard the collision of policy and technology so succinctly and appropriately presented.