The high schoolification of higher education: Chicago Law School edition

The Chicago Law School continues the trend: U of C Law School Takes Classrooms Out of the Internet Age

The University of Chicago Law School has removed Internet access in most of its classrooms because of a growing problem of students surfing the Web on laptops during lectures.

The reason cited was that students surfing the Web weren't learning as much. Of course, if learning was really ths issue they might had better banned professors from lecturing, and insisted on more appropriate methods of instruction.

Old tools for new situations

In my last post I shared a comment from Hal Meeks in regard to this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Is E-Learning Forever Trapped in a Field of Dreams? The discussion has continued today in our Teaching and Technology Round Table mailing list. I finally weighed-in after this comment from Henry Schaffer:

...before this digital/web/stuff was foisted on us (faculty,
staff and students) there used to be this irritating dance of getting
the course syllabus to the students. Hand it out, but not everyone is
there. Then they get lost - "why don't you bring more to class?" Or
the late night phone call, "When is the next exam?" Annoying to the
instructors, frustrating to the students.

Now we just put the syllabus on a web page - and, as they say, "Walla!"

I don't know anyone who wants to go back to the old game.

I have no desire to go back to the old days either, but the old days now are how we did it three years ago. I'd like to see us change the game entirely. Here was my response to Henry from earlier today:

Except for today there are a zillion ways to put that syllabus online short of spending zillions of dollars on CMS/LMS solutions. Yet, we cling to the technologies of the last decade that neither the faculty nor students prefer. While at the same time, enforcing built-in and totally unacceptable (industrial era) pedagogical frameworks.

It warms my heart that we are at least having these discussions, and the opportunity to challenge the status quo.

QOTD: Hal Meeks on educational technology

This was picked from an email by Hal Meeks to our TLTR mailing list in reaction to this post from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Is E-Learning Forever Trapped in a Field of Dreams?

There are many more serious problems facing higher education. Use of
technology illustrates some of these problems, as is the willingness
to blame technology and its misapplication. It is akin to blaming a
cell phone for a boring conversation.

Class structure and higher education

This a great read at Harvard Business on organizational class structures and the hidden (and not so hidden) damage they do to organizational cohesiveness and effectiveness: How to Crack Companies' Class Structure.

An invisible class structure is preventing companies from making the most of their employees’ talents.

By class structure I mean there’s a function or profession that considers itself and is perceived by all others to be the one that the organization values most. Everybody else is a de facto second- class citizen or worse.

By invisible I mean that everybody just accepts the class structure as a fact of life. Leaders do not consider either the price it exacts or how they might get rid of it.

What a shame! In an age when solving increasingly complex problems requires not just the input but also the robust interactions of multiple disciplines, a class structure is a formidable competitive disadvantage.

When I read these sorts of things they just make me sad. It'd be hard to find a more class-based organizational structure anywhere than what we have in higher education. The hidden costs are huge, and it would be wonderful to see someone step-up and take this on. Fixing this would yield tremendous organizational and societal benefits far beyond the academy.