Really enjoyed Wiley’s close:
… embrace the trib culture sooner than later. Higher education doesn’t have to remain stuck in its traditional R/O ways … I would beg those early pioneer to open their eyes to what was happening all around them (on YouTube, on Flickr, on Wikipedia, and the other pioneers of the trib’ing movement) and to evolve with the times rather than be left behind by them.
Just at the end of the first blogging experiment in the computer literacy course I told you in a previous post. Basically, students were told:
If you create a blog and play with it, as I’ll tell you during the course, by using Web 2.o tools, then you will build up your grade without doing the final test, or doing just a small part of it. If you need some basics, just browse the courseware available for you in the platform and use it as you need it. I’m here for questions but, please, post them always to the whole community.
At the end, when asked what they thought about this course, they were enthusiastic. Almost 70 comments have been written so far. A swedish student was allowed to write in english. The main message of her post I’m picking up here, is shared by the totality of the other ones:
Caro Prof,
How much more you learn and how much easier it is to learn through doing and not just trying to repeat endless definitions without the chance to reflect or think about their meaning. This course has not only allowed me to do, to think and to reflect but it has also allowed me to choose when to do it. Something that in many other courses is impossible and which make learning even more difficult especially when you try to combine studies with work. This course has really offered an unique way of learning. If a similar method could be applied to other courses it would be great. I am convinced that if not a whole course, certain parts of several of our courses could benefit. In some cases maybe not limiting the approach to the use of computers but by following your example introducing more student-based learning and active participation …
This girl was already quite familiar with computer technology. The leitmotiv of many with bad or no computer experience was of the kind
… previously, I hated the computer and I did not know what to do with it, now, when I’m back home I run to see if others have written something or a comment to may last post; now I understand how computers and Internet could by useful in my life and my future job.
And they have been introduced to very few things: open a blog, use it, manage RSS feeds, con(trib)ute things in a wiki page, manage social bookmarks. Nonetheless, they are all confident to be able to face new issues, just feeling familiar with this new device.
So, dear friends, going back to the last sentences that Wiley put in 2012, I would say that
students are ready to trib now whereas schools are light-years behind …
Andreas Formiconi 