A good thing turns bad if there is too much of it

Living in the Future Tense #02, August 28, 2014
Reprinted in the Tampa Bay Times, September 8, 2014

When More of a Good Thing Is Bad

Edward Renner

If something is good, surely more must be better. But it is not necessarily so. It is true that when you are alone or don’t have any money that a friend or any amount of money is very valuable. But, the more you have of either, the less valuable any additional friend or money becomes, just as a meal for a hungry persons is more important than for someone well fed. What we often don’t fully appreciate is that both too little and too much are extremely damaging, but in very different ways and for very different reasons.

I recently received a friend request from someone I did not know.Why would a complete stranger want to be my friend? Maybe, it was because they liked my last column? A new Fan!

No, It was because we have the same last name. It turns out he had over 3,000 friends, many with our last name. It turns out he had more than 3,000 friends, many with our last name.

So, when is a few friends not enough, and a large number too many?

Facebook now has 1.11 Billion members. The 10% with the fewest friends have less than 10 friends each; but the 10% with the most friends have 500 or more friends, some up to the maximum limit of 5,000.

The typical Facebook participant has between 100 and 190 friends: These include close friends, colleagues, some personally unknown associates, and even some family. With some, they have a genuine reciprocal relationship, for others mainly one-way communication.

This number is very similar to the 150 people that social science research has show that most people can manage in a meaningful way. Facebook is a much more immediate and personal than e-mail, which in turn was more immediate and personal than the Post Office.

 

However, to collect 5,000 friends has little if any redeeming social value. In fact, what is true for the distribution of friends on Facebook is also true for the distribution of wealth in the US.




The Distribution of friends on Facebook and the distribution of wealth in the US are identical functions. For both groups of people the upper 10%, and in particular the upper 1%, have an excessive number of either friends or amounts of money

The important difference is that the supply of potential Facebook friends is endless, and individuals with an excessively large number of friends are the primary victims of their own excess: Too many superficial friends may be the means to loneliness no less than too few friends.

In contrast, there are only so many dollars in the economy. The supply of wealth is limited. How wealth gets distributed does make a difference. In this case, the primary victims are the 90% of individual who do not have an equitable share of the wealth.

At the poor end of the distribution a small additional amount of money makes a big difference for the person with little money. At the rich end of the distribution any additional amount of money does not make any noticeable difference.This fact is neither new nor radical. In classic free-market economic theory it is the “law of diminishing marginal utility.” But, this well established economic principle seems to have been forgotten by the current economic policies that have allowed the excessive accumulation of wealth by the1%. 

One way to correct this distribution is to increase the minimum wage to be an effective living wage, including adequate food, shelter and health care. However the very rich have used their money and influence to blocked this simple reform. Clearly, their excess has not trickled down as the promised alternative; indeed, just the opposite.

The damage this false argument has caused is great compared to the economic stimulus and improved quality of life that would result from a greater degree of equality.

In a democracy, individuals are generally free to behave in self-serving ways as long as it does not harm others. That is why a few people are free to choose to distribute their social energy to accumulate an excessive number of meaningless friends.

Perhaps, the question we should re-consider is whether, like Facebook, to permit a few people to accumulate excessive meaningless amounts of the national wealth, when the result is so harmful to the national level of well-being.



Privacy versus the Right to Information

Living In the Future Tense #1, May 28, 2014

 

Privacy versus the Right to Information

Edward Renner
 

The European Union court ruled on May 13, 2014 that Google must give people a say in what comes up when they are googled. This has touched off a counter charge in the US as both an unfeasible and unreasonable form of censorship.
 

The legalistic perspective is a conflict between the public’s right to obtain information and the individual’s right to privacy. But, that is too specific. It is based on old ways of thinking.

The digital age has altered every aspect of our lives, including what we believe to be either good or bad.

The response by Wikipedia, Facebook and all of the other corporate giants affected by the ruling was quick and strong. Yet, they all have carefully protected secrets of their own.

This suggest the critical issue is not individual privacy versus the public right to know, but rather whether the distinctions between individuals and corporations makes sense today.

Individual citizens must disclose and pay income tax on their world-wide income. Google, Apple and all of the other technology giants have secret sums of cash stashed in tax shelters concealed by complex accounting facades. The corporate world of finance is still largely secret. They have proved to be too big to regulate, too big to fail and too big to jail.

If people are like corporations, we too should be able to protect our secrets. But, as is increasing the case, if corporations wish to be treated as individuals, they too should be transparent. Google and the others cannot have it both ways.

As it now stands, individuals are small enough to fail and jail, but important enough to be required to disclose and pay taxes on world-wide income. But the corporations are too big to fail or jail, but not important enough to be required to disclose and pay taxes on their world-wide income.

 

The time frame for change today is no longer millenniums, nor even centuries, but rather decades. Decades define an individual lifetime. The Google case is about how today should be re-structured to accommodate the inevitable future conflict between individual and corporate privacy.

Technologically, transparency is big part what the next 50 years are about.

The Google debate is not about whether individuals should or should not live in glass houses, but whether privacy by corporations for commercial profit, and by a democratic government for security, is acceptable, while equivalent personal privacy is an unacceptable form of censorship.

The National Security Agency secretly spied on US citizens and foreign leaders of our own allies. In Florida the House and Senate leaders met secretly to re-define voting districts. True transparency is neither a by-product of whistle blowers or good investigative reporting.

Transparency is a value. It is a way of life. It is an entirely new mechanism for successfully living in the future tense. It must be universal and not selective. Privacy as only a tool for profit and control is very dangerous for individuals; whereas, transparency as a tool for public accountability is essential.

 

 

Lecturing Other Nations Won't Fix Climate Change

This essay may be freely reproduced and distributed with appropriate attribution. Reprinted in the Tampa Bay Times, February 23, 2014, P6.

 

Lecturing Other Nations Won’t Fix Climate Change

Edward Renner

 

In 984 AD the Vikings established a remote settlement in Greenland. The chiefs over-used the land and its resources to support a luxury life-style for themselves. When this most western outpost of European society collapsed 500 years later, “the chiefs had preserved for themselves the privilege of being the last to starve.”

From Collapse by Jarred Diamond

 

Last week (February 16, 2014) Secretary of State John Kerry in a speech delivered in Indonesia called climate change “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” He urged Indonesia, and other Developing Nations, to limit their rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions.

 The Developing Nations, like Indonesia, have been unwilling at the UN sponsored international conferences on climate change to agree to reduce their rapid growth in emissions because of their essential need to reduce the large proportion of their population living in extreme poverty.

 However, if they continue to increase emissions at current rates, they will crash the capacity of the planet to support a growing world population of over 7 billion, bringing the Developed Nations down with them.

 But, the stark reality is that no Developing Nation will reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless the US and other Developed Nations first take meaningfully steps to assist them in alleviating extreme poverty.

 The Developing Nations have nothing to lose by waiting. We have everything to lose by lecturing them to do more.

 The Developed Nations grew their prosperity by deferring the costs of protecting the capacity of the planet to support human life. As the worst offender, the US has the largest historical ecological deficit of any nation in the world.

 On a per capita basis we, of all the Developed Nations, are the weapon of mass destruction.

 At the UN International Conferences, we have refused to pay “backwards” for the harm already done in proportion to what we are asking the Developing Countries to pay “forward” as future prevention. That is what the Developing Nations have asked for as a basis for reaching an international agreement.

By standing firm, all we will gain for ourselves is the privilege of being the last society to collapse.

 

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The per capita consumption of natural resources and wastes produced (Ecological Footprint) in the US is greater than the national supply (Biocapacity). The difference is the size of our ecological deficit. Our long-standing over-consumption has been possible only by depleting the surplus of natural resources (such as lumber) from developing countries like Indonesia. Many Developing Nations have had their natural resources reduced to the point of no longer being able to support their own population, which is the current reality of Indonesia. Yet, the Developing Countries are faced with growing demands from Developed Nations for even greater free trade access to their shrinking biocapacity



From the Global Footprint Network: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/indonesia/
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/united_states_of_america/

 

Edward Renner blogs at http://forumsforafuture.blogspot.com

Carrying Capacity

A version of this essay was published in the Tampa Bay Times on Sunday, May 19, 2013, P1-2. This essay may be reproduced, reprinted and republished.

Saving Our Planet:

Why Climate Change Has Not Inspired Action

Edward Renner

 

While Climate change has entered the national conversation, it has not received popular support nor resulted in a cooperative international approach. New measurements show that the climate-changing gas carbon dioxide is at the highest atmospheric concentrations -- 400 parts per million – in at least three million years. And yet a recent Gallup poll shows that only a minority believe that global warming will “pose a serious threat to them or to their way of life during their lifetime.” 

One possibility is that the focus on climate change has let us, as individuals off the hook because there is not, really, anything that each of us can do personally that will make a difference. Yet, we know that something very significant is happening to the environment about which something must be done. 

With such a disconnect, and so little political will, action seems impossible. But there is a way. If we would shift our focus from climate change to the concept of Carrying Capacity, then are there many necessary things we can do ourselves, over which we have direct control, including holding our elected officials and global corporations accountable for specific changes in public policy.  

What is Carrying Capacity? 

Carrying capacity is a well-established biological concept: It is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment. 

As a practical metaphor, a row boat can hold a limited number of people. Add one too many and the boat will sink and everyone drowns. Likewise, the planet can support a limited number of people. Add too many and its capacity to support life will collapse. 

Of course the planet is far more complex than a rowboat. But only in two very simple ways: 

First, the impact on the planet of adding one more person to the population of the US is the same as adding 10 people to the population of Mexico. This is because the average American uses more resources and makes more waste than the average Mexican. Similar to the row boat, it is not the number of people that is important, but their combined weight. For the planet, this is the Effective Population; it is the number of people multiplied by their average impact which is the total burden of the human footprint on the planet. 

Second, nature is not a static situation like a row boat floating in still water. Nature is a dynamic system in which all the elements influence each other over time: When a growing population cuts down trees to clear land to grow food, the result is soil erosion decreasing the amount of food to feed the increasing number of people who are cutting down the trees. In a similar way, the row boat, when exposed to stormy weather rocks and dips in ways it did not when in still water. 

In the past, individual societies have collapsed when they exceeded the biological capacity of their local geographic area. When an area and thus society collapsed, other areas and societies emerged. Today, however, human activity is damaging the carrying capacity of the entire planet, and there is no other place to go. On August 22 we will have used as much resources and created as much waste as the planet can replace and absorb in a year. At that rate, it takes 1.4 planets to support our current life style. 

We are depleting the planet of its resources to support human life. That is the issue.

Clearly, there is a theoretical limit to how long the effective population can continue to increase all the while reducing the biological capacity of the planet necessary for living. Growth is finite. 

The Tipping Point 

When collapse occurs in nature, there is a “tipping point” in which the accelerating demands produce a rapid decline in capacity. The process is similar to the over-crowded row boat which, with the addition of a small amount of extra weight, starts to take on water, which, the moment that happens, causes the boat to take on even more water, and it quickly sinks. Once the tipping point is crossed, neither the boat nor nature can continue to support life. For thousands of years this has not been an issue for the planet. However, it is an issue for those of us alive today. We are the ones who will be responsible for bringing our planet to the tipping point. 

In nature, the rapid collapse occurs due to “Forcings.” These are incremental changes of one element that forces additional depletions in all of the other elements, which in turn trigger even greater reductions in each of the other elements. This leads to an accelerating Titanic-like downward spiral toward total collapse.

 

Jared Diamond in his book Collapse has chronicled how past societies which existed and thrived for hundreds of years – some more than a thousand – have collapsed over the period of one lifetime when a single forcing -- such an extended drought --- pushed the society beyond its tipping point. Today, climate change is Nature’s mechanism for causing forcings – drought, desertification, famine, water shortages, and dead seas, to name a few. The social, political and economic consequences of forcings are the ingredients for societal collapse: migration, social unrest, war lords, starvation, economic recession and growing inequalities in which a very few are rich and powerful while the vast majority are poor and weak. Civic order cannot withstand large numbers of desperate people.

The failure of national governments, dysfunctional internal political process and regional and ethnic conflicts are early warning signs of impending collapse. 

Avoiding the Tipping Point 

Fortunately, unlike the ways of nature, carrying capacity is something we can do something about. We have knowledge and control over all of the elements responsible for staying within the carrying capacity of the planet. We can measure the biological capacity of the planet to provide the resources we use and to absorb the waste we create. We already know how the growth of the effective population is exploding at the same time as our resources are shrinking. Although we do not know exactly where the tipping is, we do know that it is within the lifetime of the majority of people alive today. Given a six thousand year human history on the planet, that is all we need to know. The choice is ours. 

If, between now and 2015, just 3% of the effective population would reduce their total footprint by 25%, and by 2020 the percent doing so doubled to 6%, and by 2030 double again to 12.5%, and by 2040 to 25%, and by 2050 to 50%, then the total footprint of the effective population would be reduced, and the danger of crossing the tipping point would be averted. The collective effective footprint of the human population on the earth would start to decrease at around 8 Billion, even though the actual population is projected to reach 9 Billion by 2050.

An Interactive Graphic   To see the effect of different levels of participation or different percent reductions enter alternative numbers from 0 to 100 without the % sign in the highlighted chart. A negative number in the "% Reduction" column will illustrate the effect of continuing to increase the size of our footprint.

 

Half the population eventually reducing their impact by 25% over the next 37 years is not an unreasonable possibility. The largest population growth is in underdeveloped countries with relatively small per capita footprints. The largest footprints are in developed countries which have the capacity to make the necessary adjustments.  

The impact of total distances traveled and the efficiency of transportation, the amount and sources of energy used, and what we eat and how it is produced can each be divided into sub-categories, which can be further broken down into the hundreds of specific everyday actions over which we have personal control, such as using fewer plastic water bottles, driving one less mile or eating less meat. 

A small percentage of people making regular small contributions, and encouraging progressively more people to join with them, can have a large cumulative effect.  

However, while these individual efforts are all necessary, they alone are insufficient. Rather, they must be our daily reminder that public policy issues, such as effective mass transit to replace personal automotive commuting, the infrastructure of alternative energy sources and national policies independent of the short-term self-interest of big agriculture, big oil and multi-national corporations are essential. 

This challenge is of particular relevance to those of us living in the US, because we are putting in jeopardy our way of life, far more so than China who is our major competitor. We are the biggest offender in the world of per capita over use of natural resources. We have more to lose than any other nation if, collectively, the human race exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet.

We have become distracted from the necessity for institutional and political accountability by the emphasis on the abstract threat of climate change over which we have little direct personal control. Climate change is simply the most important of Nature’s mechanisms for causing forcings. In contrast, carrying capacity can be documented down to the number of gallons of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel refined; the tons of fertilizer and pesticides used; the number of wind farms created; and, the BTUs of coal and oil that must be remain in the ground. These are all subject to public political control, and the policies required to regulate these events are known. 

What is absent is the social and political awareness to shift our focus away from the abstract event of climate change, and our necessary but insufficient personal responsibility for it, to the collective and essential government and corporate accountability for specific and measurable policies and practices of not using more resources and producing more waste than the planet can replace or absorb in a year. 

This, we know how to do.  

The political, economic and social discussions we need to have are not whether we need shift the burden from primarily a personal responsibility to one of greater government and corporate accountability, but rather the most feasible ways to do so. 

_______________________________

Edward Renner is a Professor in the Honors College of the University of South Florida. He may be reached at kerenner@usf.edu. An introduction to his University level course, Forums for a Future, is available in pdf format from USF at http://tiny.cc/7ij7fw, or free in iBook format from iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/invitation-to-forums-for-future/id533089665?mt=11.The environmental data is from the Global Footprint Network data base: http://www.footprintnetwork.org

Can MOOCs Save Academic Freedom?

Can MOOCs Save Academic Freedom?

Edward Renner¹ University of South Florida

Abstract

The commercialization of higher education over the past 50 years has embraced MOOCs as the next big growth opportunity for venture capital. However, the realization that M00Cs are our last stand to protect the fundamental purpose of academic freedom has been lost in the current distraction of debating the relative value of online as opposed to traditional classroom teaching. Our academic challenge is to use MOOCs to elevate general public knowledge to be an effective civic moderator of wealth, power and belief. If we do not, commercial control of information will become the currency defining the human condition.

Historically, the three forces that have defined the human condition and human progress have been economic wealth, political power and social beliefs and values. Like the keeper of the fire, academia in the role of keeper of knowledge, has sought to preserve and protect the light of reason and wisdom against the excess of wealth, power and fanaticism. This is the ultimate modern purpose of academic freedom.

Although globalization is commonly treated primarily as an economic concept, its impact on political power and social beliefs and values has changed the frame of reference for how we must now think about academic freedom.

The digital communication revolution that has flattened the earth into a global playing field is disrupting higher education in the form of massive open online courses (MOOCs). However, the value of MOOCs as a powerful force to protect the fundamental purpose of academic freedom has been lost in the current distraction of debating the relative value of online as opposed to traditional classroom teaching.

Of far greater importance for human progress and the nature of the human condition is the essential prerequisite of independent critical thinking that can neither be bought nor suppressed.

This noble justification of academia is now more than theoretical, it is actually possible – but not without a struggle. The commercialization of learning that has overtaken higher education over the past 50 years has embraced MOOCs as the next big growth opportunity for venture capital. In this sense, MOOCs have become the last stand for the defense of academic freedom because ownership of knowledge and information is the key to controlling the political power and social beliefs and values determining the distribution of wealth in the 21^st Century.

Unfortunately, academics are typically weak warriors, and our colleges and universities are deeply compromised fortresses for combating power and belief in the service of greed.  For example, at the University of Wyoming, the mining industry was successful in the early removal of a “Carbon Sink” sculpture which called attention to the dangers of climate change.² At the University of Iowa, the appointment of a director for the Center for Sustainable Agriculture was blocked by agribusiness because the nominee’s research supported the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency.³ The student loan crisis provided a financial accounting of shifting the cost of a college degree from a public to a personal responsibility, to mention only a few illustrations of the commodification of education.⁴

On the one hand, MOOCs offer the opportunity to fully democratize knowledge and learning, by facilitating the flow of all information into the public domain. Finally, with open online courses there is an opportunity to make teaching and learning available to everyone. Now, the ultimate civic accomplishment of balancing the dynamic resultant of the three forces of wealth, power and belief in the service of human progress and the enhancement of human condition is possible.

But, our institutions, as owners of copyrights and patents, contribute to making knowledge and information a commodity by removing it from the public domain. Apple is attempting to control the K-12 academic market in which an iPad can replace many of the functions of a physical classroom. State legislators see the cost of education going down and control of content going up through online learning. AAUP is confronted with a dilemma that the instrumentality of job protection as the strategy of choice for defending academic freedom will be compromised by MOOCs. Colleges and universities are searching for a business model to survive in a competitive market in which a few winners supported by venture capital provide courses administered by others with a minimum of financial support from state governments.

The potential endpoint is an economic market which owns the political power and social beliefs which determines the preconditions for the distribution of wealth, globally and nationally.

MOOCs may well be the last stand in defense of academic freedom if knowledge is to increasingly belong in the public domain, and not increasingly become a commodity. This is our academic challenge. We must own and use MOOCs to elevate general public knowledge to be an effective civic moderator of wealth, power and belief. If we do not, control of information will replace resources, just as resources replaced land, as the currency defining the human condition.

Seeing knowledge as public domain, not as the newest commodity market, can secure our legitimate place in human progress as the keeper of the fire. We must now occupy learning. In the long term, MOCCs can provide a strategic and powerful defense of the ultimate purpose of academic freedom, not job security in the short term.
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1 Professor Renner teaches an MOOC in the Honors College at the University of South Florida.

2 University of Wyoming officials sped up, touted removal of anti-coal sculpture. http://trib.com/business/energy/emails-university-of-wyoming-officials-sped-up-touted-removal-of/article_4f9332ee-d83c-5d58-a38b-19e913ba739d.html

3 Thomas Bartlett. Field of Discourse, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2010.

4 The Making of Corporate U, Topical issue of The Chronicle Review, Oct 17, 2010.

 

The Difference Between a Reference Point and a Criterion

The Difference Between a Reference Point and a Criterion

Edward Renner

Donald Eastman III, the President of Eckert College, wrote an op-ed piece in the Tampa Bay Times about the limits of online learning: “…what works for most students…is a small classroom…where a respected authority…is a spellbinding revealer of mysteries – not simply because he or she knows things we don’t, but because a gifted teacher reads the audience the way an actor reads the room…”

On July 17, the University of Toronto announced that it had joined Coursera.  In response, Clifford Orwin, a professor of political science at the U of T, wrote in The Globe and Mail that “the classroom experience is at the heart of education…The electricity that crackles through a successful classroom can’t be transmitted electronically.”

Pamela Hieronymi in her essay in the Chronicle declared that the capacities of online technology “should not be confused with the training provided by one mind interacting with another.”

In short, the chorus of critics is that online and virtual is a shoddy imitation of the real thing. Such declarations miss the point. They are assertions that the ideal traditional classroom is the real criterion against which online should be compared, rather than serving as a reference point for comparison with other alternatives.

The issue of whether the new technologies are consistent with a hypothetical ideal appropriate for the specific circumstance of lecturing to a captive audience at a fixed time and place is a meaningless theoretical exercise. The essential exercise is comparing this particular circumstance with other circumstances using an objective external standard.

The standard at one extreme is a situation in which hardly anyone learns anything. At the other extreme is one in which almost everyone learns everything. These two limiting distributions can be plotted on a graph in which the X-Axis is the proportion of the material learned and Y-Axis is the proportion of the class.

In practice, of course, both limits can only be approached. Every class results in an actual distribution defined by the standard deviation around the average amount learned. The distribution for any class can be plotted on the same graph as the two limiting cases. This simple graphic provides an objective external standard for comparisons between different circumstances and different teaching methods. The only question is, on the average, how close does any particular effort approach a limit, and what is the spread between the students who are most and least successful?

The classic example this kind of research has been carried out over the past several decades on the teaching of large enrollment introductory physics classes. Typically, students in these classes could calculate answers to problems using formulas, but they were unable to apply the concepts to answer simple basic questions.

Harvard Professor Eric Mazur found that after a semester of lecturing, on the average, students understood at best about 30% of the material. However, 60% understood the material when it was presented online, and the classroom was “flipped” to practice applying the concepts in small discussion groups.

Professor Carl Wieman of the Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia has carried out controlled experimental studies on this method. In a recent study published in Science he found that the online presentation of the material followed by peer group discussions in the classroom more than doubles the average amount of material mastered. In addition, 90% of the students reported enjoying the interactive teaching techniques more than traditional lectures; while only 1% disagreed (8% were indifferent). In addition, levels of student engagement and attendance were significantly higher with the flipped classroom.

This is the type of information that needs to be informing policy discussions over the relative effectiveness of different circumstances and methods of teaching, not declarative statements comparing the new digital communication techniques with a theoretical classroom.

What is of theoretical importance is identifying the variety of dimension that account for the means and standard deviations of the distributions of actual students, under different specific circumstances. Like all such comparisons, there are large individual differences. The result for different groups provides comparative empirical reference points; none of which are an ultimate criterion.

We might suspect, much like a flipped classroom of today, that back when experienced professors interacted with students personally known to them in small classes, that the average amount learned was relatively larger compared to classes today. Currently, many large lecture classes are often taught by overworked adjunct professors who often do not even have on-campus offices. Given budget constraints that trend is likely to continue.

Also, we might reasonably assume that a technologically challenged professor would do much worse trying to teach on line, than doing so face-to-face, no matter how large the live class. Just as the newly appointed Millennial professor might do much better using the new technologies rather than trying to teach using face-to-face lectures. A class of adult learners may very well respond differently to the two modes of teaching relative to a homogenous age cohort of Millennials.

Such individual differences as these are of great theoretical importance. They can be empirically identified and dealt with strategically by doing the best job possible with the resources we have. These differences will not be addressed, however, by refusing to accept responsibility for change ourselves in light of the many new circumstances and teaching methods now available.

In the fall of 2007, after a 15 years absence from undergraduate teaching, I became an Adjunct Professor in the Honors College. I figuring a small class for me to enchant would enhance my retirement. The course met three times a week and had three required full length textbooks. Now, in 2012, there are no textbooks. The Monday and Friday classes are virtual, there are no (zero) classroom lectures. All substantive material is delivered online. Students write, comment and challenge each other throughout the semester, meeting on Wednesday for a moderated exchange of ideas.

My biggest surprise was how much easier it is now, with 21^st Century digital technologies, than it was before to have even higher levels of student engagement with each other, the material and the professor. The technologies are more respectful; they allow students to do their work in the time and space that best fits their life and their circumstances – which for many includes a job. Socially, they are more collaborative and participatory. Technically, they allow efficient access to material that is more comprehensive, engaging and up to date.

Each year as the class became more online with less lecturing, the student evaluations and level of performance went up. The quantitative evaluations are now exclusively positive and “strongly agree” the most frequent response to all items. Having gone from three to one formal class each week has raised the sobering possibility that zero might be even better. I expect for some, perhaps even the majority, that that might be the case.

However, I quite enjoy the weekly meeting, and rather than face that possibility my current scholarly effort is focused on creating a metric for social science and humanities courses that, like the concept test in physics, can be used to measure changes in the level of cognitive complexity and critical thinking that takes place over the term. My subjective evaluation alone is not sufficient.

We need to recognize that the art and science of teaching and learning in the 21^st Century is now different. Our challenge is how to systematically go about using the new technologies to enhance teaching and learning without making declarative statements bases on our beliefs, as if they were something more than just that. We have the capacity to reflectively apply the science and critical thinking we teach our students to what we ourselves are actually doing. Our own teaching is the ideal place to demonstrate the power of scientific inquiry and critical thinking that we claim to be our non-replaceable purpose as teachers.

Edward Renner teaches in the Honors College at the University of South Florida

Occupy Learning

Occupying Knowledge and Learning

Edward Renner

 
The communication technologies of the 21^st Century have threatened both the time-honored ways of delivering education and its social and cultural purposes.

The debate over delivery is whether the digital technologies and online applications are actually a means for enlightenment. Many do not embrace the new technology because they believe them to be a “shoddy imitation of the class room experience.” Or, that it is the millennial mind that needs to be fixed, certainly not their teachers.

 

The debate over purpose is whether online is primarily a financial tool to create new revenue streams by video recording lectures to reach distance and nontraditional students, or an opportunity to systemically restructure the substance and nature of higher education.

 

The Educational Divide

 

These internal debates over delivery and purpose have created an educational divide that rests on false either/or distinctions between live classes and online material, rather than the complementary aspects of how to most effectively use the technologies for teaching and learning. These debates go to the core of how, not whether, the roles, functions and responsibilities of higher education have changed as a result of the digital revolution.

 

The new communication technologies are neither a second-rate educational experience nor a cheaper commodity. To view them as such is to diminish their value. Failure to embrace and use their potential is to cling to the dead idea of a 500 year old concept that lectures and books are still the primary currency for teaching and learning. Both have been replaced by the new communication technologies, binding delivery and purpose together into a new 21^st Century entity.

 

The divide is paralyzing change, while higher education is failing to come to terms with unsustainable increases in tuition and the need for wider and more successful access.

 

A Void Waiting to Implode

 

The public debate over financing higher education grows more urgent every day. When the student loan bubble bursts – as it surely will – higher education will be required to reposition itself, if it has not heeded the warning and done so proactively.

On the nontraditional side there is no such confusion. The commercial on-line and for-profits have both a marketing advantage and a clear strategy. Their products are practical, job centered, and non-critical. They are not part of the liberal elite, and their negotiable content better serves the preservation of traditional social values.  Education as a commodity fits the bill of state legislators who are feeling the political heat of rising costs of public education as austerity measures causes state revenue to be replaced by tuition increases.

 

The competition for educational dollars will only continue to grow in the face of continued financial constraints. This transfer of title to greater standardization, less physical structures and lower cost is well underway.

 

However, contrary to its manifest appearance, the real story is not about the healthy democratic process of government oversight finding a balance between consumer protection and corporate profits. It is about the role and function of teaching and learning in the 21^st Century as the instrument of human progress. This is no small issue. The ownership of both knowledge and learning has replaced economic growth as the gatekeeper of the human condition.

 

There are only two ways the merger of delivery and purpose can go: Either there will be a further commodification of knowledge with the for-profits competing with public institutions for the educational marketplace, or traditional institutions of higher education will re-invent themselves to actually serve the dual role of centers of public knowledge and to provide massive open online learning opportunities.

Owning Knowledge and Learning

The Occupy movement provides a conceptual context for the unification of delivery and purpose into a new 21^st Century entity in which lectures and books are replaced by the power of the new digital communication technologies. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) can be widely inclusive of the general public and still personally responsive and individually evaluative of registered students.

 

One of the purposes of my MOOC “Forums for a Future” is to expand the physical, social and temporal boundaries of the class to be able to include the parents, extended family and social network of the students so they may share their educational experience with significant people in their personal life. This simply inflates and enriches the reach of the course at little extra cost. In addition, because the course is online and fully public and self-paced, anyone is free to drop-in, or to fully participate. Finally, any existing public interest group – such as church discussion group -- can create their own section by physically meeting together at a set time or in virtual space. If they wish, they can invite university students to drop in, or even to participate with them; this is something students who have completed my course may do for credit as facilitators, or as paid participant observers for evaluation. In every variation, there are interpersonal interactions among self-selective groups who are able to use the opportunity provided by an open door classroom to tailor their participation to suit their own unique needs as learners.

 

The new technologies have given us the opportunity to restructure both how (the delivery) and what (the purpose) we teach as the counterforce to education becoming simply another commodity. It is time to close the false distinctions of the educational divide and to occupy both knowledge and learning as the new role and function of public higher education in the 21^st Century -- as the essential instrument for the enhancement of the human condition.

Good education is both disruptive and essential for democracy. The content and who controls it does matter.

 

Edward Renner teaches in the Honors College at the University of South Florida