Serendipity35

Yesterday, I attended the NEWUG WebCT Regional Conference at Drexel University. I was part of a presentation about a study that we did here at NJIT on student satisfaction with distance learning (online learning, eLearning, call it what you will). But, the presentation that I most enjoyed was by Chris Shamburg from NJCU.

In the jargon of Web 2.0, Chris did a mashup on epistemology, learning to be a discriminating user of web information (How credible are things like Wikipedia, blogs etc.?), and using RSS feed aggregators to pull all this information into one place where you might be able to actually digest it. It was the only really participatory session I attended, and it included some good low-tech audience-baiting techniques (like handing out scenarios on file cards to everyone - sometimes I really miss 3X5 cards...).

It got people thinking - and arguing - and that's good. Most people in higher ed are so far behind their students in the use of technology. I don't really expect our faculty to all open MySpace accounts, start podcasting etc. What I would like to see is more of our faculty becoming aware of what is out there and at least suggesting/encouraging/allowing their students to use the new technologies.

There was a lot of discussion in Chris' session on whether or not we should be allowing/encouraging students to use sources like Wikipedia. Though we certainly did not have a consensus on that, what was clear from our discussion is that we need to be talking with students about issues like this.