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Learning is, for me, like breathing. It has almost always come naturally to me, an involuntary expansion of the relevant organs. But just as I can become crippled by asthma when I inhale secondhand smoke or if the air is a bit too cold, the ease with which I learn is hampered by numbers and formulas. I remember nights in junior high and high school, sitting down too late at the dining room table to start my math homework, my father sitting next to me in an attempt to help. But I felt quite innumerate--and more than a bit passive aggressive toward my father’s help because learning was supposed to be easy. I didn’t really want his help, even though (or perhaps because) he was a special education teacher for high school students and he really did know how to teach kids who had learning disabilities or were just plain recalcitrant. I didn’t really want to learn all that math because the learning was incredibly difficult. I felt all my efforts would be fruitless--and frequently they were, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The dining room table thus became a space of frustration for me. It was neither really home--where I was supposed to feel comfort and love--or school. It was a liminal space where learning became uncomfortable in an unproductive way.
I spent last weekend at Northern Voice, a blogging and technology conference with an emphasis, it appeared, on the more touchy-feely side of blogging: using technology to connect with people in physical spaces, forging communities that bridge the virtual and the real, and maintaining your authenticity online.
What Northern Voice reminded me is that while I’m always learning, and while there will always be terrific people from whom I can learn, sometimes I need to sit down at the (usually metaphorical, sometimes literal) dining room table, alone, to wrestle with the things I’m trying to figure out, be they technical or intellectual or emotional. I can't always be flitting from book to museum to classroom to the blogosphere; sometimes I just need to wrestle with my own learning in my own space.
Among my (new and old) friends at the conference, there was much discussion as to whether we could effect significant change (in learning and in society) from within institutions of higher ed, or if we would be more effective leaving the academy and taking learning opportunities directly to people not enrolled in universities. Because I have invested so much of my life in higher education--as a student, teacher, and staff member--it's difficult for me to envision myself wanting to blow up the ivory tower. At the same time, I understand that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. That's why--even as my institution, in a move that highlights just how much it values teaching, tries to move my faculty development colleagues and me from dark but private basement offices to cubicles in a windowless room with 18 other people--I've been investigating other tools that might repair that house, if not dismantle it.
In the face of institutionally mandated learning management systems like Sakai and Blackboard, it's no wonder, then, that I am pushing for faculty to use tools like Twitter, blogs, wikis, and Voicethread to connect with one another and with their students. I want to help them pick and choose among many tools to find the ones that best meet their own learning needs and those of the students they teach. I want them to escape the classroom without forcing students to sit down at their own dining room tables. I want faculty and students to more organically integrate learning into their own lives.
The conversations I had at Northern Voice--between sessions more than within them--challenged (but in the end did not undermine) this belief that the faculty-student relationship remains a sound one. In the end, I think we can salvage this relationship, even if right now at many institutions it is not a healthy one.
My conversations at this conference underscored my commitment to help others—particularly students and faculty—navigate liminal learning spaces, virtual and real, while minimizing the frustration of sitting at the dining room table. And so I, like many people, am once again asking questions such as these:
- What and where do people want to learn?
- How much help do they need to get started?
- How much help do they need to complete a project?
- Is this project better shared online, offline, or both?
- If
