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Weighing In
It IS about Technology: Integrating Higher Ed into Knowledge Culture
8/6/2008
We have technologies now that allow us to carry forward the evidence of work and the work itself from semester to semester. Though we can use the semester time frame as a way to define fees and revenue, there is no longer a reason to use the semester time frame as a way to define student work. Students already learn in many alternate ways on many differing but formalized learning paths. Higher education is expert in managing experiential or co-op learning, semesters abroad, internships, service learning, and so on. We know how to create structures based on the work itself and the natural work cycle, just as in real life, so altering how we structure a learning cycle is fully within our expertise.
Most convincing of the need to reconsider segmented learning is that higher education has already embraced learning outcomes assessment. We have in place mechanisms and expertise to track and evaluate learning outcomes. Seat time is being recognized as less and less relevant as a measure of learning. Let's start also to re-consider the very idea that segmented learning is still the default and somehow sacrosanct. It no longer makes sense.
Trent Batson, Ph.D. has served as an English professor, director of academic computing, and has been an IT leader since the mid-1980s. He is currently Co-Lead for the Web2ePortfolio Initiatve (W2eP), a Senior Associate with the TLT Group, and Editor of Campus Technology's Web 2.0 e-newsletter. batsontr@mit.edu
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