The New Architects of Knowledge

1. The New Architects of Knowledge Empowering College Students to Create Online Content

2. Thinking Is Experience “The initial stage of that developing experience which is called thinking is experience. This remark may sound like a silly truism. It ought to be one; but unfortunately it is not. On the contrary, thinking is often regarded both in philosophical theory and in educational practice as something cut off from experience, and capable of being cultivated in isolation”—John Dewey, Democracy and Education

3. Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?—W.B. Yeats, “Among School Children”

4. As John Dewey writes in Democracy and Education, “The essentials of method are therefore identical with the essentials of reflection. They are first that the pupil have a genuine situation of experience -- that there be a continuous activity in which he is interested for its own sake; secondly, that a genuine problem develop within this situation as a stimulus to thought; third, that he possess the information and make the observations needed to deal with it; fourth, that suggested solutions occur to him which he shall be responsible for developing in an orderly way; fifth, that he have opportunity and occasion to test his ideas by application, to make their meaning clear and to discover for himself their validity.”

5. In a recent interview, educator Jacqueline Brooks defined constructivist knowledge in this way:, “Constructing knowledge talks about how we as the learners are reformulating, refiltering, relooking at constantly the way that we see our world, that the teacher can't give away explanations, the teacher can't give away knowledge, the student can't receive it passively from the teacher. The learning and teaching dynamic is a process of negotiation in which the people come to the table, try to make sense of the world, and in any one particular instance try to make sense of the concept at hand.”

6. Obviously, the advent of online and technology-enhanced courses over the past decade raises theoretical issues within the classical debate between constructivism and formalism among American educators. This is an important issue. As Sarah Chin and Jeremy Williams argue in a 2006 JOLT article, “Online delivery of education can no longer be regarded as a fad or confined to the realm of the nerd. The point of departure in this paper is that, after centuries of very little change in educational methods, we are now on the brink of a major paradigm shift in which a key factor is the "disruptive technology" of eLearning (Hart & Christensen, 2002). This development is to be welcomed because of the vast opportunities it presents to people who are currently poorly served or not served at all by educational institutions.”

7. Two Questions Here are two preliminary questions, among many others, the academy should discuss today in terms of online education: (1) Should online courses privilege constructivist models of education? (2) Are online educators changing the definition of “instructor” and “professor” in what some might call a major paradigm change now facing the university system?

8. Yes, it is obvious, the Internet continues to change everything. Move on.

9. The Technology IS The Knowledge The first question, though, ultimately raises the important issue of multimedia content in online education. We need more classroom content in multimedia forms on the Internet, and we must begin to accept the idea that the technology is actually the knowledge. The technology is the knowledge. The computer and the Internet are the way we know and discover at this juncture in the twenty-first century. It is itself. By that I mean, simply, we now construct knowledge in interconnected electronic forms, and it dictates the patterns in which we think and how we create new forms and structures in all academic fields. The shared knowledge system, Wikipedia, of course, and the Google search engine are the main examples we can use to illustrate this fundamental argument.

10. Consequently, the continued growth of the Internet makes it natural that online education would adopt constructivist models of education. Under this rubric, students, individually and in groups, create course content and add to the existing body of knowledge on any given subject. Students learn and present subject content through multimedia processes. The culture directly benefits because the created material can be accessed online. Future students build on this material, offering refinements and using new technologies.

11. What about professors? By almost any measure, online educators are changing the once static definition of college instructors and professors. Online professors create content that can be both learning-based and/or research-oriented, which has thrown a huge wrench into the standard ways the academy determines scholarship. Is an academic Web site that receives thousands of hits on a monthly basis worth as much or more as a short, university press book that sells a few hundred copies at best?

12. Creating Knowledge • Web pages. Students can easily create Web pages containing course content. The pages can be informational or argumentative. • Web sites. Students can use their Web pages as a basis to join in a collaborative learning experience by creating Web sites about course content. These sites can be quite extensive and represent a major portion of the students’ course workload. • Blogs. Students can maintain class blogs, using them as informational tools for other class members and to engage in discussions over class material. • Audio files. Students can create simple mp3 files containing course content. These files can then placed on a server so other students can easily access them. Mp3 files could be based on informational material, argumentative topics, or supplemental content. • Learning objects. Students can create interactive material in Web pages and Web sites, such as simple study guides or even Flash-based tutorials. • Videos. Students can create videos related to course material. These videos can focus on learning problems, for example, in a specific discipline.