Grappling with the digital divide: E-Learning

Regular KoW readers will know that this blog is not just about war. It’s also about the teaching of war, and teaching in general. My own interest as the director of this unique online MA War in the Modern World is  very much concerned with the opportunities, challenges and techniques of the digital classroom. See Laptop U and Pedagogy for the Long War. So I was very interested to read this article in the Times Higher Education Grappling with the digital divide where it says:

Academics at De Montfort University are researching the nature and impact of a new kind of literacy: the sharp end of modern communication known as “transliteracy”. The term describes the ability to read, write and interact on a range of platforms. Think of the media’s teenage stereotype, a young girl watching Hollyoaks on television while simultaneously discussing its plotlines on the social networking site Facebook, listening to music on MySpace and texting her friend to discuss home study.

The term “transliteracy” was coined by Alan Liu, a professor in the English department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose research on the subject is being carried out across University of California campuses. The project will establish working groups from across academic disciplines to study online reading and shared technology.

At De Montfort, Sue Thomas, a professor of new media, is more interested in the impact that transliteracy is having on higher education and pedagogy. In these terms, many academics are in essence illiterate, says Thomas. Most would admit it, even taking a certain pride in their part-removal from the world of e-communication. This matters if they find their teaching relationship with hyper-transliterate students breaking down because of an inability to communicate fully with one another.

Thomas believes that if academics cannot show themselves to be transliterate, they will lose the respect of their students. “University is about sharing knowledge,” she says, and students expect it to be carried out on their terms, in the ways they are used to. “There is still a huge cultural barrier for some people. We find quite often that librarians and e-learning staff are very open to this, but when you go within the humanities and you look at traditional areas such as English, there is a real resistance to technology.”

I recommend that my analog-teaching colleagues read it all. It very much tallies with my own experience which is that I actually communicate more frequently and more effectively with my on-line students than I do my face-to-face ones whom I know less well. It’s not pure misanthropy. I like talking to students. I love teaching. It’s just that with face-to-face students I actually have to drag myself into my London office to see them whereas with my online students I open my lap-top and I’m there. The main thing missing is the pub, which is a shame because that’s where the best conversations with students are to be had. The major problem, not mentioned in the article, with crossing the digital divide is that once your classroom is portable the tendency is to visit it frequently–too frequently perhaps because it’s open 24/7.

It is easy to spread oneself too thin with multitasking; indeed, I think this is the generic problem with multi-tasking (which I don’t think means the same thing as ‘transliteracy’, incidentally, but they would seem related) you may read a dozen different things before breakfast but how much time do you spend in contemplation? There’s a theory that the Internet makes you stupid, but it’s a rubbish theory says David Aaronovitch and I agree with him. It’s a fantastic tool and we’re only just starting to figure out how to make efective use of it.