In my previous post, Defining “Creepy Treehouse” I proposed definitions for a term that flavorfully describes how students may react to the imposition of (new) learning environments from the top-down. While I admit my post was one-part tongue-in-cheek, I’ve recognized that the creepy treehouse effect is an actual, if still vague, phenomena, and I hope to continue to investigate it as one of many possibilities why students may not enthusiastically engage with the new technologies that are pushed down upon them.
In the comments of my last post several thoughtful readers pointed to other impedances to student usage of instructor-designated educational or social technologies. I myself tried to consciously limit the scope of my definition to target:
- compulsory student-instructor social engagement
- compulsory student-student social engagement
- compulsory use of education technologies in general
- the artificiality of educational technologies the mimic existing technologies already adopted by the community
We’re essentially talking about so-called Web 2.0 tools that emphasize connectivity, social interaction, and collaboration. Teachers and ed-tech’ers who support the use of such tools recognize their potential as facilitating not only teacher-student interaction, also student-student interaction, which Wentzel and Watkins summarize as having positive effects on learning outcomes, especially from a Vygotsky-influenced perspective. Yet when one’s efforts to force students into these socially-connected environs is met with resistance or even repulsion, one may be experiencing a result of the creepy treehouse phenomenon.
I see a perhaps unintended relationship between social learning approaches and the shift in some Western cultures from “traditional” teacher-student relationships (which were generally akin to a master-apprentice relationship), toward relationships that at least pretend to be co-equal. Regardless of your opinion on this shift, I see this as a consequence of an over-projected form of egalitarianism that has been grasped at from both ends. For instance, I know many college professors who allow and even ask their students to call them by their first names, creating an illusion of peer-peer relationship. This goes hand-in-hand with the metaphor of teachers as “guide on the side”-again, a abolition of hierarchy presumedly to foster more authentic learning and collaboration discovery.
And yet we may find that students see, as Eric pointed out in comments on my last post, compulsory socializing in the context of education as “a violation of the work/not work boundary, and one of the reasons I think students respond so viscerally to that violation is that it impinges on the separation of identity constructs for students by asking them (implicitly) to merge their professional with their casual selves.”
I think this is as true for instructor-student socializing/social learning as it is for compulsory student-student socializing/social learning. This certainly corresponds to my own experience as a student, and suggests that while some instructors are re-articulating their identity constructs based on their own repulsion to their negative perception of the hierarchical relationships of the System, students themselves may continue to desire to hold own distinct casual self apart from their professional/academic self.
A report out of The Guardian late last year suggests that though student’s private and academic “online spaces are blurring” and despite efforts to engage students at an academic utilizing technology, students who are otherwise competent IT users but are either technically or willfully ignorant of educational applications of “Web 2.0? or other social networking tools. While the article makes it clear that the students surveyed don’t know what they want (they “‘appear to want to keep their online persona private but when you ask them whether they’d like instant communication with tutors or feedback on essays (via Skype or Facebook) the answer is always yes.’”), it also implies that educators who embrace social networking software may end up alienating students who choose not to engage academically along the same channels that they engage socially.
On the surface, it makes sense to me that the very social networking technology which many students are immersed in (“That’s not technology. That’s what I do.”, one of them poignantly states), in the hands of academics, becomes “the thin end of the wedge” as the Guardian suggests. It is, despite educators’ best efforts, nothing more than a Cog in the Machine, a tool of the Man, which will invariably push the Youth away from the Establishment. OK, this is clearly hyperbolic of me, but it has a scent of truth, and I daresay this mentality is precisely the reason some educators are so fervently in favor of utilizing Web 2.0: to connect with students, to show that We Are Not the Enemy, and even to abashedly but with persistent vicariousness try to reclaim something of our youth. Oh, I don’t mean you of course…
The reality remains that students as colleagues is a myth. Professors need not treat students as peers, though they must be treated as potential peers. It may be a gap that is never fully filled, but it does narrow as the novice gains experience, expands his knowledge base, and develops his skills.
Perhaps the more appropriate question we should be asking is neither how do we merge technologies into academic exercises nor how do we utilize the technologies that learners are already immersed in to leverage our pedagogical outcomes, but rather one that is more abstract and essential: does their ultimately need to be a distinction between our social lives, our academic lives, and our professional lives? I think any active practitioner in the field of educational technology would instantly recognize that the answer is, “No”. Many edtech’ers seem perfectly at ease not merely crossing over from one sphere to another, but embracing these sphere simultaneously, almost as if they were one and the same. Is this just because we are all friendless geeks who have no other outlets for our social inadequacies? Is it because we are forced to be perpetual learners in order to excel professionally? It could be, but I think more importantly we recognize a clear meaningfulness in the socially-connected professional relationships that we maintain. We learn as we socialize, we socialize as we learn; it’s an ever-evolving mesh network, and if we’re lucky we’re better professionals because of it.
This epistemological observation implies to me that rather than utilizing Web 2.0 technologies to induce students to enter our academic and professional worlds, or forcing our educational practices to fit into the social technologies, we might instead focus simply on training students on how they can leverage social technology for their own individual educational and professional benefits. As my wise American lit professor Mr. Jan Bakker often said, “I can’t teach students anything; all I can do is open the doors.” To that end, let us open doors to effective learning tools, educate them on why the ability to meaningfully connect the social, academic, and professional spheres can lead to a meaningful career that integrates life-long learning with rewarding social connections in their adult life, and model effective and efficient online learning environments that support our own professional endeavors.
If teachers want to dissolve or reduce the traditional teacher/student hierarchy, understand that students may not want to. For teachers who desire social learning engagement with students, we can expect that as students grow and develop stronger academic skills and begin to enter the professional world we may naturally connect with them. I found this to be increasingly true as a student finishing up my Bachelor’s and then entering and completing grad school. It’s natural that as their academic professionalism and educational intensity grows our common interests and experiences bring us together.
We as educators need to be available to our students. We need to share our expertise, our professional networks, but not our personal lives. We must be careful not to confuse personal, subjective enthusiasm for Web 2.0 tools with broad, objective effectiveness and relevance of these tools re. specific learning objectives. We need to facilitate, not build, learner-owned networks that provide long-term opportunities for individual learning, engagement, and professional development. As student Tyrel Kelsey said in Students should build their own tree house. I think a better approach to education is right in line with the idea of fostering students to develop their own Personal Learning Environment (PLE). Students’ existing or developing online literacies simply need to integrate academics, academics don’t need to integrate their social networking. The question, then, is how do we best support their development?