I traveled to Denver this week for WCET 2009, and though I was sunk with a cold on the second day, so far I’ve enjoyed participating in the conference, and, as always, have found the Twitter backchannel (#wcet09) a great way to connect with more ideas, and more people (more…)
Darren Draper stirred up another conversation on his blog yesterday (Hacking the Curriculum) which intersects a number of my interests: independent study, reusable course content, and open education, and reiterates the question, what is not replaceable in teaching? In the live classroom? In individual instructor-developed curriculum? And how far can we stretch the re-usability of online educational materials? (more…)
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:
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?
This article is an attempt to objectively define the phrase “creepy treehouse” as coined by Chris Lott, and in current usage by ed tech folks such as Scott Leslie, Marc Hugentobler, John Krutsch, and others. I plan to follow up with a post on my perspective on CTH in the field of educational technology.
n. A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids.
Example: “Kids … can see a [creepy treehouse] a mile away and generally do a good job in avoiding them.” John Krutsch in Are You Building a Creepy Treehouse?”
n. Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewards.
Such institutional environments are often seen as more artificial in their construction and usage, and typically compete with pre-existing systems, environments, or applications. creepy treehouses also have an aspect of closed-ness, where activity within is hidden from the outside world, and may not be easily transferred from the environment by the participants.
n. Any system or environment that repulses a target user due to it’s closeness to or representation of an oppressive or overbearing institution.
n. A situation in which an authority figure or an institutional power forces those below him/her into social or quasi-social situations.
With respect to education, Utah Valley University student Tyrel Kelsey describes, “creepy treehouse is what a professor can create by requiring his students to interact with him on a medium other than the class room tools. [E.g.] requiring students to follow him/her on peer networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook.”
adj. Repulsiveness arising from institutional mimicry or emulation of pre-existing community-driven environments or systems.
Example: “Blackboard Sync is soooo creepy treehouse.” Marc Hugentobler
In the field of educational technology a creepy treehouse is an institutionally controlled technology/tool that emulates or mimics pre-existing technologies or tools that may already be in use by the learners, or by learners’ peer groups. Though such systems may be seen as innovative or problem-solving to the institution, they may repulse some users who see them as infringement on the sanctity of their peer groups, or as having the potential for institutional violations of their privacy, liberty, ownership, or creativity. Some users may simply object to the influence of the institution.
I’ve been observing this phenomena increasingly, as instructors push down hot Web 2.0 technologies, while students push back with vocal objections or passive resistance. I call this the creepy treehouse effect.
More directly, any move to integrate or aggregate new institutional tools or systems with pre-existing tools or systems already embraced by the community may be seen as creepy treehouse, in as much as it may be construed as institutional infringement upon the social or professional community of it’s participants.
For example, the Blackboard family of learning management system products are often seen as creepy treehouses, as they provide e-learning tools in a very rigid, closed environment that is institutionally controlled in an attempt to “engage” students through technological novelty or mimicry of existing Web-based tools for social engagement. Increasingly, learning management systems are incorporating what educators assess as being potentially valuable learning tools such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, instant messaging, etc., not recognizing that these tools may be seen as artificial, meaningless, tiresome, temporary, or simply another aspect of The Man by the institution’s target participant group: the students.
At the same time, other LMS tools that are more exclusively related to the traditional activity of teaching (e.g. gradebooks, online quizzing, material posting, etc) are not viewed as inherently creepy treehouse. Tyrel Kelsey suggests:
Students reject creepy treehouses for one reason: they are creepy. I think a better approach to education is the idea of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) … which [students] can invite the professor into when they feel comfortable doing so.
Creepy treehouses are not limited to the realm of education or educational technology. In the computer software environment, for instance, Microsoft Office Live is likely to be judged as creepy treehouse relative to Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho, not due entirely to it’s competitiveness or the relative similarities of the products, but more to the origination of the software: Microsoft is often seen as a controlling, soulless, self-centered institution, whereas Zoho and Google are seen as not only preceding Microsoft Live, but also open, user-centered, community-driven, or alternative.
Opinions in the community as to the creepy treehouse-ness of a given system or environment may vary greatly due to the subjectiveness of individual experiences. I expect that newly introduced tools, systems, or environments are more likely to be suspect and labeled “creepy treehouse”, though over time such systems may prove to have more salient long-term value to the community than anticipated.
I teach DGM 2740: Web Design online (and once in a blue moon on-campus). This is the course that sequentially and logically follows DGM 2120: Web Essentials (which I also teach) at Utah Valley University in the Digital Media department.
During the first week of Web Design I have students read The Expert Mind, an article by Philip Ross featured in Scientific American. This is a great article for those gearing up to master any field of study. Among it’s arguments is the idea of effortful study“:
Effortful study is the key to achieving success in chess, classical music, soccer and many other fields. New research has indicated that motivation is a more important factor than innate ability.
Web design is a field that mixes many other fields together, and today’s expert Web designers must have a foundational knowledge of design theory, including it’s elements and principles as well as knowledge of information architecture, usability, accessibility, computer graphic applications, and, of course, languages such as XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. These areas require memorization, rote practice, problem-solving, examples, and independent exploration. In general this relates to the cognitive aspect of learning, one which can be mediated at least in part through a behaviorist approach (see Bill Kerr’s article on Minsky for a clearer introductory explanation on this notion, though as I learned as a grad student and witnessed first-hand as a language teacher, there is an affective domain which, when attended to appropriately, can positively impact learning as information is made personally meaningful, as emotion is stimulated, and as neural connections formed/forged and reinforced.
But to become an expert, to master Web design one must have intrinsic motivation as the SciAm article suggests, and as we learn from ed researches such as Maslow, Schunk, etc . I believe that part of that motivation is inherent in stduents decision to become a Web developer/designer. But students can fuel yourself by feeding off of the larger Web design community. And with the current manifestation of the information age, the increasing popularity of social software and online networking (the so-called “Web 2.0″), there has never been a better time to be connected to experts and professionals in the field.
This is not to say that I encourage my students to harass the current luminaries of Web design; rather I want my students to read about them, observe their activities through social software tools such as blogs and twitter. I want them to use folksonomies, and use tools like del.icio.us and digg to find the best and most talked about articles in the field. In essence, I want them to go, read, and do what the professionals go, read, and do, whether that’s taking in the latest ideas and commentary in periodicals such as A List Apart, or asking questions and providing answers on discussion forums and mailing lists such as CSS Discuss.
As my students develop their skills and rack up experiences, they can become more and more a part of this professional community. At the same time, I believe there is value in students forming their own community to support, learn from, and show off to each other. That’s part of why I’m now having students create and write in a blog designated to the subject of Web design and development. Not only can they emulate some of the practices of the experts by sharing, analyzing, and even writing Web design related news, they are creating nodes through which they can find and connect with each other.
And the blogs are something they can take with them. By independently finding and analyzing news or information articles related to Web design, they are building a highly visible portfolio piece that they can (1) continue after they finish the course, and (2) incorporate into resume materials to present to prospective employers. Definitely one of the pros of embedding authentic social software tools (see Scott Leslie’s Pros and Cons of Loosely Coupled Teaching for an idea of where this could end up taking us).
At the same time, I recognize there may be a natural reluctance in students for whole-hearted embracing of the idea of writing a blog for class. It’s the whole creepy treehouse notion, and it’s probably also some insecurity–these are, after all, novices for the most part. For students who are wary of the meaningfulness of the blog assignments, just remember:
You don’t have to be an expert yet to write a blog, you just need to be interested, teachable, and energetic. You have to be motivated to learn.
You are apprentices, and this is effortful study.