{"id":549,"date":"2020-08-12T19:32:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T19:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/?p=549"},"modified":"2020-08-12T19:35:29","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T19:35:29","slug":"lets-stop-lying-to-our-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/lets-stop-lying-to-our-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s stop lying to our students."},"content":{"rendered":"

Much of what we do in higher education is out of the force of habit. Call it insitutional or pedaogical inertia. One of the reasons I like to change the theme<\/strong> for my websites is to make myself (and others) think about what works and what doesn't with web design. <\/p>\n

I just completed a draft of a module on what I think students should know before starting a distance digital class (which everyone calls online college). I struggled a bit when it came to several sections because there are poorly made and executed tools that students have to use successfully if they are to succeed in college. Sometimes I feel like I'm handing students a screw driver with a 45 degree angle in the shaft and then pretending that's normal and they should be able to use it without difficulty. <\/p>\n

So much of distance digital technology is beholden to educational habit, including our use of content managment systems, our deployment of virtual meetings such as Zoom to replicate face-to-face class time, even our normalization of feature creep in software. I recently saw Apple added support for videos in the spreadsheet program, Numbers. Because when I'm hashing through data, what I need is to get rickrolled<\/a>. One section of the module attempted to explain how it required 7 steps to upload a file to our LMS, and I couldn't pretend that process was well designed, so I just laid out how to do it, called it cumbersome, and moved on. <\/p>\n

Given the disfunction in the US govertnment and global dystopia we are living through, it feels doubly disingenous to pretend that poorly designed or performing education tools aren't just that: crap. If we lie, and say, "oh yes, this is great tool and an evidence-based approach to your education" we fail ourselves and them. Instead we should acknowledge the failure and then keep going. "That's a bent screwdriver, I know, but you need to drive that screw if you are going to build this fence, so let me show you how to use it."<\/p>\n

At least by acknoledging the failures of our own tools - including our own pedagogies - we can build trust with our students as they build their education careers. And that's whats most important part: students are still learning, still moving forward in their lives towards their degrees and certificates. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much of what we do in higher education is out of the force of habit. Call it insitutional or pedaogical inertia. One of the reasons I like to change the theme for my websites is to make myself (and others) think about what works and what doesn’t with web design. I just completed a draftContinue reading “Let’s stop lying to our students.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}