XplanaZine

“You’ve changed the entire meaning and intent of my course!” I blurted out the words and then regreted it as Kendra, the instructional designer looked at me in shock. It was now my turn to experience what some of my friends and colleagues described as “ID hijacking.” I had managed to avoid conflict in the past by building all my own courses and putting them up in WebCT or Blackboard. But, this time, the department had decided to standardize the core courses, and they wanted to build a survey course — a “generic car any qualified driver can drive.”

I had my doubts about the generic car concept, but it didn’t seem too alien to me. After all, we use textbooks, don’t we? For the core course I had been asked to develop – in this case, a sophomore-level survey of American literature – I felt quite comfortable. After all, it would assure everyone that the basics had been covered. The instructor could customize the course by posting her own lecture notes, adding links, adding readings, and guiding discussion boards.

My role, as the content expert or SME (pronounced to rhyme with “tree”), seemed straight-forward enough. I would develop a syllabus, lecture notes, learning guides, unit overviews, review questions, and essay topics. Although I felt a bit nervous about giving up my intellectual property rights for what amounted to a “work for hire” contract which ended up at about $1 per hour, I was okay with it. I could always flesh out my ideas in journal articles and protect myself that way.

Later, someone suggested to me that I could have negotiated a fee payment to be received from every student who took my class. “It’s like an e-book or an online article,” said my friend Gabbi, who is also a law professor.

“Oh, that’s okay. I am glad to have the chance to do this. It’s a brave, new world, right?” I said.

“Well, if you’re talking about social control and mind control through education, I would agree with you there,” said Gabbi, dryly.

“What do you mean?” I asked, somewhat disingenuously. I knew what she was getting at.

“What do you think that the “car anyone can drive” is, anyway? If that’s not an assault to academic freedom, what is?” she asked.

“Come on. You’re over-reacting. We use standard textbooks to teach history, right? Besides, my course will encourage students to ask questions and to reconsider their assumptions. It will decriminalize thinking,” I said. Despite my doubts, I was really getting into it. To me, online education was not only convenient for non-traditional adult learners, but it was also a way to connect with the Instant Messaging generation. We would speak the same language, groove with the same technology.

My first meeting with Kendra and the rest of the course development team had seemed to go well. There were five of them – instructional designers, programmers, graphic designers, and support staff. Most were graduate student workers who were finishing degrees in Instructional Technology, Educational Psychology, or Instructional Design. All were out of the Education Department.

I’ve never had a class in the Education Department, so it’s hard for me to keep all of the sub-categories straight. However, I have ten years of instructional experience in the classroom and via the Internet. I have taken courses on teaching English. However, I have to say that I’m pretty weak on the terminology used by graduate students in Education. I don’t think it makes me incompetent, though. Okay. I’m already revealing my defensiveness!
I had attended the faculty training offered by the online course development team, and had even been a part of a committee a few years ago. My relationship with the department was great. They respected me as a teacher and a scholar. All was happy in Mudville. At least, that was what I thought.

I returned to the situation at hand.

“I’m sorry, Kendra. I do appreciate your work.” That was an absolute whopper of a lie. When I first saw what she did to my carefully crafted work, I couldn’t believe it. She had taken something quite subtle and ingenious and turned it into the intellectual equivalent of candy corn.

“Okay. Well, I had to change it. What you say are learning objectives are not learning objectives at all. You did not follow the Kemp Model. In fact, I didn’t even see any sign of Bloom’s taxonomy being present at all,” she said, rather haughtily I thought.

“True. I’m using my own structure of inquiry,” I said. “I’m trying to get away from the shallow and insipid way the students have been trained to think up to now. I want them to interrogate their own processes – focus on the “how do we know” aspect of things,” I said awkwardly and inelegantly. I felt like a fool. What was the Kemp Model anyway? Bloom’s Taxonomy? I thought of Bloom’s seminal book, “The Anxiety of Influence” which deals with Oedipal conflicts and how authors psychologically kill off the influence of previous generations to forge their own identity and legacy. I suspected the taxonomic Bloom was a different breed of cat.

“You can’t use those verbs. They don’t work in learning objectives. They are not performative.”

“What? Why not?” I asked, a bit dazed. My approach seemed to work marvelously in the classes I had taught online over the last five years.

“Here is a list of permitted verbs,” said Kendra. She sighed.

I looked at the list. I felt as though I were in junior high again. All the frisson of intellectual discovery was being bludgeoned into a flat little meat pie. I was starting to gain insight into why textbooks were so colorful, yet uninspiring. Such conformity seemed vaguely fascistic to me, but I also realize that I can be something of a drama queen at times.

“If you’re going to pervert the entire project by twisting it like this, I don’t can’t permit my material to be used. I am withdrawing permission to use my content.” I spoke quickly, rashly. However, I felt there was some sort of principle at stake here.

Kendra froze. Her face was flushed, and I couldn’t tell if she was going to erupt in tears or fisticuffs. The hackles on the back of my neck stood up as I began to feel that unmistakable tingle of fight or flight. Good old reptilian brain. It was definitely kicking in.

“I don’t know what to do. Here’s our timeline. This has to be out by the tenth of the month. Dean Pantagruel is really firm on that. I’m just doing my job and following Best Practices,” said Kendra.

I suddenly felt sorry for her, but not very. Why did education departments brainwash students in this way? Or, more to the point, why do such people think that they are the only ones who possess the right to comment on (more like “make pronouncements on”) learning? I know I’m only seeing a tip of the iceberg, and that there are real and compelling reasons for accepting the results of carefully conducted, IRB-blessed research. Nevertheless, aren’t we sealing our own fate if we allow ourselves to present information and to mediate learning their way only. Heaven help those who deviate from the norm!

At least this is the line of thought that occurs to me, a died-in-the-wool humanities person.

I was rescued by the fact that Kendra had class in twenty minutes. It was for the best. Looming ahead was another uncomfortable round of arguments – the graphics I wanted to use had been deemed to be “distractors” and the video clip I spent hours on would not run on any computer I tried it on, despite the assurances of the computer guy that it would run on Quicktime, Real Player, and Windows Media Player. What version, though?

As I made my way out of the workstation area, I ran into Dean Pantagruel. He was not merely cordial, he was beaming. Clearly, he had no idea of the cracks in the foundation of his new empire.

“How do you like our new work labs?” he asked. “Here, let me show you a few books that were recommended to me. I read about them on Scott Leslie’s EdTechPost. They’re great. Especially Shelford and Remillard’s Real Web Project Management: Case Studies and Best Practices from the Trenches.

“We’re doing a large review and developing best practices to submit to the State Regents in January,” he added. “I wish we could actually do all the things that best practices suggest, though.”

I felt a flash of hope. Perhaps we could have a meaningful conversation about what had just happened. I was still feeling pretty indignant, though, and unwilling to budge from my position about how to present my materials.

“Yes, compared with most universities and private industry, we’re undercapitalized. Plus, we have to use temporary workers – graduate students, that is – who tend to think that they are exploited. And – well, you know how fragmented and disjointed a university is! We will never be as smoothly organized as a corporation,” he said.

“How about the for-profit private universities?” I asked. I was just going along with the conversation. I could tell it would not do any good to bring up my “issues.” They seemed out of sync, inefficient, and bad-tempered.

“I’ll show him. I’ll start my own online university,” I thought to myself. I have enough friends who think like I do – we could probably make it work.

Then, the realities of time, energy, and obligations kicked in. I was already behind on an article I was writing for a literary journal. Pick your battles, kept running through my brain. Then, stupidly, the phrase, “who moved my cheese?” replaced it, and I thought of my favorite rat character from what seemed to be, along with Covey, to be part of the new workshop canon.

On my way home from the office, I went by the store and bought myself a huge wedge of brie. I then made a long list of “FORBIDDEN VERBS” and toyed with the idea of e-mailing them to Kendra.