Institutional Education vs Social Media Learning: What’s the future of learning?
Posted on June 24, 2008
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Lately I’ve been giving talks about the potential conflict between formal, institutionalized learning and the kind of informal, self-driven learning that social media supports. At the Sloan-C conference, and more recently at EduComm, I tried to get folks thinking about the difference between the way we learn in school and the way we learn on our own in a digital, networked world. You might not agree that this difference presents a crisis but I think you’ll at least be able to see that there is a difference.
No matter how many times I roll the ideas around in my head I can’t help but think that if we ignore the way people learn informally with social media the more irrelevant formal education may become. For instance, think about the last time you needed to answer a question…say the name of a band or how to accomplish something with a piece of software. Where did you start looking for an answer?
I’m sure you didn’t think “Well, I don’t know who sang ‘Dead or Alive’ so I better go enroll in a music history class to find out!” No, you probably Googled a bit of the lyrics, the title of the song, or posted the question to your favorite social media (my choice would be Twitter). When I need to remember how to do a Quickmask in Photoshop I don’t pull out a giant Photoshop manual or even search the software help, I do a quick search and find an online tutorial (not created by an academic or even an industry expert) or I search through user forum posts.
I’m still mulling over the idea but I can’t help but think that we need to do a better job of bringing these kinds of social and informal learning methods into our classrooms. I know that there are instructors who do this but academia, on the whole, doesn’t teach this kind of learning or value it in assessments.
Are we facing a crisis? Are we leaving out an important part of what it is to be a digital learner?
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12 Responses to “Institutional Education vs Social Media Learning: What’s the future of learning?”
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Great post. I totally get what you are saying. I am lucky enough to go to Goddard College, which is a progressive education institution. Goddard, itself, acts as a social network for education (the low tech kind). Degrees at Goddard are individualized, but as you plan your studies you work with both faculty and other students to share thoughts and resources with each other. It is definitely not a program that will produce MD’s or engineers, but the social aspects of the education are great.
I think there are ways that traditional educational institutions can harness the power of collaboration and social learning to not only accommodate social learners, but to encourage and capitalize on the power of social learning. I hope academia stops seeing social technologies as threats and begins to realize the educational value of collaboration.
In my most humblest of opinions, the institutions of higher education find it necessary to justify their outrageous tuition fees by exclusion instead of inclusion.
Why does Harvard have an admission standard? Why does Harvard charge tuition? It is to exclude. It is elitist.
Social learning is for the “commoner.” In the eyes of those running institutions of higher education it is necessary to separate the best of the best from the lowest of the low.
It was Samuel Butler who said “Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.”
At a recent STC summit, many people were panicking about this issue: if computer users simply use online forums instead of reading the manuals we write…well, what’s the use of writing our manuals? Why should we spend so much time on presentation and style? Why should we go and take courses on technical communication?
Well, when people say that users go online to find answers to questions, that is true in — as you say — informal situations. But this is not generally true in larger corporations where they teach employees how to implement and use software; they THRIVE on manuals and technical resources. They don’t go to forums — which may suggest incorrect or somewhat dangerous work-arounds and hacks — unless the manuals fail them.
So my point is just that there continues to be a place for formal learning. People continue to go to training seminars. When they’re stuck for information, or when their formal sources of help fail them, or when they’re in a more informal computing situation, they certainly DO go online (we all do!) but formal learning isn’t dead yet.
I know this isn’t the point of your post necessarily, but in response to Lara (above), I don’t know why Harvard charges its fees, but I assume that most universities charge fees to pay professors, fund research, and to build and maintain their infrastructures. I don’t see informal learning as a replacement for university when it comes to preparing for a career in most cases.
Real world experience, however, can help in many disciplines.
Hey folks! Thanks for the comments!
Muffy…I know of a few companies who use user-generated documentation by allowing their trusted alpha and beta testers to contribute to a support-wiki as they trial software. What’s your opinion about that practice?
Sarah I was talking about this the other day with my mother who is the Department Chair for Special Education of North Side High School in Fort Wayne, IN. The public school corporation she works for under utilizes the abilities of technology. They look at everything from a cost or worry stand point instead of an opportunistic stand point. This causes for a certain trend to take place. Which is most of the innovations in teaching dont come from the top down they come from the bottom up. My worry is that it seems that a rookie teachers should be bringing this to light but the teachers of old routines will stop any progression. The cost savings and development this could bring to students is enormous. Not to mention, if done right the ability to make the teachers job tremendously less stressful.
[...] I was musing about this, I ran across Intellagirl’s recent slideshow about the differences between formal education in an institution and informal learning through [...]
“Facts without theory is trivia;
Theory without facts is bullshit.”
When you look up who wrote some song or how to do a work around in Photoshop, you’re searching for trivia. Useful trivia, at that moment, but trivia, none the less.
The problem I see with harnessing social learning phenomena is the same problem I have with nearly all home-schoolers. What you need in both situations is relatively accurate data, or, at least, data that can be verified through experimentation, and profoundly driven individuals.
Just imagine a class without deadlines or grades. Some folks would thrive, no doubt, but I think most would be lost, feel cheated, and fail miserably.
In one respect social learning is the common man’s means of gaining information, but it is so much more elitist than any college. Think about it, at Harvard you are told what to do and what is important. If you learn new things via forums and wikis you must sift through piles of crap to find that one useful nugget that makes your world work. And in doing so come up with your own theory supported by the facts of the situation. Otherwise, you still end up with trivia and bullshit. And the world has more than enough of both.
Again, knowing Sarah, Social learning will work just peachy for her. I had to tell a couple of our classmates not to compare themselves to her, it would just make them sad. But I think for the average Joe, not so much.
Pyrophage: I’m fascinated by the idea that informal social learning might actually be more elitist than institutionalized learning. Surely, the privilege of paying someone else (an institution) to do the sifting for you and give you only what you need makes institutional learning more special. Agree?
How many people graduated from Harvard last year? A couple thousand? Now how many successful people do you know that took it upon themselves to learn and perfect a skill?
Having someone weed out the nonsense isn’t special, just more expensive, and certainly more efficient.
If you really think that having a degree from an accredited institution just look at the glut of degree holding individuals on unemployment right now. Everybody and their brother has a degree now, ergo by definition it is not special, just more efficient.
I still say that Independent learning is more elitist because being able to say “I got here without YOU.” Means the “YOU” in question were not important.
IG, I think it’s wonderful to compile informal learning, as long as the sources are trustworthy and the assertions double-checked (particularly when the cost of using incorrect information is high).
Years in technical support taught me that users — including myself — often mistake “coincidence” for “a fix,” and they generate outright superstitions that they share with others. They’ll write a forum post along the lines of “I’ve discovered that if you click button X, you need to save your file in format Y before you close the program…otherwise your data might become corrupted!”
This fix might work…OR it may have been formulated based on a one-time coincidence that doesn’t fix the underlying problem. What’s more, if you’re searching a forum for a solution to a problem, you might stop as soon as you find an incorrect solution without realizing that the next hit contained the REAL solution.
So I basically agree with one of Pyrophage’s points: social media needs sifting before you can really learn critical things from it. If you have the time, knowledge, resources, inclination, and critical thinking skills to do that sifting yourself, then it’s useful. Otherwise, however, most of us benefit more from an environment where we’re trained by a trusted source.
Not to say, of course, that all trusted sources are trustworthy…
This debate is critical for HE. We waste opportunities for engaging the critical skills and literacies that we and our learners are developing in wider social networks. A connected model that moves HE away frm 19th century, factory models of education and accreditation is needed, in order to engage with 21st century tools and ways of working. At present HE institutions are trying to shoehorn technologies and ways of working with them into traditional landscapes.
This also has the benefit of extening HE as a democratic project. The issue isn’t either formal or informal, it’s both/and…
http://www.slideshare.net/secret/s2escJ0qs3y4AB
[...] posted a few days ago about the Personal Economics of Social Media, and highlighted Intellagirl’s slideshow, How Social Media is Pushing Higher Ed into Identity Crisis. If you missed it, I highly recommend [...]