iCranky - Against Badly Thought-Out Teaching Seminars - From Inside Higher Ed

Lawrence Musgrove writes in Inside Higher Ed :: iCranky:

I’m feeling a bit cranky. My colleagues and I have just received word that our next professional development day will focus on ways we need to technologize our teaching methods so that we can better facilitate the success of the newest new generation, commonly known as “Millennials.”This latest alien invasion of first-year students, we are told, are teenage battery packs “with wires running through their veins” plugged into video games, MySpace and iPods.Therefore, we better get our collective act together and at the very least hybridize the delivery of knowledge so that we can help them make the grade in the global marketplace.

... one of the reasons I’m cranky today is because most faculty development workshops I’ve attended assume no knowledge and experience on the part of those being lectured to about the latest advances in technology, learning style, and interconnectivity.

Nobody asks us what we already know and do. ...

Another reason I’m cranky today is that I detest these facile characterizations of our students. ...

And I’m cranky because this attempt to equate pedagogy with technology confuses ends with means. ...

...

What our students need is not more of what they come in the door with. They don’t need more of the same in the same way they got it before. They need to be confronted with people who talk about ideas that matter. They need to become people who can confront and talk to other people about ideas that matter. They need to sit in a room of people and learn about humanity.