Further thoughts on online education

This week I will be returning to an in-person classroom setting for the first time in more than a year and a half. It was evident last spring, and it remains evident now, that students are burnt out on online classes and eager to return to the classroom. My own feelings are a bit mixed. I am surprised to realize that my trepidation on returning to the classroom is not rooted primarily in the health risks, even though coronavirus transmission remains an ever-present public health concern. Strangely, it was the comments and questions from my non-teaching friends that alerted me to this cognitive discrepancy. “Aren’t you worried about catching COVID?” they’ve asked me. In these moments I became aware of being preoccupied not with the lingering virus but rather with how rusty my skills of classroom management had become.

As I’ve discussed previously, the advent of the pandemic and subsequent shift to remote instruction prompted sweeping reappraisals of the value of the college experience in general and the value of classroom education more specifically. The crisis affected me on multiple levels. On an existential level the emergence of the pandemic threw the very future of public institutions and interaction into doubt, higher education included. This uncertainty exacerbated my precarious position as fledgling early career academic, and my anxiety during the summer of 2020 was compounded by global unrest in addition to my ongoing lack of employment prospects.

I thus experienced the availability of distance learning as a boon: it afforded me the opportunity of continued employment, and offered other conveniences such as the elimination of commuting. There were clear benefits that I enjoyed, and even as my students expressed exasperation at “Zoom University” they also identified aspects of remote learning that they wanted to preserve: the online availability of lecture materials, “on-demand’ access to lecture recordings, and an end to the onslaught of class handouts. As an instructor I had developed my own list of perks that I was loath to relinquish, mostly relating to the availability of student names and attendance records (even with the associated discomfort over increased surveillance and privacy concerns).

Last Fall I discussed the merits of online teaching with a distinguished colleague. He has been retired from teaching for some time, but had just participated in a Zoom class session as a guest speaker. He was aghast at the number of students who elected to keep their cameras off, and that some of those who did choose to be visible were in dark rooms with sweatshirt hoods over their heads. I had to wonder how long it had been since he had been in a classroom as his dismay seemed to betray an unfamiliarity with the contemporary classroom setting. I also appealed to his robust background in media ecology: wasn’t he discounting the fact that each of the students now had an equal view of the instructor, as compared with a physical space? What would McLuhan say about the virtual classroom environment? When I discussed this with one of my mentors he pointed out that McLuhan would be honor bound to support remote learning, as that is exactly the sort of unexpected hot take that became part of his public persona and brand of media analysis.

I am aiming to approach the return to classroom instruction with an open mind and an ample amount of grace for my students. I remain hopeful that I will receive the same consideration.

Reflections on a year of Zoom University

The spring semester is drawing to a close, bringing an end to a year of remote teaching and distance learning. For me, it’s been a fascinating and often challenging experience. The sudden shift to mediated modalities prompted by the pandemic forced a reckoning with questions about the continued relevance of traditional higher education.

For years I’ve posed the following proposition to students in my Argument classes: “It is important to get a college education.” In their initial response students can only affirm or negate the proposition. During subsequent discussion we unpack the implicit variables and ambiguous terminology that complicate any simple or straightforward “yes/no” response: how is “importance” being defined, and just what exactly constitutes “a college education”? Every time I have conducted this exercise it is the economic valuations that win out: the interrogation of the proposition tends toward a cost-benefit analysis of the price of college tuition weighed against projected lifetime earnings. 

In arguing against the importance of a college education students occasionally cite famous examples of entrepreneurial outliers who made their fortunes after abandoning their collegiate studies. Another common talking point is the widespread availability of free information. The classical model of university organization developed in an era of information scarcity. The vestiges of this model have provided an implicit justification for tuition as the price of admission for exclusive access to specialized information and instructors. In an era of information abundance, access to information no longer seems like sufficient justification for exorbitant tuition and years of student loan payments. As my students have rightly pointed out, the knowledge commodity is less “valuable” when specialized information is readily available through web sites, YouTube videos, or free educational platforms like Khan Academy.

In these exchanges with my students I have attempted to gently undermine the premise that the “value” of college as represented by tuition costs is not linked to the “value” of information or knowledge. I’ve suggested that their propagation of the “value of education” line was hollow lip service to an ideal that they didn’t truly hold, an almost ritualistic recitation of an interpassive belief that no one really believes (sort of like my own semester abroad experience in college when I feebly tried to convince my parents that my interest in visiting Amsterdam was solely motivated by a profound desire to visit the Van Gogh Museum). No, the students’ implicit yet unstated understanding of the “value” of a “college education” was closer to the truth: a social experience tied to expectations of lifestyle affordances and class status.

This is the underlying reality that Ian Bogost elaborated last fall in an article discussing how the pandemic had revealed that the dilemma facing universities was not about providing education, but sustaining the college lifestyle:

Without the college experience, a college education alone seems insufficient. Quietly, higher education was always an excuse to justify the college lifestyle. But the pandemic has revealed that university life is far more embedded in the American idea than anyone thought. America is deeply committed to the dream of attending college. It’s far less interested in the education for which students supposedly attend. [...] Joe College and Betty Co-ed became archetypes, young and carefree models of American spirit and potential. Going to college, Thelin writes in his book A History of American Higher Education, “was a rite of passage into the prestige of the American upper-middle class.”

From an instructor’s perspective, I was grateful that the transition to remote learning was as readily available and easily implemented as it was. From the perspective of May 2021 -- bolstered by the benefit of hindsight and the preliminary reassurance provided by the vaccine rollout -- the anxieties over a forever-changed public life that pervaded in the early days of the pandemic seem overblown. It now seems that most campuses are prepared for a return to normal (or at least the “new normal”) this fall, but a year ago the fate of higher education (along with many other institutions and spaces) seemed very much in doubt. Last summer I was deeply appreciative for both the continuity of employment for myself and other staff as well as the broader educational continuity for students that distance platforms provided.

I’ve now taught both synchronous and asynchronous mediated courses. My synchronous Public Speaking classes were relatively well-suited for a video-conferencing format; the audio-visual medium could easily accommodate the fundamental activities of speaking and listening. Yet the “space” of the Zoom room presented certain restraints and affordances that led me to reconsider the inherent limitations of a traditional classroom space.

Graeber on labor and leisure; the perils of hipster economics; and the educational value of MOOCs

• Following last month's post of David Graeber's views on "bullshit jobs," this Salon interview with Graeber discusses the failed forecast of universal leisure time:

Right after my original bullshit jobs piece came out, I used to think that if I wanted, I could start a whole career in job counseling – because so many people were writing to me saying “I realize my job is pointless, but how can I support a family doing something that’s actually worthwhile?” A lot of people who worked the information desk at Zuccotti Park, and other occupations, told me the same thing: young Wall Street types would come up to them and say “I mean, I know you’re right, we’re not doing the world any good doing what we’re doing. But I don’t know how to live on less than a six figure income. I’d have to learn everything over. Could you teach me?”

But I don’t think we can solve the problem by mass individual defection. Or some kind of spiritual awakening. That’s what a lot of people tried in the ‘60s and the result was a savage counter-offensive which made the situation even worse. I think we need to attack the core of the problem, which is that we have an economic system that, by its very nature, will always reward people who make other people’s lives worse and punish those who make them better. I’m thinking of a labor movement, but one very different than the kind we’ve already seen. A labor movement that manages to finally ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people.

• In an article for Al Jazeera, Sarah Kendzior surveys the politics of gentrification and the perils of hipster economics:

Proponents of gentrification will vouch for its benevolence by noting it "cleaned up the neighbourhood". This is often code for a literal white-washing. The problems that existed in the neighbourhood - poverty, lack of opportunity, struggling populations denied city services - did not go away. They were simply priced out to a new location.

That new location is often an impoverished suburb, which lacks the glamour to make it the object of future renewal efforts. There is no history to attract preservationists because there is nothing in poor suburbs viewed as worth preserving, including the futures of the people forced to live in them. This is blight without beauty, ruin without romance: payday loan stores, dollar stores, unassuming homes and unpaid bills. In the suburbs, poverty looks banal and is overlooked.

In cities, gentrifiers have the political clout - and accompanying racial privilege - to reallocate resources and repair infrastructure. The neighbourhood is "cleaned up" through the removal of its residents. Gentrifiers can then bask in "urban life" - the storied history, the selective nostalgia, the carefully sprinkled grit - while avoiding responsibility to those they displaced.

Hipsters want rubble with guarantee of renewal. They want to move into a memory they have already made.

• At Mute, Dominic Pettman writes about the rise of MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) in higher education, and how commodification affects the value of learning:

In the pedagogic trenches, MOOCs are considered a symptom of wider economic patterns which effectively vacuum resources up into the financial stratosphere, leaving those doing the actual work with many more responsibilities, and far less compensation. Basic questions about the sustainability of this model remain unanswered, but it is clear that there is little room for enfranchised, full-time, fully-compensated faculty. Instead, we find an army of adjuncts servicing thousands of students; a situation which brings to mind scenes from Metropolis rather than Dead Poets Society.

[...]

For companies pushing MOOCs, education is no different from entertainment: it is simply a question of delivering ‘content.’ But learning to think exclusively via modem is like learning to dance by watching YouTube videos. You may get a sense of it, but no-one is there to point out mistakes, deepen your understanding, contextualise the gestures, shake up your default perspective, and facilitate the process. The role of the professor or instructor is not simply the shepherd for the transmission of information from point A to point B, but the co-forging of new types of knowledge, and critically testing these for various versions of soundness and feasibility. Wisdom may be eternal, but knowledge – both practical and theoretical – evolves over time, and especially exponentially in the last century, with all its accelerated technologies. Knowledge is always mediated, so we must consciously take the tools of mediation into account. Hence the need for a sensitive and responsive guide: someone students can bounce new notions off, rather than simply absorb information from. Without this element, distance learning all too often becomes distanced learning. Just as a class taken remotely usually leads to a sea of remote students.

[...]

Marshall McLuhan was half-right when he insisted that the electronic age is ushering in a post-literate society. But no matter how we like to talk of new audio-visual forms of literacy, there is still the ‘typographic man’ pulling the strings, encouraging us to express ourselves alphabetically. Indeed, the electronic and the literate are not mutually exclusive, much as people like to pit them against each other.

• Pettman also quotes Ian Bogost's comments on distance learning:

The more we buy into the efficiency argument, the more we cede ground to the technolibertarians who believe that a fusion of business and technology will solve all ills. But then again, I think that's what the proponents of MOOCs want anyway. The issue isn't online education per se, it's the logics and rationales that come along with certain implementations of it.

Manifesto for a Ludic Century, ludonarrative dissonance in GTA, games and mindf*cks, and more

• Kotaku recently posted a "manifesto" by game designer Eric Zimmerman declaring that the 21st century will be defined by games:

Systems, play, design: these are not just aspects of the Ludic Century, they are also elements of gaming literacy. Literacy is about creating and understanding meaning, which allows people to write (create) and read (understand).

New literacies, such as visual and technological literacy, have also been identified in recent decades. However, to be truly literate in the Ludic Century also requires gaming literacy. The rise of games in our culture is both cause and effect of gaming literacy in the Ludic Century.

• In a follow-up to Zimmerman's treatise, Kotaku asked various game theorists, designers, and writers: will the 21st century be defined by games? Respondents include media theorist Ian Bogost:

So, perhaps there is one fundamental challenge for the Manifesto for a Ludic Century: would a truly ludic century be a century of manifestos? Of declaring simple principles rather than embracing systems? Or, is the Ludic Manifesto meant to be the last manifesto, the manifesto to end manifestos, replacing simple answers with the complexity of "information at play?"

• While on the topic of Bogost, I recently read his game studies paper from 2009 wherein he relates contemporary game studies to McLuhan's discussion of games in 1964's Understanding Media:

Might we conclude: videogames are the first creative medium to fully emerge after Marshall McLuhan. By the time they became popular, media ecology as a method was well-known. McLuhan was a popular icon. By the time the first generation of videogame players was becoming adults, McLuhan had become a trope. When the then-new publication Wired Magazine named him their "patron saint" in 1993, the editors didn't even bother to explain what that meant. They didn't need to.

By the time videogame studies became a going concern, McLuhan was gospel. So much so that we don't even talk about him. To use McLuhan's own language of the tetrad, game studies have enhanced or accelerated media ecology itself, to the point that the idea of studying the medium itself over its content has become a natural order.

• This piece by Bogost for The Atlantic looks at "flipped classrooms" and massive open online courses:

Generally speaking, educators have warmed to the idea of the flipped classroom far more than that of the MOOC. That move might be injudicious, as the two are intimately connected. It's no accident that private, for-profit MOOC startups like Coursera have advocated for flipped classrooms, since those organizations have much to gain from their endorsement by universities. MOOCs rely on the short, video lecture as the backbone of a new educational beast, after all. Whether in the context of an all-online or a "hybrid" course, a flipped classroom takes the video lecture as a new standard for knowledge delivery and transfers that experience from the lecture hall to the laptop.

• Also, with increased awareness of Animal Crossing following from the latest game's release for the Nintendo 3DS, Bogost recently posted an excerpt from his 2007 book Persuasive Games discussing consumption and naturalism in Animal Crossing:

Animal Crossing deploys a procedural rhetoric about the repetition of mundane work as a consequence of contemporary material property ideals. When my (then) five-year-old began playing the game seriously, he quickly recognized the dilemma he faced. On the one hand, he wanted to spend the money he had earned from collecting fruit and bugs on new furniture, carpets, and shirts. On the other hand, he wanted to pay off his house so he could get a bigger one like mine.

• In a post discussing the trio of protagonists of GTA V, in anticipation of the game's impending release, Craig at unigamesity sees the use of multiple playable characters as addressing "ludonarrative dissonance":

Ludonarrative dissonance is when the story the game is telling you and your gameplay experience somehow don’t match up. As an example, this was a particular issue in Rockstar’s most recent game, Max Payne 3. Max constantly makes remarks about how terrible he is at his job, even though he does more than is humanly possible to try to protect his employers – including making perfect one-handed head shots in mid-air while drunk and high on painkillers. The disparity and the dissonance between the narrative of the story and the gameplay leave things feeling off kilter and poorly inter-connnected. It doesn’t make sense or fit with your experience so it feels wrong and damages the cohesiveness of the game world and story. It’s like when you go on a old-lady only murdering spree as Niko, who is supposed to be a reluctant killer with a traumatic past, not a gerontophobic misogynist.

• Ludonarrative dissonance also cropped up in this post by Alex Pieschel on medium discussing irony and praise in videogames (found via Critical Distance):

What I find strange, in light of our supposed anti-irony cultural moment, is a kind of old-fashioned ironic conceit behind a number of recent critical darlings in the commercial videogame space. 2007's Bioshock and this year’s Bioshock: Infinite are both about the irony of expecting ‘meaningful choice’ to live in an artificial dome of technological and commercial constraints. Last year’s Spec Ops: The Line offers a grim alchemy of self-deprecation and preemptive disdain for its audience. The Grand Theft Auto series has always maintained a cool, dismissive cynicism beneath its gleefully absurd mayhem. These games frame choice as illusory and experience as artificial. They are expensive, explosive parodies of free will.

• Which led me to this 2007 post from click nothing on ludonarrative dissonance in BioShock:

To cut straight to the heart of it, Bioshock seems to suffer from a powerful dissonance between what it is about as a game, and what it is about as a story. By throwing the narrative and ludic elements of the work into opposition, the game seems to openly mock the player for having believed in the fiction of the game at all. The leveraging of the game’s narrative structure against its ludic structure all but destroys the player’s ability to feel connected to either, forcing the player to either abandon the game in protest (which I almost did) or simply accept that the game cannot be enjoyed as both a game and a story, and to then finish it for the mere sake of finishing it.

• Sarah Wanenchak at Cyborgology considers mindfucks in videogames (partially in response to this post from Problem Machine):

The post itself makes a very important point: games, for the most part, can’t pull the Mindfuck like movies can because of the nature of the kind of storytelling to which most games are confined, which is predicated on a particular kind of interaction. Watching a movie may not be an entirely passive experience, but it’s clearly more passive than a game. You may identify with the characters on the screen, but you’re not meant to implicitly think of yourself as them. You’re not engaging in the kind of subtle roleplaying that most (mainstream) games encourage. You are not adopting an avatar. In a game, you are your profile, you are the character you create, and you are also to a certain degree the character that the game sets in front of you. I may be watching everything Lara Croft does from behind her, but I also control her; to the extent that she has choices, I make them. I get her from point A to B, and if she fails it’s my fault. When I talk about something that happened in the game, I don’t say that Lara did it. I say that I did.

• These excerpted research results published on kmjn.org reports that videogame players are acceptive of at least some cases of incoherence in anachronic gameplay:

Anachrony is a common storytelling technique in which events are narrated out of chronological order. A familiar example is a flashback, where story time jumps to the past for a bit, before returning to the present. The term "nonlinear narrative" is also sometimes used for this kind of out-of-order storytelling (somewhat less precisely).

While it's a common technique in literature and film, anachrony is widely seen as more problematic to use in games, perhaps even to the point of being unusable. If the player's actions during a flashback scene imply a future that differs considerably from the one already presented in a present-day scene (say, the player kills someone who they had been talking to in a present-day scene, or commits suicide in a flashback), this produces an inconsistent narrative. The root of the problem is that players generally have degree of freedom of action, so flashbacks are less like the case in literature and film—where already decided events are simply narrated out of order—and more like time travel, where the player travels back in time and can mess up the timeline.

• Polygon reports on a venture by Press Select to publish longform games criticism:

The first of the books are set to be published in early 2014. Some of the writers that will be published by Press Select in its first round have written for publications like Edge magazine, Kotaku, Kill Screen and personal blogs, including writers like Chris Dahlen, Michael Abbott, Jenn Frank, Jason Killingsworth, Maddy Myers, Tim Rogers, Patricia Hernandez and Robert Yang.