Ferdig and Dawson's account with the problems in higher education of moving the administration forward in the technology course development field and the inner workings of faculty owner-ship, roalities, etc., made interesting reading. Personally after reqading this artilce I am very glad that I do not have to contend with the world of academia in my career. Working in the corporate culture, you know that anything you produce belongs to the company!
The second reading is from Ellen Rose, "Is there a class with this content?" Web CT and the limits of individualization.
An excerpt from Rose's article, page 18:
today, with the advent of Web-based systems, the euphemisms may have changed -
we now talk, for instance, about instructional relevance and the radical
retooling of higher education - but embedded within such language are the same
premises that gave rise to teaching machines and individualization: the belief
that education must be made more efficient; and the belief that it is
imperative, in the interests of enhanced (i.e., more efficient) learning, that
more and more instructional decision-making power be transferred from educators
to devices and those who make them.
It seems that our current foray into social networking with wikis, blogs and podcasts are the prime elements of transferring to tools...however, I think that educators need to maintain the instructional-decision-making power and these tools do provide a freedom to educators instead of undermining their power, especially in guided discussions.
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