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8/14/2019 Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Home Opinion & Ideas The Chronicle Review
The Chronicle Review
August 26, 2011
Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age
By Cathy N. Davidson
Five or six years ago, I attended a lecture on the science of
attention. A philosopher who conducts research over in the medical
school was talking about attention blindness, the basic feature of
the human brain that, when we concentrate intensely on one task,
causes us to miss just about everything else. Because we can't see
what we can't see, our lecturer was determined to catch us in the
act. He had us watch a video of six people tossing basketballs back
and forth, three in white shirts and three in black, and our task was
to keep track only of the tosses among the people in white. I hadn't
seen the video back then, although it's now a classic, featured on
punk-style TV shows or YouTube versions enacted at frat houses
under less than lucid conditions. The tape rolled, and everyone
began counting.
Everyone except me. I'm dyslexic, and the moment I saw that
grainy tape with the confusing basketball tossers, I knew I wouldn't
be able to keep track of their movements, so I let my mind wander.My curiosity was piqued, though, when about 30 seconds into the
tape, a gorilla sauntered in among the players. She (we later
learned a female student was in the gorilla suit) stared at the
camera, thumped her chest, and then strode away while they
continued passing the balls.
When the tape stopped, the philosopher asked how many people
had counted at least a dozen basketball tosses. Hands went up all
over. He then asked who had counted 13, 14, and congratulated
those who'd scored the perfect 15. Then he asked, "And who saw the gorilla?"
I raised my hand and was surprised to discover I was the only
person at my table and one of only three or four in the large room
to do so. He'd set us up, trapping us in our own attention blindness.
Yes, there had been a trick, but he wasn't the one who had played it
on us. By concentrating so hard on counting, we had managed to
miss the gorilla in the midst.
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Attention blindness is the fundamental structuring principle of the
brain, and I believe that it presents us with a tremendous
opportunity. My take is different from that of many
neuroscientists: Where they perceive the shortcomings of the
individual, I sense an opportunity for collaboration. Fortunately,
given the interactive nature of most of our lives in the digital age,
we have the tools to harness our different forms of attention and
take advantage of them.
It's not easy to acknowledge that everything we've learned about
how to pay attention means that we've been missing everything
else. It's not easy for us rational, competent, confident types to
admit that the very key to our success—our ability to pinpoint a
problem and solve it, an achievement honed in all those years in
school and beyond—may be exactly what limits us. For more than a
hundred years, we've been training people to see in a particularly
individual, deliberative way. No one ever told us that our way of
seeing excluded everything else.
I want to suggest a different way of seeing, one that's based on
multitasking our attention—not by seeing it all alone but by
distributing various parts of the task among others dedicated to the
same end. For most of us, this is a new pattern of attention.
Multitasking is the ideal mode of the 21st century, not just because
of information overload but also because our digital age was
structured without anything like a central node broadcasting one
stream of information that we pay attention to at a given moment.
On the Internet, everything links to everything, and all of it is
available all the time.
Unfortunately, current practices of our educational institutions—
and workplaces—are a mismatch between the age we live in and the
institutions we have built over the last 100-plus years. The 20th
century taught us that completing one task before starting another
one was the route to success. Everything about 20th-century
education, like the 20th-century workplace, has been designed to
reinforce our attention to regular, systematic tasks that we take tocompletion. Attention to task is at the heart of industrial labor
management, from the assembly line to the modern office, and of
educational philosophy, from grade school to graduate school.
The Newsweek cover story proclaimed, "iPod, Therefore I Am."
On MTV News, it was "Dude, I just got a free iPod!"
Peter Jennings smirked at the ABC-TV news audience,
"Shakespeare on the iPod? Calculus on the iPod?"
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And the staff of the Duke Chronicle was apoplectic: "The University
seems intent on transforming the iPod into an academic device,
when the simple fact of the matter is that iPods are made to listen
to music. It is an unnecessarily expensive toy that does not become
an academic tool simply because it is thrown into a classroom."
What had those pundits so riled up? In 2003, we at Duke were
approached by Apple about becoming one of six Apple Digital
Campuses. Each college would choose a technology that Apple was
developing and propose a campus use for it. It would be a
partnership of business and education, exploratory in all ways. We
chose a flashy new music-listening gadget that young people loved
but that baffled most adults.
When we gave a free iPod to every member of the entering first-
year class, there were no conditions. We simply asked students to
dream up learning applications for this cool little white device with
the adorable earbuds, and we invited them to pitch their ideas tothe faculty. If one of their professors decided to use iPods in a
course, the professor, too, would receive a free Duke-branded iPod,
and so would all the students in the class (whether they were first-
years or not).
This was an educational experiment without a syllabus. No lesson
plan. No assessment matrix rigged to show that our investment had
been a wise one. No assignment to count the basketballs. After all,
as we knew from the science of attention, to direct attention in one
way precluded all the other ways. If it were a reality show, wemight have called it Project Classroom Makeover.
At the time, I was vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at
Duke, a position equivalent to what in industry would be the R&D
person, and I was among those responsible for cooking up the iPod
experiment. In the world of technology, "crowdsourcing" means
inviting a group to collaborate on a solution to a problem, but that
term didn't yet exist in 2003. It was coined by Jeff Howe of Wired
magazine in 2006 to refer to the widespread Internet practice of posting an open call requesting help in completing some task,
whether writing code (that's how much of the open-source code
that powers the Mozilla browser was written) or creating a winning
logo (like the "Birdie" design of Twitter, which cost a total of six
bucks).
In the iPod experiment, we were crowdsourcing educational
innovation for a digital age. Crowdsourced thinking is very
different from "credentialing," or relying on top-down expertise. If
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anything, crowdsourcing is suspicious of expertise, because the
more expert we are, the more likely we are to be limited in what we
conceive to be the problem, let alone the answer.
Once the pieces were in place, we decided to take our educational
experiment one step further. By giving the iPods to first-year
students, we ended up with a lot of angry sophomores, juniors, and
seniors. They'd paid hefty private-university tuition, too! So we
relented and said any student could have a free iPod—just so long
as she persuaded a professor to require one for a course and came
up with a learning app in that course. Does that sound sneaky? Far
be it from me to say that we planned it.
The real treasure trove was to be found in the students'
innovations. Working together, and often alongside their
professors, they came up with far more learning apps for their
iPods than anyone—even at Apple—had dreamed possible. Most
predictable were uses whereby students downloaded audio archivesrelevant to their courses—Nobel Prize acceptance speeches by
physicists and poets, the McCarthy hearings, famous trials. Almost
instantly, students figured out that they could record lectures on
their iPods and listen at their leisure.
Interconnection was the part the students grasped before any of us
did. Students who had grown up connected digitally gravitated to
ways that the iPod could be used for collective learning. They
turned iPods into social media and networked their learning in
ways we did not anticipate. In the School of the Environment, oneclass interviewed families in a North Carolina community
concerned with lead paint in their homes and schools, commented
on one another's interviews, and together created an audio
documentary that aired on local and regional radio stations and all
over the Web. In the music department, students uploaded their
own compositions to their iPods so their fellow students could
listen and critique.
After eight years in Duke's central administration, I was excited to
take the methods we had gleaned from the iPod experiment back
into the classroom. I decided to offer a new course called "This Is
Your Brain on the Internet," a title that pays homage to Daniel J.
Levitin's inspiring book This Is Your Brain on Music (Dutton,
2006), a kind of music-lover's guide to the brain. Levitin argues
that music makes complex circuits throughout the brain, requiring
different kinds of brain function for listening, processing, and
producing, and thus makes us think differently. Substitute the
word "Internet" for "music," and you've got the gist of my course.
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I advertised the class widely, and I was delighted to look over the
roster of the 18 students in the seminar and find more than 18
majors, minors, and certificates represented. I created a bare-bones
suggested reading list that included, for example, articles in
specialized journals like Cognition and Developmental
Neuropsychology, pieces in popular magazines like Wired and
Science, novels, and memoirs. There were lots of Web sites, too, of
course, but I left the rest loose. This class was structured to bepeer-led, with student interest and student research driving the
design. "Participatory learning" is one term used to describe how
we can learn together from one another's skills. "Cognitive surplus"
is another used in the digital world for that "more than the sum of
the parts" form of collaborative thinking that happens when groups
think together online.
We used a method that I call "collaboration by difference."
Collaboration by difference is an antidote to attention blindness. It
signifies that the complex and interconnected problems of our time
cannot be solved by anyone alone, and that those who think they
can act in an entirely focused, solitary fashion are undoubtedly
missing the main point that is right there in front of them,
thumping its chest and staring them in the face. Collaboration by
difference respects and rewards different forms and levels of
expertise, perspective, culture, age, ability, and insight, treating
difference not as a deficit but as a point of distinction. It always
seems more cumbersome in the short run to seek out divergent
and even quirky opinions, but it turns out to be efficient in the end
and necessary for success if one seeks an outcome that is
unexpected and sustainable. That's what I was aiming for.
I had the students each contribute a new entry or amend an
existing entry on Wikipedia, or find another public forum where
they could contribute to public discourse. There was still a lot of
criticism about the lack of peer review in Wikipedia entries, and
some professors were banning Wikipedia use in the classroom. I
didn't understand that. Wikipedia is an educator's fantasy, all the
world's knowledge shared voluntarily and free in a format
theoretically available to all, and which anyone can edit. Instead of
banning it, I challenged my students to use their knowledge to
make Wikipedia better. All conceded that it had turned out to be
much harder to get their work to "stick" on Wikipedia than it was
to write a traditional term paper.
Given that I was teaching a class based on learning and the
Internet, having my students blog was a no-brainer. I
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supplemented that with more traditionally structured academic
writing, a term paper. When I had both samples in front of me, I
discovered something curious. Their writing online, at least in their
blogs, was incomparably better than in the traditional papers. In
fact, given all the tripe one hears from pundits about how the
Internet dumbs our kids down, I was shocked that elegant bloggers
often turned out to be the clunkiest and most pretentious of
research-paper writers. Term papers rolled in that were shotthrough with jargon, stilted diction, poor word choice, rambling
thoughts, and even pretentious grammatical errors (such as the
ungrammatical but proper-sounding use of "I" instead of "me" as
an object of a preposition).
But it got me thinking: What if bad writing is a product of the form
of writing required in college—the term paper—and not necessarily
intrinsic to a student's natural writing style or thought process? I
hadn't thought of that until I read my students' lengthy, weekly
blogs and saw the difference in quality. If students are trying to
figure out what kind of writing we want in order to get a good
grade, communication is secondary. What if "research paper" is a
category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic
gobbledygook?
Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing
more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to
be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer
typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally
better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom
assignments by the same writers. Longitudinal studies of student
writers conducted by Stanford University's Andrea Lunsford, a
professor of English, assessed student writing at Stanford year after
year. Lunsford surprised everyone with her findings that students
were becoming more literate, rhetorically dexterous, and fluent—
not less, as many feared. The Internet, she discovered, had allowed
them to develop their writing.
The semester flew by, and we went wherever it took us. Theobjective was to get rid of a lot of the truisms about "the dumbest
generation" and actually look at how new theories of the brain and
of attention might help us understand how forms of thinking and
collaborating online maximize brain activity. We spent a good deal
of time thinking about how accident, disruption, distraction, and
difference increase the motivation to learn and to solve problems,
both individually and collectively. To find examples, we spent time
with a dance ensemble rehearsing a new piece, a jazz band
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What caused the ruckus in the blogosphere this time was a blog I
posted on the Hastac, an online network, which I co-founded in
2002, dedicated to new forms of learning for a digital age. The post,
"How to Crowdsource Grading," proposed a form of assessment
that I planned to use the next time I taught "This Is Your Brain on
the Internet."
It was my students' fault, really. By the end of the course, I felt
confident. I settled in with their evaluations, waiting for the
accolades to flow, a pedagogical shower of appreciation. And mostly
that's what I read, thankfully. But there was one group of students
who had some candid feedback, and it took me by surprise. They
said everything about the course had been bold, new, and exciting.
Everything, that is, except the grading.
They pointed out that I had used entirely conventional methods for
testing and evaluating their work. We had talked as a class about
the new modes of assessment on the Internet—like public
commenting on products and services and leaderboards (peer
evaluations adapted from sports sites)—where the consumer of
content could also evaluate that content. These students said they
loved the class but were perplexed that my assessment method had
been so 20th century: Midterm. Final. Research paper. Graded A, B,
C, D. The students were right. You couldn't get more 20th century
than that.
The students signed their names to the course evaluations. It
turned out the critics were A+ students. That stopped me in my
tracks. If you're a teacher worth your salt, you pay attention when
the A+ students say something is wrong.
I was embarrassed that I had overlooked such a crucial part of our
brain on the Internet. I contacted my students and said they'd
made me rethink some very old habits. Unlearning. I promised I
would rectify my mistake the next time I taught the course. I
thought about my promise, came up with what seemed like a good
system, then wrote about it in my blog.
My new grading method, which set off such waves of vitriol,
combined old-fashioned contract grading with peer review.
Contract grading goes back at least to the 1960s. In it, the
requirements of a course are laid out in advance, and students
contract to do all of the assignments or only some of them. A
student with a heavy course or workload who doesn't need an A, for
example, might contract to do everything but the final project and
then, according to the contract, she might earn a B. It's all very
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adult.
But I also wanted some quality control. So I added the
crowdsourcing component based on the way I had already
structured the course. I thought that since pairs of students were
leading each class session and also responding to their peers'
required weekly reading blogs, why not have them determine
whether the blogs were good enough to count as fulfilling the
terms of the contract? If a blog didn't pass muster, it would be the
task of the student leaders that week to tell the blogger and offer
feedback on what would be required for it to count. Student leaders
for a class period would have to do that carefully, for next week a
classmate would be evaluating their work.
I also liked the idea of students' each having a turn at being the one
giving the grades. That's not a role most students experience, even
though every study of learning shows that you learn best by
teaching someone else. Besides, if constant public self-presentationand constant public feedback are characteristics of a digital age,
why aren't we rethinking how we evaluate, measure, test, assess,
and create standards? Isn't that another aspect of our brain on the
Internet?
There are many ways of crowdsourcing, and mine was simply to
extend the concept of peer leadership to grading. The blogosphere
was convinced that either I or my students would be pulling a fast
one if the grading were crowdsourced and students had a role in it.
That says to me that we don't believe people can learn unless they are forced to, unless they know it will "count on the test." As an
educator, I find that very depressing. As a student of the Internet, I
also find it implausible. If you give people the means to self-
publish—whether it's a photo from their iPhone or a blog—they do
so. They seem to love learning and sharing what they know with
others. But much of our emphasis on grading is based on the
assumption that learning is like cod-liver oil: It is good for you,
even though it tastes horrible going down. And much of our
educational emphasis is on getting one answer right on one test—as if that says something about the quality of what you have
learned or the likelihood that you will remember it after the test is
over.
Grading, in a curious way, exemplifies our deepest convictions
about excellence and authority, and specifically about the right of
those with authority to define what constitutes excellence. If we
crowdsource grading, we are suggesting that young people without
credentials are fit to judge quality and value. Welcome to the
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I don't agree with quite a few views mentioned rather lamely as those that necessitate a
goodness in this internet era. Specifically, given that more and more people are engaging in
social networking sites-so emroiled in co mmenting and so fastidious and so particular about
how they are being commented up on,students due to such a, what I call 'delirium' seem to
almost invariably engage in these activities not being able to c oncentrate on any thing else...
just a s a man who feels r est less without taking d rugs . How do y ou subst antiate t his?
I would just like to add, rather proudly that I am not a victim of the abov e mentioned
'phenomenon' but I found so many of my peers hav ing succumbed to it.
9 people liked this. Like
Internet, where everyone's a critic and anyone can express a view
about the new iPhone, restaurant, or quarterback. That
democratizing of who can pass judgment is digital thinking. As I
found out, it is quite unsettling to people stuck in top-down models
of formal education and authority.
Learn. Unlearn. Relearn. In addition to the content of our course—
which ranged across cognitive psychology, neuroscience,
management theory, literature and the arts, and the various fields
that compose science-and-technology studies—"This Is Your Brain
on the Internet" was intended to model a different way of knowing
the world, one that encompasses new and different forms of
collaboration and attention. More than anything, it courted failure.
Unlearning.
"I smell a reality TV show," one critic sniffed.
That's not such a bad idea, actually. Maybe I'll try that next time I
teach "This Is Your Brain on the Internet." They can air it right
after Project Classroom Makeover.
Cathy N. Davidson is a professor of interdisciplinary studies at
Duke University. She served as the first vice provost for
interdisciplinary studies at the university from 1998 until 2006,
when she helped create the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. This
essay is adapted from her book Now You See It: How the Brain
Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and
Learn, just published by Viking.
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akhileshankala 1 year ago
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If I could engage 20 c redits with professors like Cathy N. Davidson, I would c all the award of
that degr ee "Nirva na". Then I wouldn't want to engage a PhD but a NheD - a Doc tora te of
higher education Nirvana. The schism here is between traditional learning and human
possibilities.
Just reading through the piece made me feel good about the emergent engagement on
display. I can only pigeon hole this form of education as 21st Century learning. That does
not mean that old, true and tried tested ways are obsolete, b ut that whenever a system leads
us to behave one way inside the syste m and another outside it, we need to peer in the outerone to see what we may be missing.
It is a cerebral jigsaw that requires all the pieces to fit because once t hing I recognize is that
students do have ex traordinary relationships with their profs and can be in awe of those they
respect as people who have helped them to see, but here I re ad about a learning pool, where
every one is discovering something, and that is something I love seeing - it means I that as I
sit in the present - I know I am watc hing a much more po werful and positive future unfold.
We can still wor ship the pr of as it has o cc urred in t ime immem orial, o r we c an foc us on
observ ing transformational change in the way we individually approach learning, then there
is less worship and more taking part in the activity of making education a way of life rather
than simply a way of graduating.
M.
19 people liked this. Like
If you are looking for "possibilities," "emergent engagement," "cerebral jigsaw,"
"discovering," "unfolding," "love," and "transformational change" psychoanalysis is your
cup of tea.
The classroom anyt ime it is structured for accountability for learning over will certainly
bo re y ou t o de ath.
6 people liked this. Like
It probably will bore me to death. Then that is my c hallenging of learning. I have t o
fix that because learning is my responsibility - as a student of life at least, if that is
education equates with life.
The takeaway I gained from reading Cathy Davidson's article is that when we are
open to a new appro ach, we suddenly see things we didn't see before - we awaken to
new ty pes of learning (BTW you can add "awaken to ourselv es" to y our list) and
then we can figure out how concre te our learning needs to be and how abstract.
Both are vitally important forms of seeing IMHO. Surely a university e ducation
that does not do that is simply rot e learning?
I have no idea how to take the viciousness out of education, intelligence cannot be
enforced, it can't be dictated, we either rise to the intelligence we are capable of
encompassing or we gain nothing much but another day of same old, same old - the
only psy choanalysis of merit here is "know thyself".
Education hasn't become less visco us, it still remains largely an industrial age
training ground. In what I see Davidson write above, I see her welcoming in the
21st Century.
I really do n't know who anybody here is, I don't know how best any particular
person learns even if I hav e pedagogical script - if education isn't a way of life for
me, then all I am do ing is graduating into that equally b oring existence of pass/fail,
then education isn't a way of life, and in that resulting failure I will have do ne that
to myself, only my self. I am not here to prov e that I am a lifelong learner. I am.
Beyond the imaginative wo rds I utilized there is the pragmatic reality that yo u
have o utlined, which is that learning without rigor is simply sho rtchanging our
given selves.
I have c ome here to learn and that learning includes burning some of my o wn ego,
I added a like to y our response, because y ou offered something that I can certainly
appreciate, build upon simply because I c an be adaptive - and so, if I can do that
the thoughtspaces 1 year ago
5768 1 year ago
the thoughtspaces 1 year ago
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here, imagine what I might have learned when once, many dec ades ago, when I too
used to be in a classroom.
Y es, v icio us ed ucatio n bores me to de ath - and y es, I wou ld like t hat a lso t o be
engraved on my tombstone or at least written into the epitaph of factory
education.
M.
1 person liked this. Like
"Make Wikipedia better" is a fantastic assignment for almost any course. Perhaps a similar
challenge would be o f even greater interest to some students. As a PhD student in Computer
Science, I've pic ked "Make something better than Wikipedia" as my thesis topic. Two years
into my researc h, the open source Wiki-to-Speech project has reac hed a stage where
students and teachers can begin using the (free) tools to create content which prov ides
pathways for learning rather than merely points of reference. For ex ample, here is a Wiki-to-
Speech presentation on the foundational concept behind the project, stigmergy:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/128384...
2 people liked this. Like
I am a big fan of student group assignments, especially, those that keep the students engaged
and working together (instead of div'ing up the work), and over the y ears, I hav e found
student assignments involv ing individual or group b logs to wo rk best.
Eons ago, in 2003, a go od portion o f the grade in our online class was based on student
participation in discussion boards. It worked well, exc ept for file attachment submissions.
The attachments affected the fluid communication that we wanted to see in our class. So we
turned file attachments off. Students had to ty pe in their assignments and substantive
comments to their classmates' postings directly into the Blackboard discussion forums.
Many copy +pasted their posts on the forums, but we did started seeing better digital writing
when stud ents wer e not affec ted by the MS-Word "I am wri ting a p aper" mental ity . Fluid
discussion board communication, of course, improv ed significantly :: our students were
engaged. Life was good.
Eons later, in 2008 (I think), we started using class blogs inside Blackboard. Why, I ev enonce c hanged the course site entry point from Announcements to a Class Blog and confused
the heck out of our students and co-instructors. Today , I usually assign blog assignments.
Blog assignments work great because they prov ide a rich authoring environment within a set
and very familiar blogging framework. Our students, anyo ne really, do n't have to futz with
wiki nav igation, co ntent seque ncin g, aggregation, and pe riphera l pre sent atio n. Students can
conce ntrate on their writing, easily mark it up, add links, multimedia and anything else they
may deem appropriate.
Instructors c an easily set individual and group assignment blogs to be open to all, or priv ate
until graded. I like to set mine to be open to the class, in fact, further encouraging fellow
students to cr itique and discuss their classmates' writing assignments via blog c omments.
Blog assignments have worked v ery well for us. Students get into substantive discussions.
Like the article says, o ur learners like to show off what they know, expres the ir opinions and
Web 2.0 too ls, like blo gs fac ilitates that rather wel l. Bett er y et, the ir c ollobor ativ e learnin g
skills, writing skills and quality of discussion continues to get bette r and better.
Life is still good.
3 people liked this. Like
Maybe it depends on the student's academic interest/inclination (major): I have
students who are quite annoyed if they hav e to blog o r read someone's blog or keep up
with my tea cherly blo gging. They are n ot in curio us; ac tually , they are inte llige nt, well-
spoken, well-read and "good students." Hitting them with the stick of Required for Y our
Grade, or even tempting them with the carrot o f Improving Y our Grade ... well, it seems
counterpro ductive. Is it ok to study, read, write and also be unplugged?
John Graves 1 year ago
garay 1 year ago
lamoglie 1 year ago
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multitasking our attention—not by seeing it all alone but by
distributing various parts of the task among others dedicated to the
same end. For most of us, this is a new pattern of attention."
As an indiv idual , I c an't split my attention an d att end to mu ltipl e things at onc e. But a
group of individuals can do so, and I think that's what Davidson means here. I t's
consistent with her use of "crowdsourcing" in this essay, that a group o f individuals can
acco mplish more than what any one individual (even an ex pert) can do bec ause of the
diversity of perspectives they collectively hold.
I don't think she's arguing that "intense personal focus" isn't useful. Rather, she's pointing
out that "intense personal focus" means we'll miss something things, and that working
within a gro up c an mitigate this.
14 people liked this. Like
I agree with yo ur interpretation. In a way, I think Davidson is identifying in the
digital world something similar to what i understand happens when flying a
commerc ial airliner or the space shuttle - lots of distributed attention to getting a
particular task accomplished.
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Exactly .I buy yo ur point. Multi-tasking is an insidious practice in this modern day. .so
dangerous that never can a student devote his full concentration to the task at hand.
What's the point o f doing a ny thing if u r not 100 % intere sted, if no t comm itte d.
7 people liked this. Like
To me, there is a frustrating distraction in this piece that rev eals a large point about
attention. In her introduction, the authors adds a new symptom that supposedly reve als the
mysterious et iology and manifestations of an ailment called dyslexia, for which there is nodefinitive diagnosis, only a diverse menu of illustrative sympto ms from which to choo se (37
at one site that po ps up on Google with the co mforting message that "usually" dyslex ics
exhibit at least 10 ). Was the author's decision not to attend to tracking the basketballs
bec ause she is dy slexic or bec ause she b elie ve s she is dy slex ic?
I once had a conv ersation along these lines with a student who indicated that he was A DD
(because he had been told that he was). When in the course of our c onversation I asked him
some of his favorite free time ac tivities, he responded "playing chess." When I pointed out
how remarkable it was that, given his condition, he would enjoy a pastime that required such
conce ntration and focus, he looked genuinely surprised and said that this inconsistency had
never occurred to him.
The larger point is that attention is not something innate to an individual, let alone to a
generation, although propensities might be. Attention is task specific, shaped by culture,
and applied in relation to o ur beliefs, values, and personal preferences which I think the
author is really saying and which makes the introductor y anecdote co ntradictory . Any one
who thinks c hildr en have sho rt a tte ntio n spans is impo sing their adult v alue s on c hildr en
who unde r cert ain c irc umst anc es relev ant to th eir wor ld perse v erate fo r ho urs o n activ ities
that adults would abandon in minutes.
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I think the introductory anecdote works well here. It shows that if every one in a group
is focused on the ex act same thing (counting basketball passes, in this case), the group is
likely to miss something. In her anecdote, a handful of people didn't focus on the
assigned task (for whatever reason), which meant that the gro up, as a group, was mor e
observant.
rick1952 1 year ago
akhileshankala 1 year ago
reinking 1 year ago
Derek Bruff 1 year ago
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I think you're letting the comment about dy slexia distract yo u, so to speak, from
Davidson's point.
5 people liked this. Like
With all du e re spect , and a heal thy admir atio n for t he au tho r's energy and industr ious
exploration of new tec hniques, not every one has the benefit of teaching students of the
caliber that are admitted to Duke. How might these ex periments play out in a decidedly non-
selective public university ? I for one am not brave enough to find out.
14 people liked this. Like
Y es, and I a m wonder ing ho w the se exper imen ts at Duke wou ld compare again st
traditional educational methods and their outco mes at Duke. Innovation for
innovation's sake that fails to norm itself against past practice s and outcome s is yet too
y oun g an ex per iment for us to judge .
6 people liked this. Like
In reply to "reinking": "Was the author's decision not to attend to tracking the basketballs
bec ause she is dy slexic or bec ause she b elie ve s she is dy slex ic?"
Y ou don't th ink it's likely som eone publishing in th e field of br ain sc ienc e, who helpe d put
together a freaking Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, might have taken the time to
investigate the nature of her o wn dyslex ia?(Or perhaps y ou missed those little details in a
blip o f atte ntio n blindness?)
9 people liked this. Like
David, I'm not aware that Prof. Davidson has actually published "in the field of brain
science." In any case, cut bac k on the flaming, eh?
11 people liked this. Like
There's no surprise that the quality of writing on the student blogs was better than their term
papers. I find myself only skimming most research articles bec ause the writing formula for so
many academic journal articles seems to ensure that the author must bury the few live ideasand findings in so much conv entional dead wood. But rather than blame the formula, I blame
our ex pectations, which include fluency in the jargon of our disciplines and the apparent
bel ief that y ou are writin g in ac adem ic c ode for a s elect gro up of ex per ts who kno w that code
bet ter than you do.
7 people liked this. Like
Degrees are granted to individuals, not to groups. Grades are assigned to individuals, not to
groups. The academic enterprise is inherently individual. Any study or grading scheme that
can't account for that fact is inapropriate.
mrmars 1 year ago
5768 1 year ago
David Thomson 1 year ago
tporges 1 year ago
bghansel 1 year ago
Jeff 1 year ago
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I think group work is most often assigned because it's more conv enient for professors. Fewer
things to grade. By grouping higher performing students with lower performing students, the
class average grades go up. That helps professors on their ev aluations.
10 people liked this. Like
Life outside the academic enterprise is heavily group centered. A n education that does
not prepare students to work successfully in a gro up is inappropriate and flawed.
Most of us hav e felt the sting of working with underperforming peers, it suc ks. The
challenge, for professors, and I suppose bosses, is usually figuring out which members
of the group distinguished themselves.
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Teamwork is valued outside the university , not "group centered" work. Teams are
va lued bec ause the y can pro duc e wo rk tha t on e perso n can't achiev e. The wor k
assignments given to groups of students can be achiev ed by individuals. This isprecisely why universities cannot prepare students for work in teams. The entire
"group work" training system is artificial and unrealistic.
Outside the university, teams can fail, but group grades are not given by
professors. The c omparison with non-academic teamwork must fail.But this isn't
my main point, anyway . Group work wasn't introduced to teac h teamwork. It was
introduced to transfer teaching load from professors to brighter students.
Invariably , professors do not allow students to select their own teams. Why not?
Because professors intentionally group lower performing students with higher
performing students. This gives a benefit to the pro fessor and to the lower -
performing student at the expense o f the brighter student.
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I agree entirely with this point—that group work is appropriate o nly for
projects that are to o big for individuals. There is an optimum group size for
most tasks, and for most sc hool tasks, that optimum size is one. Coming up
with p rojec ts that genuin ely bene fit fro m gro up wo rk is diffic ult, but possible,
at least in upper-division engineering c lasses.
See http://gasstationwithoutpumps....
4 people liked this. Like
What do y u thin k?
Like
Loved the positive waves, and the energy.
Like
jimislew 1 year ago
Jeff 1 year ago
gasstationwithoutpumps 1 year ago
Julie Gillis Lanclos 1 year ago
jimislew 1 year ago
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Interesting...but how will it change a c ourse on, let's say, classical Greek, or Kant's Critique?
And let 's not fo rge t the followin g wel l-estab lishe d facts:
Facebook is the only place people talk to a wall
"I wrote abo ut it in my blog",... as did 1,00 0,000 ,000 other bloggers who do n't read the
other blogs
Internet, though a great tool, also seriously distorts our attention. Proof is that I am writing
this while I actually planned to do some wo rk, and I am sure y ou did not plan "let's read the
Chronicla today ".
10 people liked this. Like
Having students write for each other, not just their professor, has benefits in just about
any c ourse, including those o n classical Greek or Kant's Critique.
An d don't knoc k the d istractio n pot ential o f the I nter net. Sure, at this mo ment I'm not
working o n a task that I had dec ided to finish this afte rnoon, but I'm engaging in
unexpected conversations that might have unexpected benefits to my professional
work down the ro ad. Y ou ne ve r know when som e lit tle b it o f inter action or lear ning wil l
be useful in the futur e.
9 people liked this. Like
I actually do plan to read the chronicle, as well as govloop.com, milbook, webmaster
newsletter, techdirt, nextgov.com newsletter, linkedIn groups, and ac ademic
impressions daily. I plan for at least 1-1.5 ho urs for reading and research online on
what ev er top ics p op in my inbo x t hat int ere st me the mos t that day.
I've made impressive perso nal and professional connections, found answers to work
problems and invaluable resources and reference materials, and discove red whole
new ideas/products/solutions by scheduling my unstructured research time.
I also tend to forward ridiculous amounts of information on to collegues who are
alternately
appreciative or incredulous of how much reading I get done.
I do find I have to keep it scheduled or it's quite easy for me to go down the rabbit hole
so to speak.
4 people liked this. Like
"Almost instantly, students figured out that they c ould recor d lectures on their iPods and
listen at their leisure."
"At their leisure." Talk about non-accountable listening!
Collaborative learning techniques long ago c onsidered "jigsawing" in which different students
in a group focus on different parts of an assignment then pool their understanding. Having
tried this (and being a current proponent of team learning--until such a day that I c ome to
see the gorilla invariably the re in the ro om) I regard jigsawing similar to "outsourcing" and
"distribution of responsibility." Far from optimal as far as the individual student is conc erned
and a compromise between poor and good pedagogy at best.
3 people liked this. Like
technologicaltransfo 1 year ago
Derek Bruff 1 year ago
brenadine 1 year ago
5768 1 year ago
Derek Bruff 1 year ago
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Having students grapple with material on their own, t hen with peers, and then with an
instructor ac tually works pretty well, whether it's a "think-pair-share" or a "jigsaw"
activity . Doing so gives students a chance to surface their own prior knowledge and
experience s and vet their ideas in a relatively safe environment (the small group). This
means that more o f them are prepared to engage meaningfully in the whole-c lass,
instructor-led discussion that often follows.
6 people liked this. Like
At leas t in pr inciple!
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Any one who has s tood o n a foo tball (so cc er) t err ace and w atc hed t hat q uinte ssen tial 2 0thC
sport knows:
At ten tion Blindness Is Rare: Y ou c an see the player with the ball, the play ers without the
ball , what's happ ening no w, and what might happ en. Y ou sense what som e play ers w ant tohappen, versus what others want. You ex perience it all at once, as a totality.
Technology I s the Oppressor: Howev er, when you watch it on TV, y ou cannot see the whole
pitch, y ou cannot watch the game as an unbroken continuum (because they use cinematic
techniques and cuts, and show multiple replays), and you must c ontend with generally
stupid commentary throughout.
Crowd-sourcing Is Old Hat: Shouts, comments, disagreements, terr ace c hants, call-ins,
fanzines, internet forums...'Nuff said.
But, now as always, Future Shock sells!
PS. Apple's co llege marketing strategy hardly differs from the tobacc o c ompanies' "free
sample" approach on y esterday's campuses. How very Mid-Century! But Professor
Davidson's "pester-power" twist is a bit more current. ;)
4 people liked this. Like
At ten tion blind ness m ight n ot b e as r are in the rea l world as y ou b eliev e. I f yo u read
some of the original reasons for studying attention blindness, they include some v ery
pragmatic situations with dire outco mes. One of the cases involv ed a chase after a
suspect that had shot a police o fficer. One group of police officers accidentally mistook
one of their own undercov er officers for the suspect and brutally beat him up before
realizing their mistake. Another officer, c hasing the real suspect ran right by the
bea ting. Late r, wh en aske d to iden tify tho se inv olv ed in mistakenly beating u p the
undercov er officer (the participants all left when they realized their mistake and did not
identify themselv es) this officer claimed to have not even seen the undercov er officer
being att ac ked. He wa s co nv ict ed o f ly ing and spent a few y ear s in jail before rese arc h
on attention blindness and a set o f duplicated studies simulating a similar ev ent finally
conv inced the judicial system that in fact when concentrating on a key ev ent, it ispossible to miss something ev en as dramatic as an individual being beaten by a gro up.
The reason becomes obv ious if yo u reverse y our perspectiv e and ask if the players o n
the field have the same breadth of vision and attention that you hav e watching from the
stands. I suspect they display dramatic attention blindness to anything other than the
bal l and the play ers imme diate ly inv olv ed. I also su spect that ev en y our attention in the
stand during an exc iting moment would miss something quite major happening in the
stands across from yo u that was not related to the game or t he action on the field.
3 people liked this. Like
5768 1 year ago
poppysabina 1 year ago
stelleen 1 year ago
jmalmstrom 1 year ago
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The very nature of modern media (TV and now the internet) is that it is produced in
a way that tends to narrow our focus, often leading to misdirection. Y es, this type
of thing happens in the big wide world, but it is not perceiv ed as a v irtue there.
Alway s rem emb er, co mput er means o f deliv ery are b y nature r igid and inflex ible .
Online classes, while often necessary, do not prov ide the flexibility of what can,
and often does, happen in the classroom. I have dissected a frog both virtually and
in reality. The virtual dissection was much less instructive.
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My comments are response mainly to these sentences:
"Grading, in a curious way, ex emplifies our deepest c onvictions about e xc ellence and
authority, and specifically abo ut the right of those with authority to define what constitutes
exc ellence. If we crowdsourc e grading, we are suggesting that yo ung people without
credentials are fit to judge quality and v alue. Welcome t o the Internet, where ev ery one's a
critic and anyone c an express a v iew about the new iPhone, restaurant, or quarterback. That
democratizing of who can pass judgment is digital thinking."
People who are ex perts--who know more and think more about a topic--have be tter
informed opinions than laypeo ple. That is so obv ious. Why be interested in a nov ice's
opinion about a discipline? To acco rd a nov ice equal time and cr edibility isn't democ racy ; it's
idiocy.
One other point: How do you do serious study or make a serious scholarly c ontribution, like
writ e a bo ok, witho ut being able t o focus and c onc entr ate for lo ng periods o f time? If y ou let
in distraction, work sputters. This is your brain on reality , folks.
14 people liked this. Like
Have you do ne any reading on Peer Grading? From what I've seen, as along as a rubric
is used, peers generally agree with instructor grading to the tune of 90 - 95%. See Sadler
& Good, 2006: The impact of self- and peer-grading on student learning.
5 people liked this. Like
After r eading Virgin ia Heffernan's artic le on y our book, I wro te a b log p ost abo ut wh at I had
gleaned from the article (the book, although it went straight to my wish list, had not yet be en
released in Canada). The post has receiv ed 17 0 very thoughtful comments; yo u can see the
post and the comments here:
http://siobhancurious.wordpres...
Reading this essay has given me a lot mor e to write about; there will be another post soo n!
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