George, my friend, I’m frankly surprised by how much you have flattened this conversation. I did not say, imply, or think that students are never auto-didacts. I was speaking about very specific students–not the ones in the Macaulay Honors college, but the ones in the Development English classes at BMCC. I am all for OER. I am all for trying new things in the classroom. I am all bringing the focus of education back (yes, back–this is nothing invented by the edupunks) to a focus on student discovery, student initiative, and student-centered conversation and collaboration. I just don’t believe that sprinkling a little magic WordPress dust is going to solve the most difficult educational problems that schools like BMCC face.

We certainly agree there, as would Joe, I suspect. While I fear losing sight entirely of the structural tendency to turn community colleges into intellectual ghettos (a point which Kamenetz makes in her first chapter), you are—of course—right that we should lose sight of the trees through the forest.

I gather you are addressing Michael, Jim, but I’m going to rush in here (like a fool) and say that I do think instructors (and, yes, institutions) have a role to play, if not necessarily at the center of things. I think we’re at a point analogous to the mid-fifteenth century, when another technological revolution, the printing press, apparently promised to supersede the need universities and profs (a rather newer imposition then than now). That didn’t happen, of course. Institutions and roles transformed to extend literacy. Arguably, books made instruction more important (and interesting), not less. What’s interesting about the present moment is the way OER, at least potentially, puts profs (and even the places that employ them) in the position of resourcing students. About time, presumably. For this to work, of course, things would have to change pretty radically. But it happened before.

Jim, it’s really funny you should mention that, because I have been thinking about writing a post about digital apprenticeship since this whole kerfluffle started. I think it is the right direction. I would add I also think we need to revisit a complementary tradition to apprenticeship: Guilds.

There is a lot to be explored here.

I’m not just following this discussion; I’m glued to it. As George knows, I’m not permitted to do *any* online instruction (because of my college Senate’s resolution that every department make its own decision about “the appropriate delivery of content and instruction”). And, as George also knows, this is driving me crazy because I used to teach “hybrid” courses without telling any administrators and that teaching experience made me be believer in–and a vocal proponent of–using technology and the internet to help/enable/facilitate student learning. ( I was–and still try to be–one of Stephen Downes’s “change agents,” who always have to “work around, and often against, their mandate in order to make a difference.)

George was instrumental in helping me become a change agent for faculty across CUNY who wanted to learn about online instruction; to date, I’ve helped more than 300 instructors create and/or improve their online courses. BUT I’M NOT ALLOWED TO USE ONE with my own students. [Sorry, I had to vent in capitals.] So when I read the first chapter of DIV U (particularly the section on “colleges that trumpet [their] centuries long tradition of academic excellence”), I thought Kamenetz was describing my college. This is my 34th year here and I still don’t see any meaningful efforts to change the ways in content and instruction are “appropriately delivered.” Most of my colleagues smirk when I say something educational innovation.

But I don’t agree with David Wiley’s analysis of the causes of this depressing situation. It hasn’t been my experience that “the majority of the people actively involved in ‘open education’ are technologists [who] work on the problems they are comfortable solving.” At CUNY, the “majority” of the people who have led (and are continuing to lead) faculty attempts to open (in its “verb” sense) education are English teachers. And we (for I’m one) don’t do what Wiley accuses “open education advocates who aren’t technologists” of doing (i.e., “focus more on the administrative, policy, and business problems of moving open education forward than RSS, Yahoo Pipes, wikis, or collaborative authoring”). Because we are actually *using* the technology and tools that we’re advocating, we have first-hand experience with them, and this experience informs our theories and pedagogies.

Unfortunately for me, however, the English faculty in my college have little or no interest in listening to anyone but themselves. And, in my view, as long as faculty ignore/resist/condemn their students’ strategies and tools for learning, things won’t change until the administration forces the changes. And forcing faculty to teach online is the best way to destroy the entire endeavor.