The End of (Classroom) Empire(s)

After reflecting on my own teaching as well as that of others, I don’t see much difference between the one-room schoolhouse and the college classroom. The basic form is often the same: one person teaching a multitude of learners. Even when a so-called “guide on the side” replaces “the sage on the stage,” not much changes. The paradigm of remains that of the teacher as sovereign of the classroom whose tribute is paid to the local institutional empire. I think this age of empire is nearing its end.

Why? Philosophically speaking, the status of sovereignty is historicist in nature. Sovereigns have difficulties allowing or admitting that a world exists outside of and prior to their sphere of influence. As a result, the concept of sovereignty is diachronically transcendent and synchronically immanent. In its actualization, sovereignty is the attempt to exercise proprietary control (see Goodchild’s theology of money, 2007). The concept and the actual circumstances set sovereignty to spite itself (see Negri and Hardt’s analysis of empire, 2000), because the sovereign holds a profoundly vulnerable position precisely because it attempts to subject the plurality outside itself to management. Sovereigns must make of themselves a state of exception (Schmitt, 1976; Agamben, 2005; Derrida, 2005), and their exceptionalism is their eventual undoing.

While only slowly being accepted and demonstrated in higher education, the limits of soveriegnty have already been baldly exposed in other areas of global afffairs. The movement from restricted to general economies of meaning in philosophy and the social sciences outlined by Derrida in 1967 are now largely accepted on both sides of the Atlantic, despite much denial of his credit and foot-dragging sentimentalities. The state of bio-politics described by Foucault in the late 20^th century (1985) was completely outmaneouvered in the 21^st century by non-national influences upon inflation, money supply, and the cost of borrowing. The success of and duration of sovereign monetary interventions are completely outside the ken and control of today’s governments (See Daly, 1999). Free flows of meaning and finance are only part of what disrupts the sovereignties within higher education; freely flowing information marks the end of higher education empires.

Very aggressive sentimental denial is the norm in higher education in North America. In educational technology, it takes the form of attempted information regimes, such as e-publishing, journal databases, learning management systems and MOOCs. In today’s higher-ed context, these regimes are attempting to conquer each other, consolidate and establish oligopolies. Online collaboration and partnership on open platforms is an alternative to these processes that should be particularly interesting to smaller actors and institutions. Getting swept up into an LMS or relying upon a large MOOC provider provides a short-term solution: getting embedded within a service ecosystem in exchange for a progressive loss of critical media and technological capabilities. These providers only offer the illusion of sovereignty, and the payment of tribute (for example, serials pricing) and demands of fealty (for example, the restrictions of licensed LMS providers ) to these emperors can only increase to the point of so-called “disruption.”

The illusion of sovereignty paid for by college and university “empires” translates into the classroom as a loss of options. The subscription to Service X does not include access to certain articles or kinds of interaction. And  it is almost always impossible to share access or create interactions among courses lets alone among institutions (even if they subscribe to the same provider!). As a teacher, I have experienced this paralysing lack of flexibility and interoperability. Discussions of these limitations, which I see as weaknesses, with the local emperors usually lead to prosaic conclusions about “the way things are.”

This is not the case in the world of business. Small- and medium-sized businesses are wary of getting caught up in services that close off options for flexibility and innovation. They seek sustainability, agility, collaboration and a potential for scalability without escalating cost. As a result, they often favour of more open platforms that foster collaboration. Somewhat likewise, my opinion is that smaller institutions and their teachers should should build their own collaborative options rather than ensconce themselves in paywalled “education solutions.”

I think the best alternatives are those that take advantage of the current circumstances. The pursuit of inter-institutional collaboration makes the most of decentered meaning, finances and information. Collaborations require careful negotiations of meaning, bypassing paywalls and openness to free and open sources. Virtual team-based teaching is one approach that leverages the end of empires in classrooms.

One alternative that I think should be attractive to teachers in small institutions is virtual collaboration. Rather than piggy-back on the “go big or go home” approach in and among the already-big players, virtual collaboration accentuates and strengthens teaching excellence without paying off service vendors or slowly devolving teacher expertise. Virtual collaborations disperse membership and activity across space, time and organizational structures. Indeed, they take advantage of differences in geographical location and time by taking advantage of fluid organizational structures.

I have experimented with virtual collaboration in the classroom for four years. The approach has been developed under many names: Globally-Networked Learning Environments, Collaborative Online International Learning, Global Class and Virtual Team Teaching, to name a few. The most basic forms of collaborative, networked teaching involve internet and web-based tools to engage two or more groups of learners within a common course design, which may take place in one session, across several sessions or throughout an entire term.

I personally prefer focusing my networked teaching around real-time, interactive sessions that are supported by collaborative work done outside of class by my teaching partner and our collective group of learners. We do this outside of the walled-gardens of our institutionally-licensed services by using free or open web-based tools like GoogleDrive Apps and Skype.

The in-class experience is similar to knocking a hole in the wall between two classrooms, only this time the “holes” are punched by internet and web-based tools. An effective networked-learning collaboration requires transparency and plenty of communication. Sharing free and open platforms creates transparency and enables communication between the teachers as well as all the learners.

The current form of the college classroom resists collaborative teaching: during class hours, the teacher-monad assumes and exerts temporary sovereignty in a tiny classroom kingdom that gives fealty to some institutional mini-empire. For various reasons, teachers, administrations and staff continue to imagine and expect that each teacher is the sole regent of a pedagogical realm.

Opening up the classroom to collaborative partnership sharpens the importance of teachers’ subject matter expertise and teaching excellence. I find working with a partner outside my institution is brilliant.  I gain a colleague at another small institution, with whom I can address all manner of things without worrying about the intricacies of departmental and institutional politics. We build each others’ strengths by reflecting upon our personal experience, teaching  style, disciplinary knowledge and the use of technology for teaching. The pedagogical development I have experienced while doing collaborative networked teaching shows me how the end of empires can be a very good thing for teaching and learning.

Effective Social Learning: A Collaborative, Globally-Networked Pedagogy is part of the Seminarium Elements book series. Look for it January 15, 2015.

Preorder today at fortresspress.com and Amazon.com.

Photo Credit: “Pompeii – The Forum – Temple of Jupiter – bust” by Elliott Brown – CC by 2.0

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