Wiki Textbooks 2
Well, now that I've had a chance to survey briefly some wiki textbooks online, I see some clear pedagogical benefits relating to the instructional models I mentioned in my last post. The students are forced to survey a variety of information sources in order to construct text, which means more reading and writing and further development of literacy and thinking skills. In most cases the instructors structure the wiki text in some way, by providing a detailed table of contents, for example, to show the sequence of conceptual and factual categories of information that students should fill. Some instructors further structure the collective textbook writing project by assigning individual students particular topics and particular roles in the creative process. Student A might have to write an explanation of hybrid vigor, Student B might then have to provide examples of it, Student C might have to peer review or fact check the piece prior to publication, and Student D might have to be responsible for monitoring and editing subsequent changes to the entry. I thought this was a good use of the medium. It also points out other clear pedagogical benefits relating to social interaction and peer-mediated learning. El-hi education literature has promoted cooperative learning since the 1960s--along with discovery learning, active learning, self-regulated learning, authentic (contextualized or situation-driven) learning, and technology-mediated learning. It's interesting to see these models actualized in higher education today through dramatic applications of the wiki software.
I say dramatic because I think the changes are and will be profound. They will affect what we know and what we think we know, how we talk about things, what we regard as important, who we regard as an authority or an expert. Standards will fall left and right (starting with grammar and punctuation--e.g., how I resent public disregard for the proper use of apostrophes). Talk about dumbing down! And the changes will be mind-bending as well. We will learn (if we haven't already) to accept reality as an illusory, factuality as relative, truth as interpretation, uncertainty as normal chaos. Meanwhile, however, I now really want to co-write a wiki text!
I keep thinking of students in a summer course I taught at a state college on U.S. History and Constitutional Government, 1865 to the Present. I was an anthropologist, assigned out-of-field, and had successfully taught a few semesters of world history. With my Henry Steele Commager and various other hastily compiled texts, I managed to stay slightly ahead of my students, who, alarmingly, proved to be high school history teachers taking summer courses for advancement! I.e., they undoubtedly knew more than I did on the subject. We met once a week for 3 hours--a lot of time in which to screw up. I studied day and night and took a tutorial on constitutional law (way more complex than I had imagined), but I was still worried about the 3 hours. About halfway through the course I asked the students to team up and take particular constitutional issues that interested them to report on. To my astonishment, they flat-out refused! One explained, "We know what group work is; we assign it to our students all the time. But we didn't pay money here to do the work ourselves. We paid money to learn what you have to teach us that we can bring back to the classroom."
So I guess those students would not have co-written a wiki textbook with me. Maybe undergraduates don't notice (or care) that with wikis they do the work themselves. Which leads me to the questions, How will be know what to accept as true? and, What will be the role of the wikitext instructor?
Labels: custom publishing, custom textbooks, online textbooks, textbook authorship, textbook writing, Wikis
Wiki Textbooks
I'd like to explore a new topic and that is the application of wiki software to custom published textbooks. I have really mixed views on this and hope that comments on my posts will help me figure things out. On the one hand is the exciting prospect of creating a working text for a course through the participation of students with their instructor. This enterprise is the ultimate in custom publishing. At the same time it firmly supports and extends constructivist models of teaching and learning. These models feature students as active learners constructing their own understandings through their self-regulated development of knowledge networks. These networks are built up from multiple modes and sources of information, though primary source texts may be conspicuously missing from the discourse. Further, the networks are mediated socially through interaction with peers, experts, and audiences as well as through observation and experience. Because they allow students to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct knowledge networks, wikis give whole new meaning, and new scope, to the concept and value of student interaction with text.
This can only be good, right? In addition to permitting global pedagogical nirvana, the process is a perfect reflection of technological potential in our promiscuous Information Age. It is also a reflection, I think, of post-postmodern sentiment, which seems to discard both idealism and realism in favor of interpretivism. In this view, both reality (metaphysics) and truth (epistemology) are separated from moorings of any kind and opened to a sea of equal opportunity interpretation. And what is a wiki if not a constantly changing seascape with dubious new creatures evolving among the more familiar organisms? Because a part of me says, no, there have to be baselines, there have to be standards, benchmarks, principles, authorities. There have to be limits, constraints, disciplines. There has to be quality control. Am I hopelessly old-fashioned? Am I favoring censorship? I'm going to answer my own questions (and you are welcome to answer them also), but first I want to actually read some wiki textbooks. (Maybe I'm just a tempest in a teapot.)
Labels: college textbooks, custom publishing, textbook authorship, Wikis
Ethics of Authorship--Part 2
By exploitation of the learner I mean using the textbook as a medium to advance one's hidden agenda or to trash another's. An undergraduate introductory textbook is not the place for liberal, conservative, radical, reactionary, religious, or feminist posturing, grandstanding, or proselytizing. Yet, I see this all the time. Authors screen facts through their ideological filters, which is fine and probably unavoidable, but then present those nuances or distortions without alerting the (usually naive) reader that this is what is happening. This is not okay. The ethics of authorship require self-awareness and honesty, especially wherever we depart from objectivity. The reader has a right to know (and a responsibility to understand) the sources of your thoughts as well as your words.
Whatever happened to those values? Sometimes I think that objectivity, for one, must be part of the post-modern world we are leaving behind as we enter Brave-New-World times for real. Subjectivity (intellectual anarchy?) reigns. Literary and social criticism of the 21st century seems to insist that facts are fictions, that even science is storytelling, that all reality is alternate. In which case, nobody is really wrong and it doesn't matter what we believe! Bring me back to when we at least still tried to discover and speak truths (even if doomed to fall short of any absolutes). In any case, clearly stating your frame of reference and theoretical or ideological perspectives, and explaining how they might affect what you say, is de rigeur in textbook publishing. Students, even neophytes, have a right to this.
Exploitation of naive readers takes other forms as well--undocumented assertions, for example, when readers don't even understand the significance of a missing source citation, don't realize that a conclusion is being drawn without reference to any authority or body of knowledge other than yours. Students also have a right to know what is not being said, and why. They don't care about this stuff, you may say. True enough, but they would if we worked harder at bringing them to the intellectual level we claim to prefer in a student. They would question what they read. They would question your conclusions along with your grounds for making them. And this would be good, right?
So, to me, the second ethical principle of authorship after honest representation is a little humility, that and firm restraint against exploiting students' ignorance and gullibility. This relates to the third ethical principle: We should not neglect learners. Neglect will be the subject of my next post. I hope you are reading these, by the way. The SiteMeter so far says not yet.
All the best,
Mary Ellen
Labels: ethics, textbook authorship
Ethics of Authorship--Part 1
In my career in textbook development I have worked with many authors of the highest integrity. Whatever issues arose over manuscript or reviews, I could always count on honest and open discussions and productive resolutions. The few times I have been disappointed in this have been instructive, however. I have come to realize that some unethical attitudes and behaviors may be so subtle or commonplace as to escape notice. I'm not talking about the obvious, such as plagiarizing or breaching a contract. I'm talking about misrepresentation, exploitation, and neglect.
I have known authors who misrepresent themselves to acquisitions editors to win unearned advances upon signing, or perhaps just to put one over on an evil empire--for example, a Marxist (to anyone in the know) claiming to be writing a mainstream introduction to sociology or a creationist claiming to be writing a mainstream introduction to evolutionary biology.
Worse, to me, is textbook authors who misrepresent themselves as educators when they clearly care little for their readers and know nothing about learning theory or educational psychology. These authors have a "no pain no gain" attitude toward students. They don't see themselves as teachers (or even as learners in their own fields), and they tend to reject pedagogy in textbook development. Rather, they see themselves as experts and as gatekeepers of their professions--keeping out the riffraff. This all comes across in their writing, of course, but usually they don't see it. They write above grade level and fail to engage. Their textbooks are authoritative but unpopular and seldom survive more than a couple of editions.
But textbooks teach. That is their function. A textbook permits and encourages readers to learn and gives them what they need to do so efficiently. In the ethics of authorship, I believe that intending to communicate audience-appropriate content in a pedagogically sound way is the prime directive. The second is resisting opportunities to exploit that audience (or its champion, the editor), which I will take up in my next blog post: Ethics of Authorship--Part 2.
Labels: ethics, textbook authorship
