Crystal Alberts, Department of English, University of North Dakota
Edupunk: an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude.
When Bill sent me the link to EDUPUNK Battle Royale-Part 1 (see here for all 5) and asked me to comment on it, even before finding out what it is, I jokingly said that he should be careful as I might adopt Edupunk as a teaching philosophy. All kidding aside, as it turns out, I’ve been Edupunk for years.
University of Mary Washington Instructional Technologist Jim Groom coined the term “edupunk” on May 25, 2008 in his bavatuesdays blog entry “The Glass Bees.”. In what has been described as a rant, Groom asserts that Blackboard and other Learning Management Systems (LMS) “tak[e] the experiments and innovations of thousands of people and re-packag[e] them as their own, unique contribution to the educational world of Web 2.0.” Groom goes on to state that these companies are not only motivated by money, but that they also supply a means for institutions to monitor faculty and students. After his post, the term took on a life of its own. The Chronicle for Higher Education discussed it on May 30, 2008 and the New York Times added to the conversation in October 17, 2008, defining it as “an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like Powerpoint and Blackboard, and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of ’70s bands like the Clash to the classroom.”
Groom raises the issue of the cost of Blackboard and their proprietary equivalents. I have not been able to track down exact numbers for UND, but this year Ball State (enrollment approximately 18,000) paid $101,000 ((http://media.www.bsudailynews.com/media/storage/paper849/news/2008/09/16/News/Blackboard.Costs.Bsu.101000-3432621.shtml). Meanwhile, Northern Arizona State with roughly the same enrollment as Ball State paid $160,100 (https://confluence.nau.edu/display/ITSACAD/Blackboard+License). To avoid this price tag, many institutions are thinking about Moodle, an open source (read free) LMS that appears to be more popular among faculty and students alike. As an extra bonus, Moodle also seems to have inspired less ire in the hacker world. Step-by-step hacks for Blackboard and WebCT are all over the Internet. All one has to do is follow the technical documentation. I’ve contacted CILT about this and security updates are installed regularly to protect against hacks. I also learned that UND is looking into Moodle (if you have an opinion on such things, my guess is now would be a good time to share it). That said, I want to thank CILT for answering my questions on these issues.
Leaving the financial issue aside (if one can in this economy), as well as that of information security, I’ll return to the term itself. While the multi-part Battle Royale spends some time focusing on the “punk” portion of the term (and whether “hippie” or some other cultural label would be better), the core discussion revolves around the surprisingly strong reactions that Groom’s post evoked. For the sake of time, I’ll summarize the arguments in the most basic way. In one camp are academics that find Blackboard to be an indispensable tool (even with its quirks) to manage large classes. Closely affiliated to this position are those who assert they don’t have time to “reinvent the wheel” or learn new technology. Still others claim that edupunks are just doing what they did fourteen or so years ago. Finally, there are tech savvy individuals (or those willing to become so) who either feel limited by Blackboard, outright despise the LMS (for various reason), or both.
I will admit (rather proudly) that I do not use Blackboard or any LMS. I should also add I avoid Powerpoint as much as is humanly possible. However, I have watched colleagues, who are very much tech savvy, struggle with the Blackboard software every semester. This battle of human versus LMS frequently ends in innumerable invectives against the inventors of the interface. Rather than subject myself to such frustration, I very happily maintain my own course web site.
To be fair to other viewpoints, I understand that I am lucky enough to have small classes and therefore do not have to track over 200 students each semester. I also realize that I am at an advantage because I can create a web page anytime I feel so moved. But I am perplexed by those who will take the time to be trained in Blackboard, then assert they don’t have an hour to create a web page using a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) composer. Likewise, I am confused by the “we already did this fourteen years ago” position. We acknowledge that we build upon what these tech pioneers did, but we also recognize, to quote that wise twentieth-century pop philosopher Ferris Bueller, that “things move pretty fast.”
While I’ve used a fair amount of space focusing on Blackboard and LMS alternatives, this isn’t really what edupunk is about. It’s not necessarily about dismantling authority, but rather, as Groom states, about “people thinking and working together.” It’s an appeal to academics be active, not apathetic; to be creative and collaborative, not automatic and isolated. It’s about discovering new ways of doing things and learning along the way, rather than waiting for information to revealed to you by someone else.
I guess its clear by now where I fall in the debate. Perhaps edupunk resonates with me because I have worked in corporate America. I laugh uncontrollably at Office Space, mostly because I escaped, what was for me, intellectual confinement, and because I wish that I had taken a power drill to my cubicle. I fled that world to what I thought was the safety of academe, only to discover that institutions of higher learning are increasingly being run as businesses.
But I’ve learned my lesson. I’m a DIY kind of woman. While I can’t build a house from the ground up like my DIY Northern Minnesota family and neighbors, with my pedagogical power drill (my MacBook Pro) in my tool belt and the assistance of students, as well as like-minded colleagues around campus (and the world), I can certainly roll up my sleeves and construct a scholarly knowledge site that we can all point to and say “I helped do that.” I can arrange a field trip to Special Collections and show my students that a little book dust never hurt anyone. I can take my class to the Writers Conference where they can interact with the authors whose works they are reading. Like I said, none of these things are particularly revolutionary and all are available for free on campus, but they all keep things interesting. Perhaps more importantly these outside of the classroom adventures pose interesting questions and challenges not only for me, but also for my students. Because while I can teach them about digital humanities, guide them through a close read of a literary passage, and explain critical theory, the only way I know to spark a true passion for the material and my discipline is by example.
So, call me edupunk. And if you are too, please let me know who you are and why. I’d love to find more of my fellow travelers.
An interesting piece, Crystal, and an interesting deabte. FYI, Peter Monahan wrote something about “Punk Rock Pedagogy” for a seminar a few years ago–not sure he ever did anything with it, though. I made it through two parts of the debate, but it seemed like a lot of rehashing of a basic point. Everyone agrees that the corporatization of the university is a deplorable thing, but why bother wasting time debating the metaphor we use to describe resistance to that process? For my part, and I say this as a real fan of first-wave punk (and not just the Clash), I think it’s a terrible metaphor given the history of punk as a style (which is what it was–not a movement). With some obvious exceptions (like the Clash), most of what punk was able to articulate was its own inarticulate anger (“Don’t know what I want / But I know how to get it / I wanna destroy…”). It’s not a model for constructive critique; it’s at best an analogy for our frustration with the system(s). As for the DIY ethos, isn’t that what educators have talked about for years with student-centered classrooms, problem-based learning, classroom collaboration, etc., etc.? Let’s remember that for most punk bands, DIY meant not having to really know how to play your instruments. Do we want to communicate to our students the idea that expertise and mastery are unimportant? I take your point about a general spirit of active engagement, creativity, and collaboration, but wasn’t this whole debate kicked off over the drab institutional flavor of the tools we use to deliver information to students (or to allow students to discover some kind of knowledge on their own). Isn’t part of the point here that we are taking the medium to be the message?
I expect there is a generational component at work when we talk about how thinks like LMS/CMSes are integrated into the university environment. My experiences with enthusiastic faculty users of Telesis and Blackboard has been that they’ve been sold on the idea that the platform doesn’t require any kind of technological specialist knowledge. Someone has told them that this is the “easy” way to do something with technology, and they’ve not necessarily thought about whether or not they even want to do some of those things online. I can understand this to some extent–take a semi-Luddite professor and park her in front of the Blackboard interface or the Dreamweaver interface and see what happens–but to me the real issue is that once an LMS gains traction among a subset of the faculty (or administration or whomever), it becomes easier for the university to focus on supporting that very limited tool. For my part, I do appreciate the (relatively) secure functions of Blackboard that allow me to go paperless when receiving essays (with integrated Turnitin support–useful for large lit survey courses) and manage a gradebook that keeps students up to date on their course standing. Then again, I despise everything else about Blackboard and consider myself a disciple of the Church of Wiki. If you want to talk about a real DIY use of educational technology, you can have a class build a wiki site (in terms of content, multimedia, linkage, etc.) from the ground up. I’ve had a lot of success with that, and it’s frankly easier to manage from the faculty end than those awful Blackboard “discussion threads” and whatnot.
It seems to me that we’re caught in a bind at this point–we’re between generations in terms of faculty comfort with digital media, universities don’t necessarily want to support multiple applications (or even platforms–Wake gives everyone a Lenovo Thinkpad and there is little to no support for Mac users at all), and then there are FERPA and security concerns that have to be weighed. I think all we can do at this point is empower ourselves and our students as learners to the best of our abilites using whatever tools–however limited–we have at our disposal. But isn’t that just the timeless practice of good teaching, not a sneering (punkish) dismissal of the status quo?
Crystal and Ryan,
Great reply. I’ve made a few similar observations here:
http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/03/teaching-thursday-considering-the-punk-in-edupunk.html
Advertisement for myself,
Bill
Crystal, intriguing post. I have to admit that I’m lukewarm toward the term “Edupunk” because, as Ryan already pointed out, it’s a metaphor that may needlessly limit and/or work against the umbrella of ideas that “Edupunk” is serving as a temporary placeholder for.
I do think there is a generational component at play here. Also, despite the corporatization of the University, where expansion is valued for the sake of expansion, the institution itself is still often resistant to change. It’s like an air craft carrier, really big and slow to turn around. While many of us can implement DIY approaches to educational tech, I think it’s going to be a while before it can be widespread. Not all faculty, whether by choice or a lack of training, won’t have the ability to make sophisticated websites. It’s one thing to offer training in a structured environment such as Blackboard, but another to give free reign in a more DIY environment. Whether this is a good or bad thing, many instructors would throw their hands up and just not use any sort of CMS. And ss much as I hate Telesis, I don’t think I could replicate my own course management software that would allow for the type of paperless class environment I’m trying to cultivate.
I also wonder if the DIY ethos would create too much confusion for undergrads. If every instructor had their own course management software or website (I’m assuming some would share), then students would be faced with perhaps too many ways to engage with their courses via tech. I could be misunderstanding the premise and proposals here though.
Having given a few of my perhaps hasty reservations about Edupunk, I do think that there needs to be a more active conversation about tech in the university and the classroom. We need to think comprehensively about what we want to accomplish, and what the value of tech is in the class.
For the sake of debate, Rick, you mention that a DIY ethos “would create too much confusion for undergrads” and I think that this is an issue that a number of people would raise. Growing up in our e-culture, students want the one stop shop. But, in my opinion, it’s kind of like buying groceries at a convenience store, yeah you can do it and survive, but it’s a pretty monotonous experience.
This whole convenient education scenario, which I suppose can be related to the posts on the sense of entitlement, has bothered me for some time. I’m reminded of Adrienne Rich’s “Claiming an Education:” “The first thing I want to say to you who are students, is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one. One of the dictionary definitions of the verb “to claim” is: to take as the rightful owner; to assert in the face of possible contradiction. “To receive” is to come into possession of: to act as receptacle or container for; to accept as authoritative or true. The difference is that between acting and being acted-upon….”
I am perplexed by students who want to receive the answer, but aren’t willing to ask a question, perhaps because I’m not wired that way. It also seems to me that there’s a lack of inquisitiveness; or, I should say that such curiosity is fine, as long as the answer can be revealed by Google in .5 seconds. It’s the short attention span and impatience that we have to contend with as academics. How can we give the cliche “good things come to those who wait” meaning again?
Like I said, I’ve been thinking about this for some time and I’m trying to be brief, but I came across the following. In “Reading in an Era of Hypertextuality,” Bertrand Gervais states “[t]he difference between discovery and revelation, between searching for a truth and having one simply revealed without any effort, is the difference between a word and a word button, between a real sign and a hyperlink, between the semiosphere (Lotman 1990) and cyberspace” (http://www.digitalhumanities.org /companionDLS/) .
That seems to sum it up for me…today’s students want to click and have things revealed, but that sense of discovery over time with detailed work seems to be waning.
So, how does this relate to DIY? If I make my students work a bit to claim their education, then, for me, I’m doing my job to my expectations. Again, I’m not saying that this is everyone’s teaching philosophy, just mine. And again, a little book dust never hurt anyone (well except me, because I”m allergic, but sometimes, as you know, you have to play through the pain).
Hi all,
One thing that I always associated with Punk of any kind is the willingness to experiment and to regard the process as every bit as essential as the final product. As higher education has become commodified — in various ways — our emphasis has shifted more and more to discussions of outcomes and objectives, and at the same time, there has been less and less emphasis on the benefits of experimental teaching (and learning). An outcome/objective oriented system makes painfully clear and manifest any failure in the process, limits (when crudely applied) the potential outcomes a continuum that ranges from success to unsuccessful, and finally conditions faculty and students to value the goal over the journey.
While we can easily imagine our way around this simplistic analysis of the recent fascination (obsession) with assessment, outcomes, and goals, they are nevertheless most frequently invoked in the crudest way possible.
Edupunk, broadly imagined, provides an antidote to this condition in higher education. An emphasis on style, a spirit of experimentation — for the sake of experimentation, and a passion for process over product, captures the punk mentality in a way that blurs the distinction between instructor as content provider and student as content consumer. In fact, the first step in the punk-i-fication of higher education might be to experiment in such a way that threatens the foundation of any mutual critique by creating ambiguity between the performer (instructor) and the audience (students). This leveling demands the rejection of authority based on expertise, experience, or even knowledge — and this includes mastery of technology (how many of the punk rock revolutionaries could actually play their instruments?). And, of course, things would get broken, but you’d have to expect that…
To bring it back to technology (only a bit) , this isn’t much different from the idea of immersion that so many (in the technocracy) talk about today. You and your students could inhabit the same world. Our avatars don’t have to look different.
But then, it would almost beg the question:
Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Good night.
I think the key to understanding the term is understanding the origin. It was a sarcastic pun referring as much to the way others view it (music industry or education institutions) as the additive of DIY when needed. The true first wave of “punks” were those that wanted into the music business, but were refused for one reason or another. Having been refused the opportunities and resources of the system, they created opportunities and resources for themselves. Then there are the zines and communication that were created. That idea, and the DIY education, is what it’s about as a term. That’s why I have no problem with it, even though I have no interest in punk music, fashion or general style.
Since you asked for the why, I’ll share. About seven months ago I started a blog in the hopes of doing some social marketing of myself and an idea I have to improve education and educational games. When I came across the term edupunk a few times I decided to look into it and found that as a student, I agreed. I want to help fix the same kinds of problems edupunk raises a fuse about. So, it made sense to try to make contacts within the group. It has progressed to the point that I’m working on designing and organizing an open, digitally distributed, learning conference with the help of Jim Groom.
As Jim states in the later parts of the discussion, he’s not so sure about edupunk. It’s the discussion and creativity that are important. From them new ideas and solutions will come forth. It is also a means to get others to think about this stuff and their views.
Pingback: Technology, Teaching, and Doing it Differently « Teaching Thursdays
For those that are interested, the Geology Dept has been using Moodle for several years. We installed it on a departmental server — if we want it more widely available on campus, CILT should install it somewhere. The bottom line is that MOODLE is superior to Web CT and Blackboard, it is free, and there are many expert programmers willing to add/fix things as they come up.
Another gizmo that I just discovered and find very very valuable is Google Forms. I use GF to have my students do Exam wrappers. East to use. And I can download all the responses in Excel format and then make graphs or analyze or do whatever I want quite easily. It leads to some great discussions with students.
Hi All,
For people interested in Moogle, try http://demo.moodle.org/ and use the film study demo module. The Romeo and Juliet module has too much room for improvement to be a fair demo.
If you are interested in setting up a server have a tech look at
http://bitnami.org/stack/moodle
This allows one to take a leftover computer, install a free OS, and then jam all the, and complete, Moogle stuff in and get it running. Maybe half a day of effort.
An interesting alternative is
http://learn.aero.und.edu/organization.asp?SideBarID=138528
( http://tinyurl.com/n5ztmo )
I have two questions.
Does edupunk advance humanity towards providing a free enough education so that a child with the potential of Einstein, Hume or Joyce who happens to be born in the wrong area, e.g. Chad, is not wasted?
Is it fair to say,
“University organizations require funding from the powers that be and will always teach en retard of the forefronts of thought. One might then think of edupunk as the latest manifestation of, and similar to, those who defied the magisterium to teach Aristotle outside the structure of the U. of Paris around the 12th C. CE.”
?
If the answer to the former is affirmative, good luck.
Thanks,
arigatou