{"id":103,"date":"2017-04-03T16:51:06","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T21:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/?p=103"},"modified":"2017-04-03T16:53:17","modified_gmt":"2017-04-03T21:53:17","slug":"knowledge-as-process-and-as-distribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/2017\/04\/knowledge-as-process-and-as-distribution\/","title":{"rendered":"Knowledge as Process and as Distribution"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the late 1990s, Ronald Deibert\u2019s Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia<\/em> <\/a>was published.\u00a0\u00a0 As a political scientist and media ecologist, Deibert was interested in the ways that new digital technologies would alter power relationships throughout the world by shifting the ways people thought and processed information, as well as the ways information and political power would be distributed.\u00a0 Deibert argued that while old media favored nation states and top down knowledge, digital media favored non territorialization via fragmented global institutions and communities and co-created knowledge.<\/p>\n

In my position at Vanderbilt, I\u2019ve been thinking about Deibert a good deal these days.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that my role deals with global politics, or politics at all in any traditional manner, it\u2019s more that Vanderbilt\u2014as an institution with an educational mission\u2014needs to think about the ways that digital educational technologies have a transformative effect both on the ways people (students, faculty) think and on how knowledge is distributed\u2014both inside and outside the institution.\u00a0 In my mind, the more that I reflect on what \u201cwe\u201d need to be doing, the more I think these twin transformations are a healthy way for us to think through our use of digital technology.<\/p>\n

On the first front\u2014that of changes in how students and faculty think, how they produce and consume knowledge\u2014I am hoping to think about ways the university can focus more specifically on providing tools, courses, and less formal means of dealing with changes in our means of communication.\u00a0 By providing students with the skills for production and the skills for critical consumption, we provide more training for their eventual move into the workforce or higher education.\u00a0 To point: I am working currently with a \u201cDigital Literacy\u201d committee who has been tasked with defining \u201cdigital literacy\u201d for Vanderbilt and then thinking about both curricular and non-curricular ways to advance digital literacy.\u00a0 While working with peer institutions\u2019 definitions of digital literacy as a starting point, I\u2019m hoping to have us think creatively about the ways that we can alter the way students and faculty produce and consume information through both curricular and non-curricular means.\u00a0 In terms of the curriculum, I can envision the creation of a digital literacy designation and the development of more classes with such a designation, or the development of a curricular model in which students attend a certain number of classes, workshops, or short modules on campus as one way of signifying digital competence. On the non-curricular side, I can picture a larger site license for digital software, an increase in the number of help stations, and a growth in support staff at locations like the Center for Teaching (CFT)<\/u><\/a>.\u00a0 These are just ideas, and the committee and the faculty at large will help shape and transform these ideas into workable solutions for our faculty and students, but it\u2019s a positive to be thinking in this direction.<\/p>\n

On the second front, that of the distribution of knowledge, we at VU are working hard at developing ideas both in our normal classrooms and outside the university to how we distribute information and how we have conversations about information outside of class.\u00a0 While this of course has meant the establishment of MOOCs<\/u><\/a>, flipped classrooms<\/u><\/a> and virtual classrooms<\/u><\/a>, it also is exemplified, for example, in Peabody\u2019s decision to offer two of their degree programs online<\/u><\/a>, in our upcoming experiments with an online summer course for our residential students, for potential non-degree programs or programs developed for, and offered specifically to, our alumni. \u00a0\u00a0I certainly see the \u201cTiny Languages\u201d program<\/u><\/a> working to focus on changing ways of distributing knowledge.<\/p>\n

In short, it is clear that digital technology has altered the landscape for education and for knowledge itself.\u00a0 It is up to us to constantly think about how we are prepared for these changes and how we prepare our faculty and students for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the late 1990s, Ronald Deibert\u2019s Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia was published.\u00a0\u00a0 As a political scientist and media ecologist, Deibert was interested in the ways that new digital technologies would alter power relationships throughout the world by shifting the ways people thought and processed information, as well as the ways information and political power would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}