Networks and higher ed… so many questions

If you poke around long enough in large change projects in higher education right now, you’ll find a technology that someone is trying to deal with. Whether it’s the needs of a CRM (customer relations management) system, the feedback from a learning analytics project, a social media mental health campaign… whatever. While technology is often complicated to develop/configure and it often does not solve the problem it was acquired for, that’s only the start of it. These technologies are really proxies for human activity, wether they are connective tech or simply a way of story things people said or did, they are still ‘activities’ that we are doing with our students. They are ethical situations, they need to impact policy etc…

In the last few years, as I’ve started to work in student preparation, recruitment, engagement and retention, I’ve been seeing new challenges. How do we incorporate health and wellness into an online program? What are the ethical implications of opening up student’s work to the world? How much learning analytics is too much analytics? How do we encourage systemic change? How much change can we even encourage inside higher ed and still call it higher ed? How does it relate to the way that people work?

And so I got a call from George Siemens talking about the DLRN conference. And it seems that I’m not alone in wanting to ask and talk about these questions. I’m currently on a planning committee with some very interesting folks

Kate Bowles, University of Wollongong
Dave Cormier, University of Prince Edward Island
Matt Crosslin, University of Texas at Arlington
Justin T. Dellinger, University of Texas at Arlington
Kristen Eshleman, Davidson College
George Siemens, University of Texas at Arlington
Bonnie Stewart, University of Prince Edward Island
Candace Thille, Stanford University

Our conference is hoping to explore the most pressing uncertainties and most promising applications of digital networks for learning and the academy through five lenses for submissions: The Ethics of collaboration, Individualized learning, Systemic impacts, Innovation and work and Sociocultural Implications.

If you’re wondering about these things too… here’s the call for proposals

Author: dave

I run this site... among other things.

One thought on “Networks and higher ed… so many questions”

  1. Hello ,
    This is Rosemary a PhD candidate of Waseda university , Tokyo, Japan. I have been always reading your blog articles and i admire your interpretation of the Rhizomatic network. i am actually using the same concept (Rhizome network) but not with the learning process but with contemporary social movements.
    my Main point is that most of the movements after 1990 started to change its connectivity system from a one centered, charismatic leader-based network to a decentralized movement where everybody is connected in horizontal way where is no specific leader and this kind of network gives diversity to the movement and the possibility that anyone, no matter how well educated , experienced in movement is , can be a leader of the movement .
    However, i have so many debated with my professors regarding whether this form can be called a rhizomatic network or not , in addition they reject my ideas saying that its totally the opposite to what delueze has referred to .
    i need to your opinion specially about what do you see is the difference between contemporary Rhizomatic networks and what delueze referred to , and if you have any advice id be really grateful if you can send me on my email address which is mentioned above. Thank you so much.

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