We all subordinate ourselves to, and participate in, groups. These may be states or other institutions at various scales: families, workplaces, corporations, education. In the context of a world in which “Absolutely everything is changing all the time,” at a recent Harvard Berkman centre seminar, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, (read his blog) President Emeritus of the IBM Technology Academy and visiting/adjunct professor at MIT and Imperial College, argues, for a mixed mode of social control in which participatory governance models and hierarchical governance models share the challenge of institutional survival in a social darwinian market environment where, “… you make mistakes you die”. The essence of the argument depends on one, metaphorised, aspect of darwinism: sexual reproduction; hierarchical governance can be crossed with participatory governance to yield a more robust hybrid. But, in the end, it appears that participatory modes of governance are only useful insofar as they produce innovation which enables adaptation for domination.

Simultaneously scary, inspiring, useful and banal, this is an excellent example of a totalising hegemonism, which only a representative of the really big and powerful can pull off. As he says, “Once you drink the Kool-Aid you understand this”.

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Like politicians, do we get the theories we deserve?

The Ur text of connectivism is George Siemens (2005) “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.” Siemens is a good speaker and has clearly spent a long time thinking about elearning. He gave a good keynote at the Emerge April 08 conference, “Technology and Community as Identity.” (2008) But, as a learning theorist, I am unsure.

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Frances Bell asks “CCK08 Is Connectivism a Learning Network?. She critiques the connectivism community/network/group of people who regularly use that term in their writing about education, in connectivist terms (“in their own terms”). The main argument is that “Protagonists have shown their ability to connect between fields of their own choosing, but less willingness to explore fields suggested by others e.g. Actor-Network Theory.” (ANT) “There are little or no links between ANT and connectivism,” says Bell. Therefore, Connectivism may not be willing to be “mutable knowlege as it extends its network…” Bell, here fails to draw a distinction between the ideas and the people who have them. If Connectivism IS its “protagonists” and the “protagonists” ARE Connectivism, then, if they do not engage with ANT, following Bell’s argument, there is a contradiction. But, how unusual is it for humans to display behaviour inconsistent with their ideas?

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The assessment or evaluation of critical reflective writing is problematic. Some take it as too personal and subjective and therefore do not presume to judge others’ reflection. On the other hand, in some disciplines reflection is formally incorporated as an assessed component.

I came across two sets of criteria for the assessment of students’ blog writing in the links in a post by Emma Duke Williams, via Stephen Downs’ On Line Daily. Emma questions the value of grading student blogging, but recognises that when used in an educational context it is practically inevitable. Stephen is, as would be expected, rather more robust in his rejection of the assessment of blogging, “Honestly, I think that the whole idea of grading student blogging is to miss the point of blogging. You may say it’s “inevitable” that staff will want to grade blogging – well, I say, don’t cater to that, don’t make it easier, don’t give them metrics – make them do their own work, so that they are completely culpable for ruining writing for children and youth.”

Well, here are the metrics. You decide if they are useful of not:

• Making assessment personnally relevant, by Konrad Golgowski
• Grading Grid by Ryan Bretag

Both reminded me very closely of the criteria that the OCSLD team came up with for the overall assessment of participants on the Brookes Postgraduate certificate in teaching in Higher Education (PCTHE). I’ll post these shortly.

Just a quick one to get going. More soon as this becomes my main professional blogging site.