The radical little interview

Many thanks to Keith Hampson for posting a simple, four-question interview with me at his LinkedIn blog, Higher Education Management Group. I've had many hits on my blog because of it, but no one has left any comments there. I re-read my answers, and had a little aha moment of my own. I'm now trying to determine if there's anyone in the higher education establishment/industry that I didn't manage to offend in some way:

Academics and their quality, check...
Textbook publishers, check...
LMS providers, check...
Learning technologists, check...

Really, I meant only to speak the truth as I see it, and as I have been watching it unfold lo these many years. And I can't really take anything back, nor can I apologize except to say that offense was not my purpose, nor was any disrespect intended. I hold education in the highest regard. I simply believe that in many ways and instances, the process of providing education has overtaken the place of honor that should be reserved for the product, the learning itself.

Let me explain. There is something in 3D virtual games, the MMO's like World of Warcraft, called "the grind." This is a pejorative term, defined in Wikipedia as "the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game." Gamers don't like it, but the game-makers couldn't come up with enough interesting battles or quests to really make you earn something over time, so they just said, "Here, do this about twenty-seven more times and then you'll get what you want."

Replace a few gaming words in that definition with a few scholastic ones, and you have what I don't like about formal education. So little in education needs to fit into the category of "the grind" any more, and yet we continue to let it drive us. We ask them to crank out something (a paper, a project, homework, a quiz) without real substance or interest but that can be graded and managed and documented, thereby qualifying as an academic result. And thereby covering the appropriate expanse of derriere. This happens so much it isn't even questioned by many. It's just what we do and how it's done.

So, I guess in the end I'm not very contrite. But I am hopeful. If you read to the end of that interview, you'll see why.