I try to understand why academe is so slow to adopt new approaches to education.  I recently helped a friend understand how to write a literature review.  He is in a graduate program and this is a completely knew activity for him.  I was able to give feedback that helped him shape his reading into a paper.  However, I found I needed to stop because my role became one of telling him what he couldn't do because it was not the  traditional approach.  He had integrated large amounts of information.  But he had mixed popular writing with academic, expansive thought papers with academic research approaches.  I thoroughly enjoyed talking with him about the subject (a school garden as a way to help inner city children learn more about their local ecology).  He is insightful and his work is exciting.  In trying to help, I became the enforcer of all the craziness of academic institutions.

March 14 bgblogging describes how students can learn breadth and depth from using the internet.  I particularly like her quote, " students come to see that in addition to the delights of grazing the possible, we can use the connective, collaborative practices of the Web to dig far more deeply into subject matter. . . ."    Instead of forcing students into preconceived molds she sees the opportunities in encouraging students to use the web to learn and participate widely.  At the same time she creates spaces and tasks for her students to use to work together, learning from the common focus on a task or an approach to a task while bringing a lot of individuality to it.  In her classes students cannot fail to participate.  The activities are designed to bring students to the heart of who they are and what they want to do. 

Why does academe favor limiting what students can and should read?  Why not evaluate what students produce, how well they are able to integrate and articulate their ideas.  Barbara Ganley has her students work from their experience and from reading other authors to see how those authors work as writers.  She encourages her students to respond to the writing around them.  No wrong answers.  When I took intro. to literature in college, our exams were frequently multiple choice.  That approach is predicated on there being right and wrong answers. 

I think the reaction against wikipedia is similarly based on a focus on right and wrong answers.  What if, instead of mocking students for using it, faculty had students participate in creating it.  Students could check on the accuracy of a topic of interest to them and join in changing it.  Concepts of a huge wiki created by the public, open source software, and creative commons licenses are difficult for many people to understand or accept. 

What about our culture needs to change for higher education to be more open to learning over regulation of knowledge?