Liberal Education Today

Notes on a presentation on redesigning a politics and media class to address Web 2.0, given at the ELI 2008 annual conference. Presentation materials blogged to the Web.

First version, 2006 - the plan: read and critique content in various Web 2.0 forms. Students were required to blog, one post/week; since the campus didn't support blogs, they "used publicware." Students also built content in a wiki. Moreover, students worked in audio, either contributing to a live radio show or co-creating a podcast (for example). Some podcasts were "enhanced podcasts," sound plus images, and published to YouTube (example). Additionally, students were required to find and add five (5) items to a group del.icio.us account, tagging from a precreated set (media bias, etc).

Various other organizations helped support students. A local community radio station helped with audio training. Campus film studies assisted with video. The library partnership included teaching about copyright issues.

One problem emerged: too much work, leading to student resistance. Public matters: students decided to make all audio content public. An unusual problem: students shocking other students with very violent content.

Some lessons learned: the blog form was the most comfortable for students (one example). A course feed page worked well. Free public online tools (Blogger, YouTube) worked well. YouTube was much easier to work with than iTunesU. One risk was that students could plunge too far into technology (medium over message). The cognitive shift involved in Web 2.0 was tricky to make, and complex to think about, "fundamentally changing how we think about information."

Next steps: creating and using a YouTube enhanced channel. Building an information commons in the library, which would support podcasting creation. Google Docs will be the next wiki platform.

One article from local media on this.

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