Charlie Moran wrote:
I've been watching the humanities, the home of critique, become
lessimportant over the past 40 years, and in particular the last
15-20 years; and other aspects of the academy that might be connected
to *design* become more important---urban planning, landscape
architecture, schools of management, some aspects of engineering.
And our Chancellor seems to spend his entire day attempting to engage
us in "strategic planning." We were told by an alum/dot-com CEO that
in today's work world there's no value to reflection, at all.
Could this be because they use different language and processes to
accomplish their version of reflection: rapid prototyping, usability
testing, user-centered design, participatory design, focus groups, .
. . ? If he thinks there is no value in paying attention to what you
are doing, then I don't think much of that company's long-term
prospects.
Now "design" is not exactly *implementation," but I know that our
various tech programs and labs have been carefully designed and then
implemented, so I'd say that we're doing what Kress says we should
do---creating programs from available materials, moving quickly into
implementation. I know that if I'd taken the 'bean-counter' approach
when we first brought technology in, we'd still be doing cost-benefit
analyses!
No reason not to do both all the time is there? We publish our budget
every year for students to see and analyze. We make all our new STC
majors rethink that budget as a way of learning how to use Excel in
our intro. technology class. Those analyses help us reimagine where
we are and where we are going. It's also a hell of a good
bean-counter education for our students. I'm not sure I agree with
Gunther if he imagines these as entirely independent. Can you point
me at a Kress volume that deals with this?
Off to teach my first-year writing class. I asked them to do
some cost-benefit thinking about our lab---that if we could take
lab-money and spend it on TA's we could reduce class size across
the program by 1.4 students---and they all said that we should
get more computers, fire some teachers, and increase class size!
Yep, I get stuff like this too. I'm sure you do the same thing I do:
use it as an opportunity to make a case for alternative approaches
????
Dickie Selfe
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