ELI 2011: The Problem of Learning in the Postcourse Era

I managed to make it down to Washington, DC last week for EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2011. While I tried to mix-up my attendance in general sessions and concurrent sessions as much as possible and found most the sessions well organized and engaging, one particular session, "The Problem of Learning in the Post Course Era," has stuck with me since the conference and I wanted to provide some highlights.

Delivered by Randall Bass of Georgetown University's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), the presentation focused on how teaching practices (and curricula) in higher education are sitting at a pivotal crossroads where more personalized, social learning is growing increasingly relevant in the classroom in the midst of rising pressure to assess, visibly map and demonstrate evidence of student learning in new ways.

Throughout the session, Bass explored some of the new and emerging ways that educators can see evidence of impact using digital learning technologies in the classroom and in student work, and how these technologies fall outside of what he called the "formal curriculum."

As Bass explained, this "formal curriculum" (lectures, assignments and exams) has been treated as the center of the undergraduate experience in academia for centuries. Bass didn't dismiss the formal curriculum as outdated or suggest that academia completely abandon it. Instead, he placed greater emphasis on the need to capture the effectiveness of informal learning strategies and intermediate activity that have become second nature to students in their efforts to excel within a traditional, formal curriculum. These informal learning strategies are what Cliff Atkinson has dubbed "The Backchannel," in his book of the same title:

• Note Taking
• Sharing Resources
• Commenting
• Amplifying
• Asking Questions
• Helping One Another
• Offering Suggestions
• Building Community
• Opening the Classroom

Although it's widely accepted that backchannel communication or "intermediate activity" has its merits for students, Bass states that one current challenge to capturing the evidence of intermediate activity's impact on a student is to "synthesize our evolving notions of how to design pedagogies for expert practice with our evolving ways of analyzing intermediate activity with digital tools."

In other words, how do we develop instructional strategies that cultivate expertise in a subject area by incorporating the backchannel into the curriculum? Secondly, how do we capture, measure and analyze the effectiveness of the backchannel?

Did you attend Bass' session ELI 2011? Tell us what you thought of it in the comments below. If you'd like to download Bass' presentation, visit the ELI 2011 resource page here.