Introduction
In a recent English Subject Centre Newsletter, Sue Thomas remarks that VLEs are now widely used in academia and that ‘many colleagues have mastered the art’ of their technical design (Thomas: 2005: 26). Whilst I don’t share her optimism, I acknowledge a genuine surge of interest in many aspects of e-learning. At the same time, one of the most frequent concerns I hear expressed at conferences and meetings devoted to this area is lack of expertise and knowledge about its practicalities. No-one would deny that this is an important issue, and, indeed, there is much being done in the way of training to address it. Yet lack of expertise and knowledge is also a distraction from what is really at stake in academics’ use of e-learning.
I would like to begin my discussion by taking issue with Thomas’s choice of ‘mastered.’ This implies that in the first instance there are skills we all need to grasp - presumably that of hypertext and HTLM code or Javascript, plus the finer points of web resource construction. Second, mastery suggests the existence of an explicit body of knowledges that we might seek, control and own in order to become expert individuals in the field of new media and its technologies. True, some academics are able to design and up-load their own sites, blogs and VLEs. Those with open access rights then circulate out into the public domain and so contribute to the free flow of information on the web. Yet these single-authored or privately created social softwares offer only a belated attempt to seize intellectual rights and status whilst also proving anathema to a technology designed to deconstruct individual ‘property’ rights as we know them. Similarly, the idea of ‘mastering an art’ neglects the ways in which new media alter the nature of traditional communications. Not least of these is the almost automatic decentring of the role of the academic teacher as the owner of pedagogy or an authority upon it; instead, audiences open up just as the architectures of the web open up space, and, so, those who read or use such sites affect their reception. (1)
Reading and Writing Practices
The implications of this idea are enormous. If we view the web as a metaphor that, in the words of Donna Haraway, helps us to ‘inflect our ways’ of thinking and writing, (2) then one of the first steps is for us to reconsider ‘our textcentric’ focus and what we understand as ‘literacy’. (3) A competent hyper-reader reacts to visual cues, searches for links, reads edits and annotations, and filters a wealth of material. But, as Sue Thomas points out, it is more than a simple matter of searching or browsing. Rather, it involves learning to read on ‘fluid and varied platforms - blog, email, hyptertext’, (4) web pages, wikis and all new media still to come. It is not so much that electronic or digital media is unlike print because it is anti-linear, but that it is simply not text. (5) As a result, we need to reconsider the practices and praxis of the new media we create and use, to consider the provenance of its ‘texts’, its audiences, its structures and its design. We need too to ‘”read” behind the screen’ and search for the apparently invisible keys to its agenda. (6)
In other words, faced with non-authentic texts, some without clear attribution and all without individual property rights, the problem is not the practicalities of how to read and write online content (‘mastering its art’); as Thomas herself notes, ‘the real challenge is what you do with it’ (26). In this virtual world too, authors or writers do not exist as such. Rather, there are ‘Web developers’. (7) Kendrick likens the creation of any electronic site to the advent of the printing press in its capacity to shift ‘our notions of how to define a creative or intellectual act’ (3), an analogy that points to an urgent reconsideration of the role of the academic in the development and integration of such technology in higher education curricula. In simple terms, then, I suggest that more important than ‘mastering the craft’ of new media’s basic functions and features - that knowledge about the practicalities of its use perhaps better accomplished by technicians - we need instead to get to grips with its theories and praxis. We ought to evaluate its resources, and interrogate and critique digital technologies by exploring the discursive web within which it is held and circulated, to make that ‘a significant subject of study itself’. (8) Those of us without expertise, or even interest, in the practical skills of design are then no longer excluded from the select band of those who have, leaving us free to engage digital media in our teaching and learning strategies without fear of failure. Even those who can design effectively may still need assistance ‘in terms of thinking of creative new ways of working’. (9) One of the ways in which this might be accomplished is by establishing collaboration as a central principle of its workings.
Collaboration
If we accept that current pedagogy involves ‘interactive, decentred, collaborative learning’ (10) and that its best practice is ‘collaborative, exploratory and practice-based’, (11) then it seems strange that more of us are not engaged in group projects. For many individuals, a significant factor in the take up of new technologies may be its demands upon academic time, at least in the initial stages of any design. Equally, such activity sometimes lacks prestige and so becomes a poor investment, especially for those working in research-dominated institutions. Excellence in teaching and learning is not always properly related to promotion or even tenure, despite its recognition as legitimate, R.A.E research. Other places lack sufficient resources and structures to support training and innovation. There is also a danger that such work becomes a costcutting exercise (if we author our own material, then fewer technicians might be required), or that technological skills become the province of only junior staff or nonacademic support posts (See Lisa Botshon: 2006: 97; Alan Liu: 2006: 6; Sue Thomas: 30). (12)
Such practical constraints mean we need to make judicious use of what is available. In each of the instances I’ve cited, collaboration ought to encourage dissemination of best practice and ameliorate any disinhibiting factors. Team projects ensure that people are used effectively according to their skills and interests in situations where everyone has an equitable investment and, consequently, shares in any reward. In the same way, the ‘destructive anomaly that leads to “apartheid”’ between e-learning technicians and academic researchers, (13) even staff and students, is broken down, and certain individuals no longer bear the brunt of becoming ‘expert’ in an ever-expanding field. Instead, teams might consist of pedagogical practitioners and theorists, academic researchers with vital subject knowledge, the information retrieval and resource skills of librarians and archivists, the technical skills and ongoing support of learning technologists and even input by students. As experts and practitioners, all share ownership of a project that belongs to no single ‘author’ and where investment in the enhancement of teaching and learning is far more likely, let alone widespread.
Conclusion
Lisa Botshon’s call for those invested in achieving excellence in teaching and learning to be ‘savvy about how and why’ we use technology and new media in English Studies is crucial in the context of my discussion (104). To facilitate collaborative or team-based practices demands that we review our current notions of authority and intellectual property rights. We need to decide too how we are going to credit this sort of innovation, let alone with whom (or how) the requisite debate might be conducted. Do we rate work only at source and/or as it circulates out and beyond its ‘original’ institution as a renewable resource to be remixed, sampled, used as a cut and paste template by others or built upon in ways that go beyond the conventions of print-based material? (14) So far the Humanities have been slow to recognise and reward those who genuinely work collaboratively or at the interdisciplinary interface. As long as this continues, single-authored claims on electronic resources or sites will proliferate as part of a move to ensure work ‘belongs’ to an individual required to create a traditional research profile. It is precisely this pressure to perform that we must undo. As Alan Liu argues, it is not enough to re-badge collaborative work simply as a multi-author, multi-disciplinary project within which ‘the now ingrained, individual research and teaching of the humanities can continue unchanged’ (17). Rather, we need to find new ways of thinking about teams and not individuals and to re-value the ways in which we might rate contributions.
At the same time, none of this will happen unless we also invest time, money and training in supporting those willing to work together. Christie Carson suggests that the average academic is ‘enthusiastic’ about new media but too overburdened to get to grips with it; as a result, many innovators currently work ‘in isolation’ (16,15). Whilst this may not be strictly true - there are many projects currently in progress around the UK - we still need to bring communities together, across and within institutions and disciplines, to offer workshops and conferences, and, perhaps above all, to re-focus our attention, away from practicalities and towards theoretical principles and ideas. Most of us know by now that we cannot simply ‘translate’ a real-life classroom and its activities into a virtual one. Some are expert in using the technologies of new media. But few of us critique its workings and not everyone is fully aware of how we might harness its energies more creatively and efficiently or of the ways in which its use alters the parameters of learning processes. This, plus individuals working to their strengths in imaginative teams where all are equitably rewarded, is the way forward if we are to ensure that our activities in this sphere are taken as seriously as other research.
Notes
1. See also Bryan Alexander, ‘A Threat to Professional Identity? The Resistance to Computer-Mediated Teaching’ in Michael Hanrahan and Deborah L. Madsen eds. Teaching, Technology, and Textuality: Approaches To New Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2006): 33.
2. D. J. Haraway, , modest-witness@second-millenium-femalemanC.-meets-oncomouseTM2: feminism and technoscience (Routledge 1997), 125.
3. Michelle Kendrick ‘The Web and New Media Literacy: Hypertext is Dead and There Is Nothing New About New Media Anymore’ The Journal of New Media and Culture (Fall 2003, Volume 2, Issue 2), 4. Http://ibiblio.org/nmediac/fall2003/kendrick.htm. Accessed 29/03/06
4. Sue Thomas ‘Transliteracy – Reading in the Digital Age’ in English Subject Centre Newsletter, Issue 9, November 2005, 26.
8. Christie Carson, ‘Digital Resources For Teaching and Discussion: three approaches to C&IT in English’ in English Subject Centre Newsletter, Issue 6, February 2004, 19.
10. Michael Hanrahan and Deborah L. Madsen ‘Introduction: From Literacy to e-Literacy’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality: Approaches To New Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), 8.
12. See Lisa Botshon, ‘All Aboard Blackboard’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality, 97; Alan Liu ‘The Humanities: A Technical Profession’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality, 6; Thomas, 30.
14. See Christopher Kelty ‘Intellectual Property and the Humanities’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality, 53.
