Yesterday in the hallways of Michel Foucault Memorial Panopticon, I heard the following conversation as two student passed a classroom labeled "Distance Learning Classroom."
Student #1: What's a Distance Learning Classroom?
Student #2: It's where they broadcast a video of a professor's lecture from a remote location.*
Student #1: They do that?!
*Well, actually, it's where they film such lectures -- in front of a live audience! -- to broadcast later to students *not* in classrooms. But as I used to say in the fifth grade, "same diff."
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Best overheard conversation in light of current trends in higher ed
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3 comments:
Your Memorial Panopticon is indeed very I Carceri. (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/melancholy/spaces.html)
Sort of makes me wax conspiracy theory-ish about the motives behind this video lecture stuff.
I have to wonder what will happen when Clear Channel takes over syndicating them - if the same thing will happen to college education that happened to FM radio, a la Harrison Bergeron.
All I got to say is it's about time ol' Foucault Baby got some love!
Let me know when they put in a Jacques Derrida Memorial Quantum Collider.
You know: technically speaking, this means you could sign up for a course that you yourself are teaching. And if someone else is grading the course--as the more paranoid among the faculty think will someday happen--someone will be in a position to grade your own grasp of yourself.
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