Thursday, March 5, 2009

Best overheard conversation in light of current trends in higher ed

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."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

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.

Sisyphus said...

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.

Unknown said...

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.