The more I think about the ways in which students (not all but many) approach learning and hence assignments, the more I wonder about the so-called remix culture. The Remix culture is what students are being exposed to. Snippets from here there and everywhere, linking to this and that. The remix culture is kinda central to the whole notion of the web.
But, and here I get a little fuzzy, this culture is not what learning is about. It brings to mind the notion of feral learning that Nunan hinted at way back in 1996. There seems to be no culture of learning. I’m beginning to think of it in terms of the Cut and Paste Collective. Everything on the web is available for cutting and pasting and it really doesn’t matter who first said it. (There’s a great article by Hess that I have bookmarked on CiteULike that I must (re)read.) Remixing is a cultural phenomena, one that is acceptable within many ‘social’ circles. According to Hess, remixers have a particular style and way of citing their originals. Aurally, the sample is recognisable. Sampling is an accepted practicce. However it is decidedly not acceptable within academia but it’s an argument that I find hard to make and hard to instill in the so-called net generation. But, my recent re-reading of Bruffee kinda lets me into a little secret. It’s the academic culture that we need to bring students to. Like Nunan said about flexible learning: Basically, the argument is that flexible learning (and flexible delivery) is the form of learning carried by the information technologies and that student expectations about teaching and learning and their approach to learning (feral learning?) is increasingly a factor of their experience of using information technologies. So, their experience of the information culture is to cut and paste. Why have it there if it’s not open to cutting and pasting?
The way students come to us, as part of the cut and paste collective, needs to be firmly deconstructed (gee, did I just use that word?). This is my goal for 2007: to investigate the cut and paste collective and to figure out ways to help students to see beyond that.