Ambiguity.
Does it have a role in online teaching and learning?
When you spend some time looking at different learning theories and frameworks, you realize quickly that they exist mainly to give instructors a pathway. Creating a course is like writing a book or painting a picture: a blank page or canvas is staring at you, out of nothing you attempt to make something. Where to begin? Frameworks specifically geared towards course design and development exist to show you the path through the forest of information and ideas you wish to share to your students.
The frameworks’ attempt to bring order to chaos is a useful way of putting it. That’s the thing about learning: it can be very chaotic. Not because knowledge is disorganized, but rather because we often - usually - come at it in a disorganized fashion. We organize the presentation of this knowledge (in other words, we teach) to counteract the disorganized reception (in other words, our natural, less-than-systematic process for learning) by replacing this messiness with clarity and orderliness.
Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash
There are some who would like to see “messy learning” taken up more seriously by educators. The term is misleading, implying that it’s a way for instructors to get away with poor preparation (“okay, boys and girls, today we’re going to do a bunch of random things that I like to call messy learning . . . .”). Its advocates see it as a method to incorporate unpredictability into the learning process. The “real” world is unpredictable and messy, so shouldn’t learning reflect that?
I’m not convinced by that argument. The world is also violent and cutthroat, but I don’t think we need to bring violence or ruthless competition into our courses. What I like about messy learning is that it rattles the rigid design frameworks, though not with much success. Someone in the article by Melissa Hudler hyperlinked above refers to it as “strategic ambiguity,” which is more palatable to those who can’t envision a learning situation that isn’t controlled and ordered. Hudler likes the term precisely because it “reveals the need for professors to be strategic and organized in their planning and offering of effective learning experiences, while creating situations that require critical and creative thinking and problem-solving.”
Hudler’s backtracking on the term brings us right back to the frameworks and Bloom’s taxonomy and methodically structured learning. Creativity as part of a strategy isn’t really about ambiguity since it is channelling learning activities towards a goal, a clear and fixed purpose usually about achieving success at university and beyond. Should university teaching and learning be so goal-oriented? Most people would say yes - students should be given every chance to succeed. But learning loses something of its wonder and its special attractiveness if it is only about clear and fixed results.
Ambiguity doesn’t fit into this schema. It doesn’t provide clear answers, which in turn fosters curiosity, the root of an attitude towards learning that I would consider more genuine and more fulfilling. But because online teaching and learning rely so heavily on organization and structure to be effective, it becomes a feat of ingenuity to incorporate ambiguity into the learning process.
For Fall Term 2020 this blog will be exploring issues informing education during a pandemic. It is appearing as part of a graduate seminar on online teaching and learning. You can read more about the seminar or see the other posts.
Post 8/60.
