A key discussion this week centres on the nature of knowledge: what is it? How is it created? How is it validated?

Content-centric education

A content-centric view of learning suggests that learning is a by-product of interacting with, or mastering, some type of content. For example, a student enrolled in a course on learning theories is generally expected to read the prescribed text, journal articles, and more recently, listen to podcasts or view videos on YouTube. Evaluation is then often based on how well a student understands the content. Through papers, group work, or exams, students display the quality of their learning against the concepts presented by texts, readings, podcasts, and videos.

But is this really learning? Common definitions of learning go something like this: learning is a long-term change in behaviour, thought, or attitudes. How long does this apparent change last in many instances? I’ll use my experiences as a learner in a masters program, with the assumption that it is in some way reflective of what others have experienced. I didn’t immediately recognize the value of many of the courses: learning theory, leadership, organizational learning, research methods, and so on. I did well on my papers, but the transformation impact was quite limited. The only courses in which I have substantial recall are those that reflected my interests at the time. Entire swaths of other courses suffer from scorched memory syndrome.

Was there any value in those courses where my memory is weak? I’m not sure. In some cases, the value of learning was not the content, but rather indirect lessons such as “when I teach, I vow not to do what professor X did. What a jerk”. Overall, I found the greatest value in the experience of interacting with other learners – throwing out ideas, receiving thoughtful critiques, and revising my views. Even then, I often don’t remember the content of the exchange. What did I learn then? I learned that ideas are shared, not solitary things. Ideas arise through discourse, not through individual thinking alone. I learned meta-principles such as the importance of thinking clearly, of considering the views of others, of valuing diversity of thought, of the need for reflection, and so on. Instead of learning content, I learned the process of learning and the value of being a learner.

Contributing and Participating

Our discussion of knowledge this week is a crash course in a similar process. Contributing to Wikipedia is a statement about knowledge. Is knowledge a hallowed thing? Is knowledge the sole creation of experts? Can a network of people – who may individually have a spotty grasp of the subject – create something of value? A few comments in the discussion forum this week reflect a reluctance to edit the lifelong learning entry in Wikipedia. At root, I believe, is a view that knowledge is created by “them” – experts. When we edit Wikipedia, we are not tearing down the pillars of expertise. Instead, we are suggesting that expertise and nuanced understanding of knowledge is distributed across a network of people. Each with a part, none with the whole.

What’s the impact?

Wikipedia, as detailed in earlier course readings, is not perfect. It’s far from perfect. But it’s an imperfection that is explicitly declared on many pages with small banners offering some variation of “this article is not supported with citations” or “the authority of this article is disputed”, etc. These self-deprecating expressions suggest to readers that all information is suspect to some degree. Books, encyclopedias, and journal articles rarely provide such humble expressions of self-worth. Their calling to readers is one of urging memorization and acquisition, not of engagement and creation. Ok, that statement might be a bit harsh. When placed in the hands of able educators, the great knowledge artifacts of history (books, articles, concepts) are an invitation to engagement…but when placed into a systematized education model – such as predominately exist western countries, they become objects to be acquired and then used as a premise for testing and evaluation.

A second weakness exists in content-centric views of learning. The growth of information is tremendous. Most people are aware of this through personal experiences with email, blogs, online news sources, YouTube, and Facebook. The growth if information is not confined to personal communication. Kevin Boyack has been working in the field of scientometrics, tracking the rapid growth of scientific articles and publications. Fields exhibit information growth at different levels. Technology-based fields experience more rapid growth than fields such as culinary arts. In general, however, it’s safe to assert that information growth is continually rendering parts of our knowledge obsolete. So that course in emerging technologies that you took in late 2008 will be partly obsolete by 2009. The content that you mastered has a shelf-life. The obsolescence of information (what we connect to form/grow knowledge) has been termed as “the half-life of knowledge”. This refers to the amount of time before half the knowledge in a field becomes obsolete. When information changes rapidly, what we know is less important than our capacity for ongoing learning.

Looking at the above paragraph, I should perhaps clarify how I use terms like information and knowledge. Information is stuff that hasn’t been meaningfully connected. For example, the annual statistics about crime rates in a certain community is information. The percentage of Canadian households with broadband access is information. Knowledge is personally apprehended or connected information. I have knowledge about crimes statistics when I have connected information in a certain way (or pattern). For example, if the community being considered has a high rate of poverty and drug abuse, driven by factors such as low unemployment, I have connected numerous information elements to form knowledge about crime statistics.

Back to the focus of this post. Shifting from a content-centric view of learning to an interaction and networked view of learning has significant implications for teaching and learning. First, it suggests that content has value to the degree that it fosters interaction, reflection, and conversation. In itself, a book is not a thing to be memorized but an artefact to facilitate questioning and discussion. Learning is not found in absorbing content, but in creating it.

To those who are reluctant to tackle a Wikipedia edit, I encourage you to lay aside the view of content consumption of learning, and make the attempt (even if it’s only adding a citation to the lifelong learning entry, or smoothing out choppy sentences). When information is fluid, others will come by and correct, extend, and enlarge on our work. The value, after all, is not in the content found in the entry, but the process by which it was written and will continue to be updated.