Experiments in Hybridity: F2F and Mobile Learning

This fall I'm piloting at the University of Southern California a class that explores the unique properties of face-to-face [f2f] and online [OL] learning environments.  35% of the term I'll meet with students f2f in Los Angeles; 65% of the term we'll meet OL, synchronously during regularly scheduled classes (Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:30-10:50) and asynchronously on various social media platforms.

I should add that the f2f sessions extend beyond regular classroom meetings.  Students will also go on evening field trips once a month: to the LA Co. Museum of Art, to play with QR-linked locative narrative in LA Flood, to view street art through the VR app Layar.  The Annenberg School of Communications, which is generously sponsoring this pilot, will send along a videographer on our excursions to capture [some of the] learning dynamic as we wander peripetatically through the city.  This idea was born for me from Baudelaire and the notion of the digital flaneur.  Students will drop digital files in the city in real time as we also collect assets we'll build into other digital artifacts for course assignments and collaboration.

Stay tuned to hear about the sister class I'll teach next fall at Washington State University/Vancouver at the Creative Media and Digital Culture program, an advanced social media class that will meet 65% f2f and 35% OL while I'm in L.A.

These experiments in classroom hybridity--f2f, OL, the combination--emanate from my sense that the physical contexts for learning create unique avenues into learning that previously were invisible: f2f was simply the de facto mode of learning "delivery."  Now that learning can be more expressly collaborative and mobile, it behooves us to determine their unique affordances so that, among other things, we can thickly describe the c21 mobile classroom to stakeholders (higher ed administrators, students, parents, government officials, business leaders) who influence the shape and funding of classrooms.

As I said recently in a talk at USC's Teaching With Technology Conference, if universities mimic the RIAA and lock down mobile and digital access to learning, they will suffer the similar fate of becoming irrelevant. Joi Ito, co-founder of Creative Commons and entrepreneur, was recently appointed Director of MIT's Media Lab.  Ito sits atop this prestigious lab even though he lacks a B.A., let alone the Ph.D. that is ordinarily a prerequisite for such a position. 

If increasingly the question is not "where did you get your degree" but "what can you do," then residential universities must integrate digital media into their learning environments or risk becoming antiquated--like cds or "Must-See TV" that required viewers to park in front of their sets at designated times.  But that doesn't mean throwing the baby out with the bath water.  F2F remains a crucial modality.  It's up to us to figure out exactly how and why.

MLA11: Hangin' Out & Movie at the End

At the end of this post, I've added a movie I made here in PDX upon my return from MLA. I rode my bike, thought about DH and what it means at this cultural moment in our universities, sat on a rock in the rain and talked into a camera. Voila! Scroll down if u don't want to be bothered by WORDS.

MLA 11 exceeded my expectations in every way.

Moving chronologically through the happy surprises:

1. Blazing fast, ubiquitous wifi. The first thing I did upon arrival at at the JW Marriott at the L.A. Convention Center was to grab Tweetdeck. The columns allow one to watch hashtag streams (#mla11, plus tags for particular sessions), responses, those one follows, and direct messages. It's a very functional interface. Yummy. And I was never disappointed by the Marriott wifi. Never got booted, was never slow. Which goes to show how few of the 8K MLA attendees were sucking broadband: at Brad's dig conferences, they truck in extra bandwidth and even then, it's a struggle to match demand. But as you'll see, broadband demand may go way up at MLA12 in Seattle. This conf was just too exciting to be missing the digital "backchannel" (not sure it was a "backchannel." Think it pretty much *was* the channel.)

2. Had my first f2f encounter w someone I follow on Twitter. Off to my first panel, I opened up the laptop and started Tweeting. Noticed that Brian Croxall, oh he of Profhacker fame (& Emerging Media Librarian at Emory), was also tweeting. I discreetly examined the room from my mid-room row. Nobody looked quite like that tiny icon I was accustomed to. Then: @kathiiberens The wallpaper in this room is like being trapped inside a Louis Vuitton bag. I laughed. He saw me laugh and located me. @kathiiberens I'm sitting right next to you.  I glanced to my right and scanned the room. Nothing. Turned my head to my left and--gasp!--inches away--waved Brian Croxall. F2F? More like elbow2elbow.

3. New Tools Panel; or, The Ghost of MLAs Past It was waaaay too early in my MLA11 experience to gauge how contestatory were the remarks of Marc Bousquet. He was describing an MLA org I recognized all too well: complacent, in denial about market realities, etc., etc. MLA11 Executive Director Rosemary Feal tweeted: "Marc Bousquet looking back, rehashing old history, while the ppl in the room seem to want to look forward"; and "So imp't to stay focused on what we can DO, how we can progress, n not to live in resentment. Bousquet's talk inspires me." Like I said, it was too early in the conf for me to believe her. I didn't even listen to all of Marc's talk (rude, eh?) b/c I felt like I'd heard it, and lived it, all before. Others in the room who hadn't lived through it were alive to the generational differences playing out agonistically on the Tweetstream: "the river runs deep," said Natalie Houston of the old resentments that weren't hers, but were on full display. Remarkably, #newtools didn't get mired in this morass. Urged along by Marilee Lindemann's show-stopping use of humor and political indignation, a strong case was made for unity and action in a time when the humanities are under forthright attack by universities that expect more work (digital plus traditional) for equivalent or less pay. Chris Newfield, whom Lindemann extolled as a hero of political action and careful thought, was the moral center of this panel.

4. Talking w/ the Tweeps I Follow Parked in the back of #newtools on "iPad Alley" sat a few of the (mostly) guys who had taught me a lot about DH before I came to MLA: Dave Parry, John Jones, Matt Gold, Ryan Cordell & Erin Templeton. Met up with all of them. Didn't have to fumble for conversation, b/c I knew what the heck was going on. Inquired after Fun Run meetup space. Chatted abt the panel. And we were off. To Cork Bar, as it turns out:

Here I met Katherine Harris (who loved that wine so much she's hunted it down for a DP this weekend), Stephen Ramsay, George_Online (argh! forgot his last name but can tell u how John Wesley and Methodism figure into his dissertation), Matt Kirschenbaum, Jason B. Jones, and Mark Sample--who on his fantastic blog SampleReality published all the DH panels, thus enticing an outsider like me to haul myself onto a plane. 41 panels, I think it was? It became the de facto guide to the conference for many of us. I kept the paper program for access to the maps.

This was the first afternoon and evening. At Cork, I split a bottle of wine with Dene Grigar, the electronic lit artist, mythologist, and MM program director extraordinaire. We exhorted John Jones and his wife Amy to have a little charcuterie and cheese as Amy told us about teaching music to kids, and preparing to do a doctoral program in astrophysics. Someone showed up, and I wondered if she felt a little bit like a celebrity when I looked her in the eye and said, "You're Amanda French." She was dazed, having conferenced all day with little break for food (an exhilaration I was to experience each subsequent day for the rest of the MLA: too much to see and hear to bother much with eating.) After we'd all hung out in the delicious air, the rectangular fire pit doing its job of making us feel cozied around a hearth, but outside, towered over by the deco downtown LA buildings and wrapped up in the wail of sirens and cars whooshing by, I walked back toward the Marriott alone, chatting with my husband on my Bluetooth. Mark Sample and Matt Gold were ambling the same way, so I signed off and we walked together. Matt lives in NYC. Mark and I took turns telling stories about teaching our kids to walk city blocks without getting run over. (Key: don't stop at the kerb, b/c it's too close to speeding cars. Stop at the edge where the buildings end.)

There's so much more to tell, of course; that's the nature of the new MLA. Pleasure! Who'da thunk it? When I'd told my grad school pals on FB that I was going to MLA for fun, they crinkled their noses as if someone had wafted stinky cheese: "Whhhhyyy? Too much stress!"

Maybe so, maybe so: hard for me to tell, b/c the only job seekers I hung out with were DHers, who generally all had multiple interviews. Nerve wracking always, to interview at MLA; but so much worse if you have only 1 or 2.

I'll end with some reflections about what it all means. Nothing like a bike ride in the rain to extract that from you. Check out the biblio at the end of the vid: blog posts and some panel talks that caught my eyes and ears. Can you name the bands at the head and tail of the vid b4 the music cred rolls?

"Premiering in L.A.": the "New" MLA 2011 Jan. 6-9

I walked the red carpet once in L.A., when the movie Practical Magic premiered, in 1998.  I don't remember why I was brought there.

[Img: Steves2cents.blogspot.com]

I was writing my dissertation 6 days a week, scuttling from my office only for yoga and the occasional swim.  I remember thinking I might see Stockard Channing, or Nicole Kidman, or Sandra Bullock.  But they didn't show.  The premier was in Century City, a red carpet unfurled over what looked like a law office courtyard.  Freestanding Kleig lights blazed.  Jennifer Beals, who did not appear in the movie, walked the carpet.  Paparazzi shouted her name. Autograph hunters/vendors huddled behind a velvet rope and awaited her scrawl.  I walked the carpet, to no one's notice whatsoever.  Then I took my seat in the dark alongside everybody else and watched a forgettable movie.

In L.A., not every premier is a grand event.

MLA 2011, this year's annual convention for professors and advanced graduate students in English, comparative literature, romance languages and ancillary fields, is new in one respect: a date change places it well after the Christmas holidays.

But transparency would really make this MLA "new," and transparency and openness are glaringly absent.  The MLA has always walled its convention against outsiders.  This year's non-member registration fee is $220.  Just to search the titles of the 800 convention panels, one must be a paid-up member or guest, which means that intellectually curious non-initiates are shut out of even learning about the event, let alone participating in it.  [Exception: anybody on Twitter can follow the tweetstream at #mla11.]

Like a castle under siege, the MLA looks even more cloistered now than it did before new media radically increased our expectation of access to information. 

How out of step is the MLA?  Check out this Dec. 17 tweet from the well-meaning Rosemary Feal, MLA's Executive Director, who manages the tweetstream:

Are you blogging about what you'll be speaking about at #mla11?  Put link here for all to see:  http://www.mla.org/conv_listings_mysessions

I clicked delightedly. Finally, to be able to see what people are talking about.  But the link redirects to a membership log-in page.  As does the page that invites one to "Exchange Collaborative Session Ideas."  MLA's notion of "all" is just a tiny fragment of people in the field--registered participants--let alone the broad world.

The happy oasis in this desert of information is Mark Sample's reprint of MLA's digital humanities panels on his blog, SampleReality.  Reading those titles, I thought: something cool may well go down in L.A.  I am less sanguine about the other 650 MLA panels, which eluded my open search.  I got a full list when I accessed the November issue of PMLA via my university's firewalled databases.  

I've been toying with the idea of attending MLA for the first time in more than a decade specifically to hear what's going on in digital humanities. I'll follow the Tweetstream whether or not I attend, but of course I'd rather have the full experience--particularly as someone studying how information is conveyed and absorbed in face-to-face settings.  Having just returned from LeWeb in Paris, and seeing firsthand the feedback loop created by f2f & Twitter right up on the mainstage, I know how quickly the social media/f2f combo platter can advance and spread the conversation.

As compared to previous MLAs, which I attended in the mid-90s with my husband before I was ABD, the emotional stakes this January would be low.  I don't have to worry, for example, whether one tweet might kill my interview prospects--as actually happened at last year's MLA.  See the 34 comments following the roguish "MLA 09 Survival Tips" at SampleReality (co-published at the Chronicle of Higher Education's ProfHacker column; scroll down to see specific discussion of the fatal tweet.)

The self-consciousness of job candidates (and those who evaluate them) is both excruciating and merited.  You hear horror stories, or just plain silly-slash-tragic ones:  the candidate who learned through the grapevine that offering a Kleenex to a sneezing interviewer was perceived as "too forward":  the Kleenex drew unwelcome attention to the interviewer's body.  Another strategized a jaunty way to toss her winter coat on the bed as she walked into the interview.  (After a fruitless two-year search, she left the academy, turned her dissertation into a commercial biography, and won a Pulitzer.)

During my sabbatical year, on leave from teaching advanced composition at the University of Southern California, I've been developing more new media skills and connecting with literary & media critics who attend to the vast landscape of user-generated, DIY content.  My progress seems slow, but it's steady enough.  I can't conceive of a more exciting time to be making stories, analyzing them, and teaching/collaborating with students.  

How ironic that at this moment of unprecedented access to tools and the explosion of genres, the MLA convention is operating largely the way it did when Wimsatt and Beardsley (below) promulgated the "new" criticism in 1946.

[Img: chainsawzombie.blogspot.com]

Is it any wonder that the English professoriate frets over its diminished cultural influence, and runs MLA panels about the "crisis" in its profession?  Explicitly, untenured faculty and graduate students are warned to filter all digital traces of their personae, combing them through and through and through for any little nit that an influential someone, somewhere might find objectionable.   This extreme caution is at odds with the way most of us behave on social media platforms.  Social media has vastly extended my intellectual reach, and is facilitated by the immediate, open, casual tone of exchange.  

At a premier, Hollywood can make any product look good.  But it's actually word of mouth--crowdsourcing--that determines whether a movie makes money or fails.

Will there be WoM about this "new" MLA?

How could there be, with all the goodies locked away from anybody hungry for a taste?  

MLA already has its answer about how vitalize the field, but it doesn't want to know.  This "new" "premier" isn't a fresh beginning, but a sequel.  MLA's survival depends on openness and transparency.  Other disciplines--communications, emerging media, composition, digital literacy, various interdisciplinary hybrids--are spreading themselves across the digital marquee.

At least there are many people in the field trained to recognize an elegy.