ADTED 531 Unit 7 - Reflections

Digital Diploma Mills

In David Noble's 1998 "Digital Diploma Mills" article, he says that we are "rushing headlong" into new technology with "little regard for deliberation of the pedagogical and economic costs, and at the risk of student and faculty alienation and opposition." He uses the bulk of his article to rail against commercialization of higher education as the primary reason why new technlogies are being adopted so haphazardly.

Overall, I completely disagree with his perspectives, and I believe that history that has elapsed in the 12 years since he wrote his article has since proven him wrong. However, there is still a major argument he makes that I'd like to respond to, which is still a salient issue today:

"In addition to the vendors, corporate training advocates view online
education as yet another way of bringing their problem-solving,
information-processing, "just-in-time" educated employees up to profit-making
speed. Beyond their ambitious in-house training programs, which have
incorporated computer-based instructional methods pioneered by the military,
they envision the transformation of the delivery of higher education as a
means of supplying their property-prepared personnel at public expense."

In my work as a corporate training project manager, on the much-harangued private side of industry, I see this point of view a lot amongst my government clients. They always feel that they can use new technologies to provide their own [employee] workforce education and training needs, because they theoretically have the "same" technology and access to it that we do. However, what I see is that most public employees simply don't have the time or the expertise in the new technologies to really learn them and implement them as legitimate training vehicles to educate public employees.

Under the Obama administration we're finally getting away from the traditional face-to-face training and starting to adopt virtual technologies, which has provided a huge cost savings to the government. We, as the dreaded private consultants, provide our government clients with the suggestions and expertise to know which technologies to use, when, and for what. Because we have expertise in both training AND technology [and if we don't we just hire someone who does], we can recommend new technologies that are right for our clients, not just what's popular or nifty. We can then easily provide implementation plans and help our clients adopt the new technologies, and provide hand-off strategies for them to eventually take them in-house. Our role is not to provide a crutch for the client, but to help them come into the 21st century in a way that works for them.

So, I'm not quite sure why that's a bad thing, and I can attest personally that when technology is left up to the feds, it stagnates. The role of the private sector is not to take over the public sector, but to act as a strategic partner and consultant to share the fruits of the innovations on the private side with our federal counterparts. This is the way that online distance education technology gets adopted in my world, but I'd like to hear about others' worlds, from different perspectives. Do you agree with David Noble?