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Among the themes that we continually return to is the idea that the profession of digital learning is evolving into an interdisciplinary academic field. We have bestowed (without any pomp, circumstance or duly granted authority to do so) the name of learning innovation on this emerging discipline, as we think that learning provides a more powerful perspective in which to understand higher education change than one that focuses on technology alone.
Having generated a set of ideas about the interplay between advances in student learning and changes in the organizational structures and actions of universities, we are hugely curious about how these ideas will play out.
The hypothesis that animates our scholarship is that higher education is in the midst of a largely unnoticed and underappreciated renaissance in student learning.
We think that future historians of postsecondary education will look back on the second decade of the 21st century as an inflection point in learning. A time when a number of trends coalesced, from the diffusion of learning science research and the unhinged excitement of MOOCs, along with the rapid growth of (traditional) online and blended learning and the maturation of enabling educational technologies, to create a postsecondary turn to learning.
Having made this hypothesis and called for a new interdisciplinary field to study institution-led learning innovation, we wonder about what will come next.
Any academic discipline, even one as nascent and fragile as learning innovation, consists mostly of a conversation. This is a conversation that occurs both across people and across time.
The work of knowledge creation is always done in relation to -- and within the context of -- prior scholarship. A new discipline of learning innovation would necessarily build on the research and ideas of a myriad of existing disciplines, from educational technology to organizational change to the scholarship of teaching and learning.
What seems new to us is that the conversation on institution-led learning innovation seems to be occurring in places and in ways that are different from the conversations within other disciplines.
The best-known thinkers in the learning innovation space seem to be doing most of their thinking on social media. At least, that’s where they seem to engage most readily in this conversation. Where historically the ideas of an academic discipline were shared and debated in journal articles and conference presentations and book chapters and monographs, today those ideas are circulated through tweets and blog posts.
We wonder if it is possible to both be a scholar of learning innovation and to forgo establishing a presence on social media? For this new interdisciplinary academic field of learning innovation that we are trying to will into existence, does making a contribution to this conversation also require a commitment to engage on social media?
Before we attempt any sort of answer to those questions, we should first make sure that we are on the same page with definitions. We define social media contributions as any writing that has the following four attributes. These include:
- Not peer reviewed
- Not editorially reviewed
- Not indexed
- Not behind a paywall
Posts on Twitter fit most closely fit this definition. And Twitter seems to be the locus of much of today’s conversation about institution-led learning innovation.
Blog posts, such as this one, also mostly fall under our social media definition. While this post is reviewed and approved by the editors of Inside Higher Ed, the actual topic of the piece was not commissioned. There is no editorial back-and-forth that would be customary in even a magazine (or website) article aimed at a nonacademic audience.
Tweets and blog posts are also seldom (if ever) indexed on the academic databases that scholars and teachers rely upon for research and teaching. Tweets have a shelf life that is nominally measured in hours (and often a depth measured in millimeters). Blog posts may be discoverable on Google search, but their usefulness for scholarship or teaching is limited given their absence of peer or editorial review.
We seem to have found ourselves in a place where the most visible, and perhaps influential, conversations on learning innovation are occurring on the least durable and validated of mediums.
Tweets and blog posts on learning innovation are timely, concise and free. They are also shallow, disconnected from prior research and largely divorced from supporting evidence.
Choosing not to participate in social media, however, doesn’t feel like much of a choice.
If one wants to have a conversation about institution-led learning innovation, then one has to go where that conversation is occurring.
To not participate in tweeting and blogging would be to shut oneself off from both the learning innovation community, as well as the debates that animate this liminal grouping of academic practitioner-scholars.
Questions about the relationship between one's investment in social media participation, and one’s profile and impact within an academic field, are not confined to the nascent discipline of learning innovation. Although our own knowledge of this phenomenon is limited, we would guess that other academic communities of practice are also grappling with the metastasis of social media.
The field of learning innovation, however, should such a field find a way to take root, is different from other academic disciplines. Learning innovation was born digital. It is being created not (or not solely) by tenure-track professors, but often by nontenured academics working in campus learning organizations.
There are no Ph.D. programs in learning innovation (yet), no departments of learning innovation (although there are centers) and no professors of learning innovation. As far as we know, there is no journal of learning innovation. There are some conferences -- such as the HAIL Storm gatherings -- but these are a complex amalgamation of academics and industry.
What learning innovation does have are tweets and blog posts. Articles, journal articles, book chapters and monographs on learning innovation may come. But for the foreseeable future, the action of those who practice and think about institution-led learning innovation is centered on social media.
But maybe your experience is different. Who is having an impact in the conversation around learning innovation outside social media? Where is this happening?
Is it possible, or maybe even desirable, for tomorrow’s scholars of learning innovation to stay off Twitter and avoid writing blog posts?
When it comes to establishing a new discipline of learning innovation, is social media cannibalizing other forms of knowledge creation and sharing that are peer and/or editorially reviewed?
Or is social media a catalyst and a complement for scholarship that is validated and checked, with a slower gestation period and perhaps a longer shelf life?
What do you make of the irony that we are questioning the value of the social media conversation on learning innovation on social media?
How do you engage with ideas around institution-led learning innovation? How would you like to?
