2024 Election Themes

September 23, 2024 by Brian Hughes

Not all themes shaping the election are stated outright and obvious. For various reasons, we have to also read between the lines. Here’s my list of top underlying themes of this election:

Whataboutism and Civic Trust

All the lying.

The New Gilded Age

In America, the lower and middle classes have been heavily under siege for the past four decades. The financialization of everything is the Midas touch.

Unequal in Inequality

We are living in an era of vast and still-growing inequality. The dream of a robust middle class with healthcare, job security, and creature comforts is being ransacked on many sides by many social and economic forces. But inequality alone is not enough to cause a major social upheaval. Life is still comfortable-enough.

Poverty and Privatization

Philanthropy is helpful, but the United States did not build interstate highways through volunteers and donations, and we can’t build a national preschool program or a national drug recovery program with private money. We need the government to step up and jump-start nationwide programs in early childhood education, job retraining, drug treatment and more. See: Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn from Who Killed the Knapp Family?

Happy and Not Dead Yet

As humans, we are lucky to be happy. Such a broad term, yet we know what it means: contented in body and soul, at ease, even experiencing pleasure. If we are happy most of the time, we consider ourselves lucky. Life is good. But there is much to be unhappy about. We are surrounded by human and non-human suffering. Sometimes we are faced with it, and other times it is hidden from us. The news media often brings it to our attention. How does it change us? Can we still be happy when we are aware of problems that plague others? Can we be happy when we believe the future of the world to be imperiled?

A Pathology of Unexamined Cynicism

We talk a lot about White Nationalism and its political consequences. I think it’s interesting to think of a politico-philosophical mindset that goes hand-in-hand with such views, one that I would characterize as a pathological mindset – or, Unexamined Cynicism. This mindset leads to political action (or inaction) and other behaviors that often manifest as politically and socially problematic. Most importantly, it can lead to prejudice and the enactment of prejudice in the public sphere.

A Temperature Change (Take the Money Back!)

Over the next few hundred years, the world will warm up. According to Peter Brennan, author of The Ends of the World, while temperatures and sea waters will rise this century, it may take a millennia for truly catastrophic geological events to unfold. Hey, good news: that means we may have enough time and technical mastery to bring about the twin goals of economic equality and of geo-engineering!

Good luck, America. Vote Blue.

Academic Quietism

September 23, 2024 by Brian Hughes

I see and hear a lot both in and outside of academia about how much people contribute to the world of written materials. For example, witness this example of personal productivity:

[name withheld] is the author or co-author of more than 450 published articles, book chapters, papers, and op-eds about education policy and politics and is the author or editor of four books on educational policy. – A real academic website

Wow. That’s a lot of professional writing about educational policy. Maybe it is all top-shelf stuff, and if so, congratulations! But I personally find it hard to come anywhere near those numbers. Like, nowhere near them. Might it be better if we published less?

Cognitive Biases Infographic

May 3, 2024 by Brian Hughes

Love this simple break-down from Business Insider:

A.I. and Academic Honesty

November 21, 2023 by Brian Hughes

A.I. content on a computer screen. — Image: A.I. as the new HCI.

A.I. Machine Learning. Large Language Models (LLMs).

These technical terms are no longer news to many practitioners of higher education. Why? Because A.I. (“AI”) is already having a huge impact on the classroom and learning activities. In 2023, students gained free and easy access to AI-augmented tools like ChatGPT to fulfill writing assignments and related coursework.

There are already dozens of A.I.-driven writing applications. Soon there will be thousands. What does this mean for the future of learning?

AI is already transforming the classroom.

The use and misuse of AI tools is now part of the classroom conversation. There is no avoiding it. In some classes, using AI may play an important part of coursework, and in others it may be frowned upon or expressly forbidden. Unless there are campus-wide policies (which seem unlikely at the moment), each faculty member will determine what is best for a particular subject.

Of course, many learning applications are already using machine learning to create learning experiences for students: Personalized and adaptive learning systems offer different learning paths for students. Automated assessment and analytics support teacher feedback. And software always promises administrative efficiencies. But AI writing tools are having a much greater impact, and more immediately. Why? Because AI-influenced writing defies our old methods of assessment.

If a student turns in a well-organized and seemingly well-written assignment, we might assume they spent time on it. But no longer. If they used an AI writing tool, their assignment may be largely fabricated by AI. This is the basis of a skeptic’s stance towards allowing AI: How can I know what (or how) the student really thinks?

However, a faculty proponent of AI might respond: Using AI to think and write is the future. Students need to practice using it. For this faculty member, reading and reviewing AI-influenced writing is part of the job. A “traditionalist,” on the other hand, may see AI-influenced writing as obscuring the possibility of accurate assessment. How can the concerns of both these perspectives be assuaged? The answer seems to be knowing what exactly is being assessed, and in this way, using AI tools may not be too different from using and citing any research aid.

Academic honesty is key.

In this environment, faculty expectations for academic honesty will take on a heightened importance. In fact, I think we will get to the point (sooner rather than later!) where degrees are accompanied by something akin to an “‘honesty rank.” Like a credit score rates credit worthiness, an honesty rank will put a rating to a student’s knowledge worthiness.

Perhaps ironically, it will be AI-driven tools that help faculty assess students knowledge worthiness, and rank their honesty against their peers. As a feature of an academic credential, this will help academic communities and employers better understand an individual’s educational background, and their ability to use both their mind and the AI-driven tools available to them.

This is just one way I can imagine educators adapting to this new landscape of writing, researching, and answer-seeking. The conversation on campus is really just beginning, and it is an exciting and interesting time for charting the future of learning. ChatGPT offers us the follow reminder:

While these potential transformations are promising, it’s essential to approach the integration of AI in higher education with careful consideration of ethical, privacy, and security implications to ensure the responsible and effective use of these technologies.
– ChatGPT 3.5

(Now, that’s not wrong, but is it really apropos?)

Collaborative Transmedia Lectures

July 18, 2023 by Brian Hughes

Session description:

The lecture is dead; long live the lecture! Today, instructors face a daunting task of teaching across face-to-face, online, and hyflex modalities where the traditional lecture is often deprecated as an outmoded method of instruction. But expert narratives can and should be reimagined in and across new media and new learning spaces. What I call a “collaborative transmedia lecture” is a framework for evolving lectures with new technologies. With an eye on video production and diverse learning platforms, this session highlights new opportunities for engagement and learning.

SXSW EDU is organized around similar themes as SXSW: innovation, multimedia, and networking. In short, it’s “a celebration of innovation and learning.” I’ve attended virtually for two years, and find it to be an exciting mix of viewpoints and formats. This year, I’ve submitted a proposal for the first time. I chose the format of a 30-minute solo presentation for my talk.

Some ideas I will define and discuss in my session:

Post-pandemic hyflex teaching
The instructor as copyleft DJ
Student-led content curation
TikTok edits and glam-casting
Transmedia storytelling

To me, these are all key aspects of the future of higher education. Why? Let’s briefly look at each idea:

Post-pandemic hyflex teaching

At Pace University, I help faculty create engaging multimedia (primarily video) for courses. Student preferences continue to evolve, and the pandemic has left us with the remnants of hyflex: the desire to access course experiences (lectures and in-class activities) on demand. This isn’t always possible, but faculty need to find ways to make their course content as accessible as possible without the downside of the recorded-with-the-webcam-during-class aesthetic.

The instructor as copyleft DJ

A simple way to enhance any slideshow or recorded lecture is with images. Used in the right way at the right time, images help students engage with and remember content. Searching for images (or generating them with AI) is a good strategy for illustrating lectures, and copyleft (and public domain) content provide a trove of possibilities. To me, this feels a bit like the work of a DJ curating a great multimedia experience.

Student-led content curation

Faculty don’t have to do all the work–and shouldn’t. Students should participate in activities that require research, like investigating the history of a topic. An instructor can incorporate student research, discussion, and share-outs into lectures. This content can be brought into the course platform during or after a class session. With a creative and playful mindset, students (and faculty) can also share course-related content on social platforms beyond university-sanctioned tools.

TikTok edits and glam-casting

Translating a lecture into a video format is hard. While it’s easier than ever to capture video, it still requires a lot of attention and time, starting with a great script. I believe many faculty members avoid video because it is much less forgiving than delivering a lecture in person–even poorly. Students see great videos every day, and have high standards. For example, YouTube creators deliver content with passion in well-lit, well-designed studio environments (even when it’s their bedroom). Students themselves continuously create media on platforms like TikTok and Snapchat, and are familiar with using dramatic camera angles, hip soundtracks, and flashy motion graphics. While these aesthetics might not be right for lectures (or are simply too time-intensive to sustain at length), faculty can borrow elements from these other mediums.

Transmedia storytelling

Putting all of the previous elements together sets the stage for a transmedia experience. The term “transmedia storytelling” denotes using multiple digital platforms to tell a story–where social media and multimedia converge to reveal a larger picture. The big idea here is to break lectures up into several segments that traverse in-person and digital media, while creating a more interesting, content-rich, active learning experience for students.

This fall I’ll be teaching Introduction to Podcasting in the Communications and Media Studies program. As a production-focused course with an emphasis on student-centered learning (i.e., “experiential education”), it’s a great excuse for me to use instructor-created video in creative ways.

With some luck–and your support via PanelPicker voting from August 8 – 20–I’ll have a platform to share this work with the SXSW community in 2024.

Learning and Storytelling

January 18, 2023 by Brian Hughes

This week, I presented on the opportunities and challenges of storytelling at the 4th Annual Pace Online Conference. My talk, titled, “Creating Engaging Stories with Video,” was meant to inspire new possibilities for telling stories in our instructional videos at Pace University.

The main theme I explored was how stories that are even only indirectly connected to the subject matter have the potential to help students better connect with multimedia content. As David JP Phillips shares, stories can make your brain more receptive to learning. These could be personal stories or stories from your field that connect to the subject matter or lesson.

Image: David JP Phillips presents on storytelling at a TedX event.

But telling stories also requires students to spend more time with our media, and that can be a challenge. I shared the story of Quibi to reinforce how even 10-minutes videos fall awkwardly between short videos (that require less commitment) and long videos that rival media choices with higher production values and well-crafted stories (well, some of the time).

Image: My depiction of the “Battle for Eyeballs.”

A Call to Action

What’s the best way forward? It’s up to each faculty member to wrestle with this issue, but I challenged everyone to try to bring a story into lectures that are longer than 10 minutes.

After sharing a personal example, I asked everyone to reflect on a time or experience in their life that led them on their academic journey. I thought it would be helpful to experience this work of identifying possible stories, even though it can be frustrating sifting through memories and making connections to subject matter! And further complicating the path ahead, a professor will need a handful of ready-to-use stories to call upon over the course of a semester.

Image: I shared my experience as an early-career media maker working with comedian Josh Kornbluth on an instructional video.

For the final part of my presentation, I reviewed the resources and services of the Online Learning Center, and invited faculty to seek our help in bringing stories into their videos.

What do you think? When and how can educators use stories to create the conditions for learning?

University-made Multimodal Curriculum?

September 1, 2022 by Brian Hughes

How can schools, colleges, and universities offer sophisticated, up-to-date, and effective curriculum across diverse disciplines without relying on Publishers? While this is sometimes an informal faculty role (e.g., creating presentations, sharing original research), it is rarely a formal one. Could it be an administrative or library responsibility? Or is it just too hard to pivot away from Publishers?

Image credit: LearnUpon Blog. Read it for a quick review on “multimodal” learning!

My current role at Pace University has me thinking about multimodal curriculum on a daily basis. Using Open Education Resources (“OER”) is one response, but it is problematic (or, at least incomplete) in several ways. For one, if institutions rely heavily on open content, how do they distinguish themselves in the marketplace? (Maybe they don’t, but that’s another discussion.) And another issue: what kind of systems are in place to keep underlying resources up to date and accurate? And how are they jig-sawed together into a coherent whole? A university’s response must either be ad hoc, or rely on intermediary companies that prepare and deliver these open resources.

But the obvious alternative to using open educational resources as curriculum is for colleges and universities to produce their own. Assuming faculty have the appropriate expertise, the primary hurdle is the sheer time involved in producing and maintaining content. I think multimedia – and multimodal curriculum – will be the game changer here. I will be writing about new approaches to the development, production, and maintenance of multimodal content in the future.

The Merit of (Academic) Tyranny

June 16, 2022 by Brian Hughes

Meritocracy is a popular nonfiction topic these days, with Sandel’s book published on the heels of Markovits’ 2019’s “The Meritocracy Trap“. Indeed the backlash against so-called elitism gives us a lot to think about.

Reflecting on meritocracy in general (and technocracy in particular), I am reminded of Churchill’s remark that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”

Sandel outlines some really damning outcomes of the rise of meritocracy and the “rhetoric of rising” in the U.S. For me, foremost on the list is the rising fiscal inequality that benefits from our broad acceptance of meritocracy, and acquiescence to all its forms (e.g., across diverse domains). High academic achievement, he argues, has become a basis of meritocratic hubris. Having rooted itself in our schools and universities, this by-product of education has been cashed out as an all-encompassing ticket to wealth accumulation.

The singularly-American obsession with self-made wealth has fused with academic achievement. This has led to a broad deterioration of our mid-20th century, quasi-egalitarian social fabric – the weakening of our ability to communally value goods that exist apart from academic achievement. But what, we might ask, are those?

Academic achievement has become expansive in an interesting (if confounding) way. Reading, writing, and arithmetic have been foundational to public education for about 150 years. And one might add religion. But the study and practice of the visual arts, music, and athletics have all come under the umbrella of formal education as well, to say nothing of the social sciences and related humanities sub-disciplines. Colleges and universities have become all-encompassing amalgams of evaluation and accreditation. Almost anything humans celebrate as worth doing has been incorporated into the curriculum.

And so, education has become a proxy and a symbol for doing anything seriously. The obvious cause of this is that we are taking our activities seriously: discussing, researching, evaluating, and sharing our actions and beliefs in every domain we can. On the face of it, this seems like a wonderful trend. But Sandel and others have revealed the folly of this path: negative feedback loops. A resentful underclass. A self-assured-yet-neurotic elite. And growing inequality.

What kind of correctives can allow us to keep the benefits of comprehensive education but mitigate the negative outcomes?

As Sandel notes, the so-called liberal elite have promoted the solution of more education for half a century. Higher education for all. Lifelong training (and retraining). Career pathways. But he suggests this path has deepened political divisions by doubling-down on education without improving social and economic outcomes for most. The political and economic problems of the present therefore point us to wealth redistribution as a solution. Notably, the solution of taxing the rich and creating educational opportunities for the poor fits this model perfectly.

If increasing educational opportunities for all is a minimal approach, then the fantasy of a social state is the strong one. But the solution of taxing the rich so as to entirely remove economic inequality clearly collides with our collective “dream” of self-reliance, to say nothing of our collective fantasies about capitalism. This tension arguably forms one of the deepest divisions between “conservative” and “liberal” approaches to governance.

What else can be done? What about the possibilities for reengineering education itself?

There are many visions of education that do not reify the value of grades and ranked outcomes – those special distillations of education that are bound up in capitalist fantasies of competition and financial success. Can we build a new foundation of collaborative action? Can we be guided by vision of collective success and shared outcomes?

To do so would be to embark on a mission to simultaneously recreate constraints for capitalism that betray our shared values that led us to educational excellence in the first place: curiosity, discovery, and knowledge. To do so would be to exit the casino and join cooperative projects. This is happening all around us, of course – the future that’s here, but unequally distributed. If it’s happening both with and without education, how can we shine a stronger light on it? Can we trace it as a solution to our meritocratic ills?

To take this path is a leap of faith. Choosing collective outcomes over individual ones. This chafes with our current capitalist optimism. It presents us with an even greater reckoning:

Can we live under the tyranny of shared endeavors, but still experience freedom as the well-educated wealthy elite now ostensibly enjoy? How long will it take us to reimagine so-called freedom as such?

The first soldiers to end a war

March 4, 2022 by Brian Hughes

They Russian army was sent to the Ukraine boarder on false pretenses of military drills. The soldiers are young. Then they were sent into battle their close neighbors by a man who sits at long tables.

What if Russia’s war on Ukraine was ended by Russian soldiers?

Are Russians sufficiently networked by technology and social media for the soldiers on the front lines to hear the anti-war sentiment of the Russian people? Would they dare turn against Putin and propel Russia’s government in a new direction?

It’s something to hope for in an otherwise bleak moment.