web 2.0 and academic service

There's been a fair amount of discussion about web 2.0 in the classroom, in online courses, and even as a mechanism for research, but not much discussion of the role these technologies might play in transforming academics' service obligations. In a way this is not surprising. I imagine most academics would agree that "service" is the most odious aspect of their jobs. Admittedly some committees, task forces, and the like can be interesting, but much of it is the institutional equivalent of household chores. Actually equating some service with chores is probably too generous. Many committees are just unchecked bureaucracy and opportunities for officiousness and pedantry (two of less attractive but all too common characteristics of the academy). My theory is that they are a product of the prototypical, narrow academic mind, which seeks to control every aspect of life by organizing it into some categorical hierarchy.

But I digress.

I've been thinking the value web 2.0 applications might have in reducing bureaucracy. Let me one example that really gets on my nerves: curriculum development. Now I would characterize my college as small to mid-size with a couple hundred tenured/tenure-track faculty and around 7000 students. There are around 70 majors and 35 graduate programs. The English department has three of each. So what does it take, you might ask, to change the pre-requisite on a course or even propose a new course?

First you produce a syllabus for the new course or reflecting the change you want to make. Then you fill out a form. There's one form for new courses and another for changes to existing courses.

Your proposal must be reviewed and approved by

• a department-level curriculum committee
• the department chair
• the school of arts and sciences curriculum committee (or other school depending on where your department is located)
• the dean of your school
• the college-wide curriculum committee
• the provost

If your course is a graduate course there is a graduate curriculumn committee. If you want your course to satisfy a general education requirement, there's another committee (and it has to go to SUNY-Central in Albany as well since the gen. ed. requirements are system-wide). If you want your course to be writing-intensive, there's a committee for that. And so on and so on.

And there are so, so many potential pitfalls and glitches in this chain of events. Often, proposals will get hung up because paperwork gets misplaced, or they will get stalled or kicked out because of typographical errors or because they are missing minor bureacratic details. Sometimes committee members may attempt to raise substantive questions, though naturally they are not based on any understanding of the disciplinary context from which the proposal is being made because the committee members don't come from my department and know very little about my program or discipline. Sometimes they may raise simple stylistic choices such as insisting a course be titled "Writing Poetry" instead of "Poetry Writing." Even more annoying, because the committees switch members every year, their idiosyncracies are in continual flux. A committee may require one change one year and then demand that it be changed back the next (why is the same course before the committee two years in a row you ask? Because it's taking that long to get through the process of course.)

Anyway, I think you get the idea. So what's my point?

Take some like 37Signals' Basecamp and try to imagine how it might streamline this process. Curriculum could be an ongoing project, along with other standing committees. Instead of having a hierarchy of committees, there could be a more dynamic mode of communication. Often, curriculum committees meet without the proposers being present. For some unfathomable reason, they seem to prefer this. Here there can be asynchronous discussion. Curriculum reviewers can discuss suggestions with the proposer; changes can be made on the fly. In the end, what is finally, actually approved is what appears in the catalog (i.e. the course title and description). So that portion can be reviewed by a technical editor who can make sure that it is stylistically consistent with the rest of the catalog.

In the end, what most academic committees do is produce documents. To that extent, Web 2.0 applications make good sense as a way of improving collaboration and making service less labor-intensive.

Comments

[fred]

Hi Alex,

Wonderfully written article. I just wanted to show you a new collaborative service that launched a few months ago. They are called www.vyew.com and they provide a free, web-based collaboration site. Basically, you get a feature-rich meeting room w/ real-time, whiteboard functionality.

It's totally free (no downloads or installs) and can support up to 20 people. Here's a link to a tutor that has started incorporating this service w/ skype.

http://elgg.net/salvor/weblog/9971.html

I would love to get your feedback on this technology.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Fred