Several years ago I conducted an experiment upon myself. The conditions were relatively simple – because I worked for the phone company and because there was the possibility of a strike, I needed to prepare for strike duty by taking about 40 hours of web based training on topics deemed necessary by the strike task force. What would that training look like, how would it feel, and how would I incorporate it within the rest of my workday.
Taking the training was actually not an unwelcome task. At the time I had just finished my dissertation on subjects relative to electronic learning and was fascinated by how they worked to effect learning. I had been involved in various stages of many of the courses that formed the core of the curriculum I would be required to take, but had never progressed through it completely. But the real motivation for the research was something else. I had also been noting that something relative to WBT was, for lack of a better description, "not right."
I had noted in my dissertation that one of the changes that had occurred in the move from CBT to WBT was the introduction of a large number of internal exits from the courseware, that is, links to the great web elsewhere. Training was simply one of many applications that ran on the desktop and I was curious to see what that actually meant.
It was not good.
As part of a virtual team I needed to have an instant messaging application open at all times, as well as regularly check my email, run or attend a variety of meetings, answer my phone, in other words, to create digitally the same access someone would provide in a large open office layout.
The first thing I noticed was that with everything going on, it was only possible to steal time in 10-15 minute increments during the day(if that long). Any training that needed to be done would be best done in the evening after the day was done, or early before it started. Then a more subtle, and much more disturbing trend, emerged. If I did try to take the training during these quiet times, I created my own disturbances, as if there were something pulling at my attention, dividing it and scattering the resulting pieces.
Over the past years I have followed a number of discussions about learning on the web that suggest that something is happening to students, a fracturing of attention that might be laid at the feet of the digital delivery systems that were becoming ever more commonplace.
Into this idea space comes Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains." I heartily recommend it. I may discuss it in greater depth at a later date, but one of the things that is fascinating me about the book, and the thing I am really focused on at the moment, is that I chose to read it via audible.com. That is, I downloaded the book to my iPod and listened to (that is "read") it in the car, when my consciousness was immune from any distractions other than what I will call the trivial details of traffic and direction.
There is a section in the book that details how we moved from oral to written traditions and the changes that occurred because of it. I find it curious that I am reversing this trend and moving back to a variant oral tradition in order to regain that moment of focused, undistracted attention. A check with audible reports that I have 187 books that I have listened to this way, and more and more I find I distinguish between books. There are some I categorize as requiring a text to hold (sometimes to be able to mark the pages with yellow highlighters and pencil notes), others that are light and easy to listen to, but still others that I would just prefer to listen to in an undisturbed, uninterrupted manner. Although I have an iPad, I have not yet created a category for books to read digitally.
Of note for those interested in e-learning: I intend to assign The Shallows to my classes, both because I find it fascinating, and because I am interested in seeing if the observations contained therein have any traction among educators. I am not sure what the alternative might be, but I am curious to discuss the topic. In the meantime, I will continue to consider it.
R
