AcademiaVsNewMedia

Let's be honest, when I started writing this page, I had just failed a PhD and was somewhat out of love with academia.

It seemed so much better and more natural that education should evolve to be a HyperText of SmallPiecesLooselyJoined that were easier for a CognitiveFlaneur like me to wander through.

Instead though ... academia got out-manoeuvred and routed around by faster media, but not "better". I should perhaps have taken more note that ConspiracyTheories are often NetworkShaped.

And go with the grain of network-shaped media / NetoCracy?

(ReadWith) EducationExploded

Discussion

Is traditional academia challenged, reinvigorated or outmoded by a new network of information sharers?

Themes :

• GranularityOfScholarlyWriting (a ModularityMistake?)
• SurvivalOfUniversities
• LinkingVsCiting
• PostModernismAndPostTruth

The challenge

• NetocracyVsAcademia / MediaInConflict

Good :

• TheHottBook
• Academia.edu, a social network for people in academia : http://academia.edu/
• AcademicBlogs
• WikiInTheClassRoom

Bad :

• AcademicJournals
• AcademicCMS
• LearningObjects vs. LearningNetworks
• DavidNoble/DigitalDiplomaMills

Academics

• NetworkAcademics
  • PhilAgre/HowToNetworkInAcademia,
• NetworkEpistemology
• RightWingBlogMobsVsLeftWingAcademics
• ArnoldKlingOnMovingToTheRightOutsideAcademia
• ArnoldKlingOnNetworkEffectsInAcademia

Tools

• TedIsTheNewHarvard
• ScienceIsPublishing
• KhanAcademy

Responses

How is academia adapting?

• AnOpenEducation
• OpenUniversityKnowledgeMediaInstitute
• AnarchistUniversity
• Connexions
• HomeMadeCurriculum

• Actually some interesting movement from academic journals. Nature experiments with open peer review : http://www.thelongtail.com/thelongtail/2006/06/openpeerrevie.html

SunirShah is starting to put together a great paper on the role of new media (especially wiki) in disrupting academia : See Meatball:OpenAcademics, Meatball:NetworkAcademics, Meatball:HistoryOfAcademia

• I don't see so much threat from ResearchCentres though. Perhaps I'm naive.
  • Also claims WikisAsOralCulture

Anyway, this is also a good excuse for a meta-discussion on ThoughtStormsVsMeatBall

Links

• PhilGreenspun is saying something similar : http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/10/04

• AcademiaVsNewMediaLinkBin

• Meatball Wiki on Academic Wiki : Meatball:AcademicWiki
  • and University Wiki : Meatball:UniversityWiki

Software people are often in the vanguard of internet-fueled sociological trends - so if there's a shift from formal university training to free-form, self-teaching, then you'd expect to see it in computer science before most other subjects. Particularly as this is probably the field that generates and consumes more knowledge via amateur OnlineWriting than any other.

How easy is it to cheat? A market in essays : http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=030104D

RobertXCringely has the next generation given up on the idea of school? : (Interesting http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit20080321004574.html (Interesting note OnStandards)

: continues (maybe he's given up the idea too) : http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit20080328004611.html

See also :

• SchoolEducation,
• OPTIMAES
• AutomatingScience
• DisinformationVsScience

CategoryInformationalism, CategoryEducation