College Education at the Frontlines of a Literacy Debate
According to the College Board website, the average cost of tuition for the 2009-10 school year for a four-year public institution is $7,020, a 6.5% increase from the year prior. This amount is for tuition alone without the consideration of the price of textbooks, school supplies, food, and perhaps the possibility of renting an apartment, dorm, or house. Taking into account the amount of money it takes to go through college, the question that ensues is: are students receiving the best form of education they paid for? In order to receive some type of answer, we would need to understand how receiving an education has evolved and look into the latest debate revolving around the future of student education. I have looked into multiple articles and videos contributed by university professors, experts, researchers and reporters discussing the idea of a "literacy revolution" occurring within the field of education involving the use of digital technology. Technology and the Internet have played a major role in the discussion of future education because of their popular usage by students. Much of the debate has been credited to answering the underlying question of whether or not the literacy structure and usage of technology is positively affecting the lives of the young generation of today, but as I have noticed, the debate has not contributed a proposed resolution both sides can agree on. Nevertheless, comprehending contradicting sides of the debate will be key to understanding the more affective form of education students can obtain, thus making greater use of the amount of time and money they paid to receive an education.
One might think that students do not have much say over issues that concern their college education, the reason being because students do not know what is best for them. A college professor at Kansas State University and 2008 U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities, Michael Wesch, tried to reveal what students thought about college and their education by having his students express themselves in front of a video camera. Wesch's highly popular and talked about video, "A Vision of Students Today," reveals the truth about students’ college experiences, from fitting 26.5 hours worth of tasks into one day to paying for hundred dollar textbooks that have never been opened. After viewing Wesch's video, I could not help but look into the structure of education I have received since coming to college. I must admit that my grades have fallen since attending Western Washington University, and I threw most of the blame at myself although I studied, took notes during class, and met with professors. After further investigation about the existing form of education today and reading articles about the literacy revolution, I have reached a theory. It is my belief that the literacy debate is currently at a standstill where neither side is proposing a useful resolution meanwhile students are not receiving the best form of education possible when the more affective methodologies exist, thus negatively influencing student grade point averages and outlooks on college education.
In the midst of the literacy revolution and the debate between the pros and cons of digital technology, I have noticed a pattern of researchers and experts forgetting the students who are being highly considered in this dispute. As I have observed the education and student life that surrounds me, I propose that technology is here to stay among us in society as every classroom I walk into has a computer setup for the teacher, and students bringing in laptops into the classroom. Teachers should be instructing students instead to affectively use the sources before them by incorporating online discussion outside the classroom. We should begin to recognize that as technology is evolving as each day goes by, and teachers are finding ways to relate and educate their students by adding technology and its literary practices into the classroom, than our educational method and approach should evolve along with technology. As professor of education at Stanford, Michael L. Kamil puts it, "Students are going to grow up having to be highly competent on the Internet…There's no reason to make them discover how to be highly competent if we can teach them" (Rich 9). The issue with the majority of educational systems today is that they are not willing to move past what once was and what now is. Teachers are educating students in a manner that does not relate with them or lacks student interest, when the world has created several methods of learning that educators do not take advantage of.
Most institutions have been built since the 18-1900s with some intention to have classrooms organized by having students facing the direction of the teacher; this form of teaching is called lecturing. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between 1997 and 2007, college enrollment increased from 14.5 million to 18.2 million in the United States. The numbers suggest that approximately 2 million more students will be included in the amount in roughly eight years. While the number of enrolled college students increases, teachers and students need to rethink the most popular learning method of today: lecture. As students walk into some of their college classes of 100+ students, they do not seem to be receiving the best educational experience they paid for. The National Training Laboratories Institute for Applied Behavioral Science has presented a pyramid that demonstrates the average retention rates in an average student. The figure to the below proposes that less than ten percent of information is retained in a lecture style class, meanwhile fifty percent is held through discussion and ninety percent through students teaching others what they have learned.
The Learning Pyramid implies that lecturing to students is not an affective learning method; therefore, educational practices should be more open to try a different route by pursuing discourse among students about course material, which could easily occur online. Consequently, due to the rising enrollment numbers, students could be and are receiving a "quantity" form of education instead of the "quality", unless the education system prepares itself with educational methods that are under dispute. Before heading into the oppositions of the debate, one must first review the main principle in question. Within the article "On the New Literacy", Clive Thompson investigates a classroom approach a professor at Stanford University named Andrea Lunsford has researched. Lunsford is quoted saying, "I think we are in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization" (2). Many authors speak about a revolution occurring, however, few explain what the revolution entails. Understanding the change of lifestyles and writing since the introduction and usage of the Internet will portray how the literacy revolution began. Thompson states, "before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment" (2). Currently, online writing occurs daily amongst today’s generation on social websites such as Facebook and Blogger (two sites that allow anyone to join in the community and display whatever the member feels like displaying on a global network); however, before the internet was open for usage in homes, writing was mostly being done to receive a grade.
Within large lecture classes, most professors grade students for the class by simply giving them several multiple-choice exams throughout the quarter. This testing method can be daunting as the majority of exams are 50+ questions, several pages long, and with a lot of text. In the mid to late 1800s, writing and composition tied into testing to serve a balance between speech and writing in the educational system. Harvard University acted as a role model to the rest of higher education as their composition course idea to prevent failed entrance writing exams spawned all over the United States (Yancey 3). Accordingly, "composition tended to take on the colors of the time, primarily (1) its identification as a rudimentary skill and (2) its predominant role in the testing of students" (Yancey 3). Even so, testing students based off lecture and readings from textbooks is extremely illogical since at least 10% of the amount of information will retain with the student through that learning style, according to the Learning Pyramid presented earlier. This could provoke students to cram information into their brains only for a test. Educational practices should push towards methods that will allow students to retain most of the information even after a test in order to give students a higher chance to succeed academically.
Since the installation of the Internet, writing takes place outside the classroom without receiving an evaluation. In today's digital world, social networking sites, weblogs, chat rooms, e-mails, publishing, texting, have all surpassed the limit of writing people can achieve. "Such writing is what Deborah Brandt has called self-sponsored writing: a writing that belongs to the writer, not to an institution, with the result that people want to compose and do – on the page and on the screen and on the network – to each other" (Yancey 4). People write their thoughts and feelings almost daily on the internet for the world to comment back, consequently forming conversations. It would then feel only natural for people to continue the conversation from their classrooms to the online network if directed properly by a facilitator. In large lecture classes, not everyone within the classroom is given the opportunity to speak and display opinion. Converging the everyday classroom discourse to an online platform would mean for a combination of receiving an evaluation by professors and furthermore allowing every student to express opinion, thought, and perspective on an online forum. Nowadays, the digital literacy debate has shaped itself into thinking whether writing on the internet serves as writing at all.
The literacy revolution is being disputed as both a positive and a negative for the learner today. A revolution is defined as an overthrow of government or as a dramatic change in ideas or practice. Currently, we have two sides of the debate arguing whether digital media is beneficial for students and their education. It is important to understand the issues people have with digital literacy and technology to receive a just outlook on the debate and therefore offer more of my proposition. In Frontline's website video, digital_nation: life on the virtual frontier, we are narrated by Douglas Rushkoff through the positive, but mostly negative effects of digital technology in students' lives, for instance: face-to-face communication being replaced by simple-minded wording through text messages, the loss of strong essay writing skills, and people becoming horrible multitaskers. In the Bronx, a principal by the name of Jason Levy has been able to incorporate technology and drastically change the pessimistic direction his school was heading. By incorporating laptops and online discussions into the educational system, Levy has been able to drop violence rates significantly, and increase daily attendance by over ninety percent, reading test scores by thirty percent and math test scores by almost forty percent. However, the school was criticized for the belief that revealing students to so much technology would transform them into lower, less capable human beings. Principal Levy was quick to respond by stating, "The world has changed, but education has not." An accurate claim to make, but serves better as a question: why has education not changed? Perhaps it is because the educational system has been too lenient on criticizing their teaching practices. I am not stating that their needs to be an overthrow of classrooms and teachers, and education should only occur online, no. I am stating that if we are to give students a better learning experience where they are gaining knowledge, contributing to the classroom, and receiving their money’s worth, students need to obtain a balance of learning from their professors and the opportunity to discuss and learn amongst each other.
The best examples I can give of the types of discussions students can participate in I have been subliminally presenting the reader throughout the discussion of the literacy debate. Wesch and Rushkoff made videos, Yancey wrote a report, and Rich wrote an article. These are a few examples of the many blog posts, articles, and videos, all of which can be found online, written by accredited professors, reporters, and researchers such as Henry Jenkins, Marc Prensky, Claudia Wallis, and Sherry Turkle. If discussions like this can occur online, than it is possible for discussions to occur among the students as they learn and grow together, uploading claims and arguments with the intention of having them be commented or criticized upon by an audience. Educational methods should flow across the digital network for students who naturally spend some part of their time and energy at their computer; it only makes sense for some of their education to take place in digital reality as well. It is crucial for teachers to educate their students on how to converse online because in doing so, the majority of students will feel more inclined to display their thoughts and discuss with each other and the facilitator online, retaining information and receiving a more affective educational experience than through lecture. Instead of arguing which route is better, we need realize that technology surrounds us so let us use it for our advantage. The more we debate about the existence of digital technology, the more students are receiving an education that could be far more affective if action had taken place. Our educators should be willing to move with the times to give the students what they want and need in today's demanding world for a college education: an overall improved learning experience.
