Arun-Kumar Tripathi (tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de)
Tue, 2 Feb 1999 11:46:17 +0100 (MET)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 11:46:17 +0100 (MET) From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de> Subject: DAVID NOBLE MAKES A COMPELLING CASE AGAINST "DIGITAL DIPLOMA MILLS"
Sending message to all list members: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
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Dear IFETS Forum members,
For past months, the members of ITFORUM had discussed some important
points regarding Prof. David Noble makes a compelling case against
"Digital Diploma Mills"
Below is the reactions from one my friend regarding his article......
My comments are below, found in <<>>..
It's high noon for higher education, quips David Noble.
He is addressing an audience at The University of Western
Ontario's Faculty of Information and Media Studies; his
lecture is one of several in the Faculty's "Labour in
Cyberspace" speaker series held this fall. Noble is on
the faculty at Toronto's York University, and is currently
Visiting Professor of Science, Technology and Society at
Harvey Mudd College in the United States.
<<I would rather say, it is high noon for higher education, that
constitutes labour in cyberspace...>>
Noble brings an urgent message to the faculty and students
gathered for the talk. The research function of the university
has already succumbed to the siren song of commercialism, he
argues, and he is worried that the teaching function will be
the next to go. And technology will be the agent that
facilitates the fall.
<<Here, I realise professor Noble points out, that if we are not re-using
our techniques to use technology in teaching, then technology is having
the blame...technology effects the teaching function..I'm optimist that
technology has the better future for higher education..>>
This is not to say that technology is to blame, or that
technology is an evil in itself or, for that matter,
that Noble is a neo-Luddite (in fact, he visibly winces
at the term). Indeed, the very document that has been
described as Noble's anti-technology manifesto -- Digital
Diploma Mills -- was first published and circulates widely
on the World Wide Web. Noble's concern is not with the
technology itself, but with the subversive uses to which
he fears it can be put by university administrations and
for-profit companies keen to cash in on the multi-billion
dollar educational market.
For a professor who puts courses online is not unlike a
chef who writes down all his recipes and methods. The chef
would undoubtedly regard the recipe on its own as a mere
empty shell, essentially useless without the skill,
experience and vision of its creator. But the restaurant
owner might well see the recipe as an opportunity for
replacing the expensive and high-maintenance chef de cuisine
with a cheap and tractable journeyman cook. And so with
professors and courses: putting the quantifiable contents
and components of a course online essentially divides the
professor from the product, leaving the product vulnerable
to appropriation and the professor vulnerable to replacement.
<<Teaching function also shows the relation between the
created and creator.>>
Despite Noble's concerns, he is not without hope: he has
detected a subtle but sure shift in the winds of change,
and that "inexorable, unstoppable force code-named *the future*
seems a little less inexorable. This shift is the subject of
his forthcoming companion piece to "Digital Diploma Mills,"
in which he will explain why "The Bloom is Off the Rose."
<<Rose is a not ROSE W/O the Bloom>>
Now, I hope most of you are free to discuss!!
Kind Regards
Arun Tripathi
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