CURRICULUM PLANNING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

JODDY MURRAYTCU

“The teacher can provide an educational experience through setting up an environment and structuring the situation so as to stimulate the desired type of reaction. This means that the teacher must have some understanding of the kinds of interests and background the students have so that he can make some prediction as to the likelihood that a given situation will bring about a reaction from the student; and, furthermore, will bring about the kind of reaction which is essential to the learning desired.”

--Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, 64 (1949)

Curriculum Evolution:Tyler’s “Educational Experience”

“Curriculum as traditionally conceived, and as practiced in the vast majority of schools, is organized about the rationality of order, of linearity, and of diachrony. It is the path we follow to the goal of knowledge . . . . I believe education ought to be an experience of dislocation in which the sense of lostness [the experience of decenteredness] is given impetus and validation, and in which in that sense of lostness identity can be achieved.”

--Alan A. Block, Curriculum: Toward New Identities, 333-336 (1998)

Curriculum Evolution:Block’s “Decenteredness”

“The level of consciousness that prevailed before history is articulated pictorially, the historical alphabetically, the new digitally. Abysses open between them. Each alphabetic attempt to bridge the abyss in the direction of the digital will fail because it will carry its own linear, goal-oriented structure into the digital, covering the digital up.”

--Vilem Flusser, Does Writing Have a Future, 160 (1987, 2011)

Curriculum Evolution:Flusser’s “Alphabetic Failure”

Seven Proclamations For Curriculum Planning in the Digital Age

1. The definition of text must continue to evolve. This one delivery vehicle must become many asynchronous delivery vehicles constructed of many modes (i.e., no more discursive bias). 2. Curricula will continue to advocate a vibrant mixture of modes in consumption and distribution, but it will need to work harder to compel students to produce “texts” of multiple modes. 3. Knowledge producers are technology producers, and vice-versa. 4. Learning experiences are much less content-centered and more problem-centered. Learning is not distinct from experience but an integral part of it. 5. Assessment of learning must have a component that is structured outside of superficial time and place constraints. We must build systems that allow for continual assessment of learning well after the experience is over and throughout a lifetime. 6. The distinction between data and text will continue to fade, so curricula must integrate traditional “numbers-oriented” knowledge along with “humanism-oriented” knowledge. 7. Learning in the digital age will be more dependent on face-to-face and hands-on experiences, not less (a common misconception). What will change is what needs to happen during the face-to-face and hands-on interactions. It is no more about delivering content as it is about crafting an experience (conditions) for learning to take place. The classroom becomes the field trip.

CURRICULUM PLANNING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

JODDY MURRAYTCU

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