While reading these selections from The Cluetrian Manifesto I tried to imagine/remember what the world was like before the World Wide Web. I thought about what it was like be a consumer in the eighties and early nineties and how that compares to now. In the past the information that I used to make my purchasing decisions came from advertising, my family and friends, and, if the product that I was interested in was discussed in an available issue, possibly a Consumer Reports magazine. The community from which I could draw information was very limited, very controlled. If I had problems with anything I purchased and needed support, well, that is what parents were for. And if I was not happy with the product or the support and I wanted to go somewhere else to buy the product often the closest competition was at least a half hour drive away.
Now with the access to the internet I can the get opinions of millions of people before stepping out of the door to go buy wait before surfing over to another website to make my purchase. If I have any problems with what I bought I do a search on Google and there has nearly always been someone else who had a similar problem before and posted a question about it. Not to mention if the company that sold the product does not provide assistance in one form or another their competitor is only a few keystrokes away. Thinking about this led me to select the following as of the theses that interested me:
11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
and
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
and
19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
The theses can easily be applied to schools where the "networked markets" are the students and the teachers the "companies." With the internet students can access stores of information about any subject that is being covered in class. They can find more information about it than the teacher knows. They can ask experts their questions and share their responses with their peers in an instant. It is easy to see why the contents of the classroom, the teacher included, are no longer the only tools at the students' disposal and why their classmates are no longer the entirety of their community. It behooves teachers to become familiarized with the methods that their "markets" use to communicate so that the teachers can be a meaningful part of the conversation.
Applying Cluetrain to Classroom Communities
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nice comment. though i think i would take your student/market, teacher/company substitution even a bit further to suggest that the learning institution within which the teacher works is now only but a fraction of the greater company negotiating with the student market.
after all, "We Are... (a Nike, Pepsi, and iTunes University)."
One thing to keep in mind is the fact that unlike the olden days when you would ask those you trust for their opinions about products/services to either confirm or disconfirm its marketing claims; the Web provides lots and lots of opportunity for propaganda spreading by the company or agents of the company. There have been many organizations busted for secretly sponsoring blogs or injecting comments into consumer sites spouting great thoughts about its own products or services under the guise of being just another poster. Should professors/instructors/teachers change their classroom behaviors because they read on ratemprofessors.com that their class "blew"?
Students today have much more at their disposal than did their predecessors. One of the resources that has always been available is the teacher. Keeping with the manifesto, the teachers need to communicate effectively by using examples with which students can relate. They still need to present the technical rhetoric to enable communication with the greater (insert discipline here) community.
I agree with the connection to students as the market and that is is growing exponentially. Students can not communicate with experts and a vast array of students around the world. Their educational community is no longer limited to their classrooms and teacher. As the teachers of the future classrooms, we need to be able to effectively facilitate and incorporate the larger community conversation into local learning environment.
I also thought about teacher rating sites after reading the articles and your post. I admit that I used similar sites during my undergraduate years and the truth is that I was very happy to have the reviews online. I based a few of my "elective" choices on these peer reviews and except for one teacher, I felt that I lucked out.
After teaching for a year, I found that I was very interested in student reviews at the end of each semester. I wanted to change my classroom behaviors because of what I read. I wanted to be a better teacher. Teachers that do not want to see what the markets (students) are saying about them are going to blow it, just like thesis #19.
it seems one can't reply to a reply - this is to mdm392's
reading the evaluations students complete is extremely helpful - when they write comments instead of just circling numbers
the teacher rating sites are becoming two-way, with professors striking back with critiques of students
http://www.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/professors_strike_back/
btw rate my professor now has a facebook application
this is to tam974
Are there legal concerns for professors/teachers who strike back?
I would assume the teachers are ok if they don't single out individuals or commit libel, but I'm not a lawyer.
Tim, why don't you ask about this issue in your Ed Law class? ;)
And I'm not suggesting that a legitimate means of feedback like SRTEs should be discounted or ignored. I'm just pointing out that the "open door" policy of a service like ratemyprofessors.com means that anyone can comment on anything, whether they were in that professor's courses, or even a student at that University, or not.
Parents and students are absolutely the market in modern schools. Students also become a product. Their parents read school report cards on the internet and vie for the best positions in the top schools. Sometimes parents will forge an address to have their child in the better school. They make demands on curriculum. Students are measured as products by standardized tests and their success later in life.
This sounds like with parenting - is the thing that the kids wants to do always the best thing for the kid? There is a reason that having parents that make bad choices leads to kids who are more likely to make bad choices. What about the kids that post that the class "blew" the day after they get their grade inflated B+ and then realize a year later the class was the most valuable learning experience they had in college? Do you think they go back and change their vote? Which reaction is the "real" reaction to the class / value of the class?