The well-known song December 1963 (Oh What a Night), by Bob Gaudio of The Four Seasons and his then future wife Judy Parker, is lyrically full of a nostalgic remembrance of a first encounter. What is less known about this song is that it was original entitled December 5, 1933 and the lyrics were a celebration of the end of prohibition.
Last night, while driving home from a wonderful evening spent with the TLT leadership, former Faculty Fellows and this year's new Fellows, I found myself humming this familiar tune while reflecting on our first encounter as a large group and celebrating what may very well be the end of many of my prohibitions/inhibitions in working collaboratively in educational technology.
I am completing my third week as a Faculty Fellow and have begun to feel cohesion among the team I am working with as we begin to find our communal "groove". Many of the big decisions within our project have been made and we are quickly moving away from the thrills of our first encounters and into the nitty-gritty of getting work done. It is an interesting and exciting transition.
Some of the most meaningful elements of the process thus far have been the social interaction and the personal admission that sometimes, I just don't know things (and sometimes these things that I don't know, are quite large). It is so easy for us as faculty to reside, relatively peacefully, in the comfort of our areas, departments and colleges, surrounded by familiarity and routine. We are often working alone or in small groups with colleagues from within our discipline, or those closely related to our discipline, which make it all too easy to become over inflated with our general sense of knowing. It is surprisingly difficult to wander across College Avenue into the unknown and unfamiliar.
Social interaction is the primary means for the development of projects through the TLT Fellowship program. According to Vygotsky (1978), social interactions play a fundamental role in the way we as humans develop, learn and grow. His well known theory states that the primary source of leaning is from others, with the "more knowledgeable other" guiding lessons through the process of scaffolding. While I certainly know about music and the typical processes of research in my field, and I have experiences in the forms of research we are currently undertaking - there is much that I don't know. What is the source then of new knowledge when the culture one is surrounded by changes? Vygotsky states that humans use tools that develop from a culture to mediate their social environments, thus it is those around us from this new culture that push our knowledge and thinking into new directions. It's humbling to be feeling the push, but it is also exhilarating.
The process of learning from and in a new culture is challenging, but the rewards can be great. The potential rewards of working in a team as part of the TLT Fellowship program bring to mind the concept of Groove, as explored by Charles Keil (http://borntogroove.org/).
Groove is an elusive concept, but in essence, it is the feeling, phrasing, and inflection that are communally created among musicians who are in the peak of their united playing. It is also based in the concept of "discrepancies," the little gaps in musical timing and pitch. Groove does not require perfection; it actually comes about through imperfection and the attempts to remedy these imperfections as a group. Being in the Groove requires acknowledgement of our defects, imperfections, weaknesses, mishaps, and discrepancies and to remedy these issues through group participation and collaboration - playing together, balancing, sharing, arguing, resolving differences, relating, and keeping together in time. In Groovology, to imply that imperfection, or not fully knowing, is equal to being loose, sloppy, mistaken, not entirely in control, or "wrong" negates the very heart of true artistry. Groovology reminds me that it is perfectly fine to be the "less knowledgeable other" in term of technology and to recognize that my contributions are made more significant through collaboration with my TLT Fellowship team members. Awareness of these processes of coevolving imperfections does much to shape us as human beings, teachers, and scholars.
While it is common place in traditional academia for the teacher/researcher to be the dispenser of knowledge, that model just doesn't hold the same value to me that it once did. Imparting knowledge is easy, creating new knowledge is significantly more difficult. I view all teaching and learning, as a place for new experiences, where I don't have to "know" to a particularly great extent, I simply have to "be". Too often the academic environment rewards those who "know this", "have done this", and, heaven forbid, "are this". The role of the expert is so glorified in academia, that there is little room for open wondering, for saying "I don't know but I'd like to explore". I believe that at the heart of the TLT Fellowship program is not only the allowance of open exploration, but the expectation that we will openly explore together.
I am absolutely thrilled to be a part of the TLT Fellowship program and look forward to new learning, new knowledge, and new friendships along the way.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
