The Open Laptop Midterm

When Henry Jenkins gave his students an "open book" exam, one student in the class asked what about an "open laptop exam."  Jenkins notes that that simple question, implying the possibilities of collaboration and interaction and teamwork  among the students, changes the paradigm of twentieth-century learning.  Once you allow students to work together towards an answer, the whole idea of standardized testing, individual achievement, bell curves, and class ranking goes out the window.   

Bye, bye . . .

John Jones repeats Henry Jenkins' story in his recent blog post for DML Central, "Revolutionary New Technology +Old Teaching Methods = ??"  Here's the url.   http://dmlcentral.net/blog/john-jones/revolutionary-new-technology-old-t...

As he notes, this semester I changed that equation:  Revolutionary New Technlogy + Revolutionary Teaching Methods = 21st Century Learning.    Here's my post about the method I used to crowdsource a collaborative midterm exam, where my students had to shape and answer a question together on Google Docs, handing in by 11:59 pm on exam day one coherent essay.   It was fascinating watching the process, watching the outlines and Prezi's and visualizations that came and went, side arguments that emerged than dried away, and then the final emergent, coherent exam.    The final product may not have been the most brilliant but I had already said the adage of collaboration open source writing is "Publish Early and Often."  You get something out there not as an end product but a first step to improve upon it.   They did it.  Brilliantly. 

Here's my post about it. http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/midterm-was-blast-pedagogical....

You can find their exams here: "Twenty-First Century Literacies" Midterm: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/annarosebeck/twenty-first-century-literacies... And then  "Brain on the Internet" midterm: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/annarosebeck/21st-century-technology-wiring-...

And to continue this open view process, here is my response to the exam from the "Brain on the Internet" class.  You will forgive, I hope, my gushing.  I am the proudest of the proud.   To be frank, I did not know if this would work.  At 11:00, I was biting my nails to the quick, worried for them.  It was still scrappy.  And then there was a crisis, and students filled in for the student who had to deal with an emergency at home instead of submitting the exam.   Others picked up the slack.  They came through for one another, together.   Here is my comment on the collaborative midterm by "This Is Your Brain on the Internet":   

Dear Members of This Is Your Brain on the Internet:   Every single person in "This Is Your Brain on the Internet" contributed to the midterm exam.  That means you fulfilled the requirement of all writing together and agreeing on and submitting one coherent final exam together.  You have all received full credit for the exam.   That's astonishing.  Sixteen people could count on one another to come through.  I want you to think about that. 

Interestingly, you argue that humanity hasn't changed because of the internet in any fundamental way but I would counter that our conception of humanity has changed in fundamental ways since the internet.   The prevailing concept of humanity since the 19th century is that we are brutal, violent, selfish, aggressive animals warring to the finish and survival of the fittest is the only way to survive.  Everything about the industrial age concept of the brain was individual and it was the individual's role to have to fight everyone else for sheer survival.   The idea that "hive mind" could exist--that sixteen people could put aside individual views and differences, could edit one another collectively without a hierarchical leader chosen in advance and given imperial authority--would have been thought to be antithetical to the brain's ways of rational thought or the body's need to dominate and control.  To be solitary and individualistic is what, in the West, was the paradigm of the human.  And also of the machine:  assembly line, division of labor, foreman at the head, with parallel principles for white collar workers as well.

However, when the World Wide Web was created largely by volunteers, without a central switching point, without hierarchical control, it jeopardized the localized, individualized brain metaphors.   Many-to-many isn't compatible with the assembly line view of the brain or of human efficiency.    When massive collaboration now happens routinely among people who do not know one another--from Mozilla to Wikipedia to World of Warcraft--we have to rethink our metaphors of what it means to be human, of what it means to be rational.   

When sixteen students can come together to write a collaborative exam, that isn't just a new theory of learning but reinforces a new idea of "your brain on the internet." 

Your class made a iittle bit of learning history with this exam.   You will be a footnote, I promise you, and maybe more than that, when someone writes the history of learning in the 21st century.   Congratulations!"