Knowledge and university09

Knowledge, the University, and the Library

A 21st Century Perspective

James W. Marcum, Ph.D.January 2010

I: Competition

II: Millennial Generation

III: The Future of Knowledge

CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGESFor the University

Higher education in America is a major industry and is viewed as ‘fertile ground’ and opportunity for:◦ For-profit universities◦ Corporate universities (Becton Dickinson)

◦ Global universities (including ‘rising’ powers)

◦ Open universities and Open Education Complacency is a high-risk attitude

I: COMPETITION

Readiness to Compete?

The university does not “come to the table” with a clear strategy and purpose (beyond “protecting what exists”)

Consider technology indispensable

Learn◦ By doing

◦ From each other

◦ Differently from elders

Visually engaged Like multitasking Find many courses

“obsolete”

II: NEW STUDENT GENERATION

“I store a lot of knowledge in my friends”

Millennial Generation

Gadgets Rule onCollege Campuses By Paul Davidson,

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The American college campus, long an oasis of scholarship and coming-of-age, is now being transformed by an armada of laptops, cell phones and perpetual connectivity.

“Our call phones often serve as web browsers, digital phones, and game consoles” - “Net gen”

Challenges (con’t):University and ‘Net Gen’

Critics: the University lives in a “time warp,” locked in to:◦ Agriculture age seasons◦ “seat time as learning equivalent”◦ Lectures as “solo performances”◦ Disciplinary silos of declining influence

Students: Perceive low levels of technological competence of many faculty and staff

Is the University ‘out of step’ with the

times?

University vs. Net Gen 2 While “millennial” generation expects:

◦ Interactive, collaborative activity◦ Instantaneous, mobile communication◦ Flexible, comfortable spaces◦ Curricula geared to new realities, professions,

challenges They also expect traditional learning …

but tire quickly if not engaged in the process

Carole Barone, The New Academy, in Educating the Net Generation (Educause 2005)

In their career, today’s college student will:◦ experience repeated career changes◦ face problems never experienced before◦ have to develop expertise that we cannot

imagine. Ergo: they must develop inquiry and

lifelong learning skills*; we cannot teach them what they will have to know….◦ *(includes learning and creating knowledge

socially)

We must keep in mind…

Nature and Future of Knowledge

The Biggest Challenge

III: THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE

Perhaps the gravest, if subtle,

danger the university faces is

the future status, creation,

transmission, and uses of

knowledge

Long considered the ‘turf’ and

arena for the university . . .

We now face unprecedented

challenges

We must remember that most major

transformational revolutions:

◦Scientific (17th Century)

◦Enlightenment (18th Century)

◦ the Industrial (19th Century)

all developed outside the university

Will the same be said of today’s “networked learning

and knowledge revolution”?

Knowledge vs. Academia?

Communicated effectively via prices -Hayek

Bringing forth the world through the process of living itself -Maturana and Varela

Genealogy of discourses of practice producing power relationships -Foucault

Most ‘research’ reports are false -Ionnidis

Increasingly interdisciplinary -J. T. Klein

Social and developmental –Valsiner & van der Veer

From reason to agency and meaning -Kauffman

… we can go on and on…

Seeking to explain knowledge

With fundamental “criticisms”: Socially constructed - Rorty

With occasional major, “paradigmatic” revolutions - Kuhn

Suggesting many ways of knowing the world have “equal validity,”

Supporting the relativism of post-modernism … and many other fashionable but false “isms”

- Baghossian, Fear of Knowledge

Explaining knowledge (con’t)

We have moved from knowledge in the individual mind (I think…)

To socially constructed knowledge (I participate…)

To knowledge as connections (I am networked….)

But we should talk about how we know?A CHANGE of great consequence…

Modern/Western Intellectual Achievement

great minds, working alone…

Library = Books = Organized Knowledge

But now…

“I am a part of the electronic universe. I am visible to Google. I link, therefore, I am.”◦ William L. Mitchell. Me++. MIT, 2003.

TO CONNECTIVITY

The tacit knowledge of the virtuoso, the scholar, the expert, is of value to the extent of their individual performance and persuasion

The explicit knowledge articulated by the ‘master,’ the expert, can be shared (website) and preserved (book) and recognized for its importance over time

The shared knowledge of the team, the lab, (as it is verified) becomes the new theory, the ideology, the paradigm… that can shape a history, a science, or a nation

The Social Power of Knowledge

Since the emergence of ‘intellectual capital’ as the key to innovation in the 1990s, corporations have jumped into ‘knowledge creation’ and ‘knowledge management’ in pursuit of competitive advantage in global competition

Is the focus of knowledge creation shifting from the campus to the laboratory?

… and what would be the implications of that for the university?

Knowledge as Intellectual Capital

Library (300 BC–500 CE)

Monastery (100–1100)

University (1100–1500)

Republic of Letters (1500–1800)

Disciplines (1700–1900)

Laboratory (1870–1970)

McNeely and Wolverton, Reinventing Knowledge (Norton, 2008)

What form will it take next? What institutions will represent it?

Knowledge: “Reinvented” 6 times

We won’t presume to define what philosophers have debated for millennia

Nonaka and Takeuchi, The Knowledge Creating Company (1995).

We should take cue from two wise men…

The New Knowledge of the Day

Parallelcomputing

Field Research

Big Bang Theory

CLOUD COMPUTING

Stem-cell

Genomesequencing

The search for today’s knowledge requires searching:

Databases Laboratory findings; research reports Newsletters Conference proceedings Deep Web Social Web (twitter, facebook, etc.) Blogs, listservs, media news archives and

features, institutional repositories, etc., etc.In addition to the traditional print

materials collected by libraries.

Cognitive (know-what) book learningCompetence (know-how) implementationUnderstanding (know-why) meaning J. B. Quinn, et al., “Managing Professional Intellect,” Harvard Business Review, (March 1996); People (know who) expertise Positioning (know where) contextTiming (know when) strategyDonald Norris, et al. “A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing,” Educause Review

(Sept. 2003); K. E. Sveiby, The New Organizational Wealth (1997)

Innovation (change how) engagementProblem solving (try how) teams, socialForecast (consider if) scenarios

Levels of Knowledge: An emerging approach…

skills

network

naviga-tion

Knowledge: emergent, dynamic, and shared -Eisenstadt and Vincent, Knowledge Web (1998)

Digital wisdom: digital enhancement of human thought -Marc Prensky, Innovate,

3/09 A Google monopoly? -ABC News, 7/12/08 Shotgun (gene sequencing) - J. Craig Ventner From reason to agency and meaning

–S.A. Kauffman, Reconstructing the Sacred

End of Theory: petabytes of data and cloud computing make scientific method obsolete

–C. Anderson/Wired, 8/09

ALERT: PROPOSALS EMERGINGFor the ‘New Knowledge’

COMPLEXITY◦Information gathering◦Growth produces complexity (and some

redundancy)◦Cope with systems and hierarchy (can

understand processes) Herbert Simon

We must lift our perspective from…

COMPLEXITY

◦ Cope with systems and

hierarchy (can

understand processes)

Herbert Simon

◦ Information gathering

◦ Growth produces

complexity (and some

redundancy)

SUPERCOMPLEXITY◦Accelerating change◦Borders & disciplines

crossed and smudged◦Uncertainty and

unpredictability◦Concepts, systems,

theories overloaded, undependable

Ron Barnett

To focus on…

Preserving existing knowledge of value while coming to understand, participate in, and disseminate to future generations the new knowledge generated (diffused) by a LARGE number of educated people from many cultures interacting in a new global and digital information ecology.

Can—and should—we endeavor to be certain that the university continues to play a central role in this process?

How do we proceed?

Greatest challenge?