Seems like UMW, and UMW Blogs in particular, is being heralded in Richard Demillo’s new book Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities as a space of “great educational ferment,” to quote from George Leef’s review of the book here. In fact, Leef’s review not only examines more popular open education mainstays like MIT’s Open Courseware, but when discussing the role of networked culture in re-imagining the future of higher education he focuses on Mary Washington:
Open courseware is not the only way online learning is going to change higher education. DeMillo observes that whereas the traditional college class involves the broadcasting of information from the professor to (doubtfully alert) students, blogs involve rich connection networks where students and instructors interact and share their questions and information.
In that regard, DeMillo points to a little-known school where there is great educational ferment: “At the University of Mary Washington, learning takes place in the digital spaces engineered by Jim Groom and his band of Edupunks. At UMW, learning takes place in blogs.”
I love that Leef focuses on the importance of a networked culture for the future of learning because more than open resources and lectures on the internet, it is the ability to interact and share our ideas and resources that really allows us to bridge the gap between institutions of higher learning and the web.
James Bacon, proprietor of the Bacon’s Rebellion blog that focuses on all things Virginia, not only gave UMW kudos for it’s work with UMW Blogs in his post on the DeMillo book, but also points out what remains for me the most important lesson of UMW Blogs: the open publishing platform is not remarkable because it’s single-handedly transforming higher education (such an assertion would be absurd), but rather it’s how this platform embodies “the process of experimentation” that is still in its infancy when it comes to the future of higher education. To Mary Washington’s great credit, it has been on the bleeding edge of innovation in this regard for more than seven years. What’s more, I’m glad people are recognizing it as a vital investment in not only the institution’s future, but in a larger discourse around the future of educational institutions.
OK, but enough about the reviews because now I have to go and read DeMillo’s book 🙂
Congrats to you and your team, Jimmy! The praise is very well deserved.
Matt,
Thank you kindly, it is hard work keeping up with the CUNY Academic Commons, you all are making us hustle, and I like that 😉
That is awesome. Ferment away!
@Tom,
What’s even more awesome is that I wouldn’t be posting these self-serving celebrations if I wasn’t trying to get a raise out of UMW. The things we do for a livable salary in the 21st century, truly shameless.
I think, job or no, you should publicize this as much as possible. Let people see how good = good. Risk = reward. That’s an important thing to publicize all raises aside.