Life in a Day

NAFSA 2011: A Parallel Universe by Sharon Joy Bell

(With nearly 10,000 members, NAFSA is the world's largest nonprofit professional association dedicated to international education.)

Many academic colleagues may be unaware but Vancouver, Canada, has just played host (May 29-June 3) to the largest gathering of higher education practitioners in the world, with 8,700 delegates converging on a stunningly beautiful city – a city at this time of year willing summer to take hold. The huge NAFSA delegate presence in downtown Vancouver was only briefly overshadowed by the thousands of fans who converged mid-week for the Vancouver Canucks/Boston Bruins ice hockey match – the first of seven which will determine who wins the coveted Stanley Cup. Fortunately our host city team won the first match with a single goal in the last seconds of the game, so spirits remained high.

With nearly 10,000 members, NAFSA is the world's largest not-for-profit professional association dedicated to international education. NAFSA’s members share high ideals: ‘that international education advances learning and scholarship, builds understanding and respect among different peoples, and enhances constructive leadership in the global community…that international education by its nature is fundamental to fostering peace, security, and well-being’. www.nafsa.org/about.sec/organization_leadership/

The NAFSA annual conference is a place to strengthen global institutional ties. The majority of NAFSA conference delegates are administrative and professional staff with responsibility for international students – from admissions, to study abroad, to internships and migration. These are part of Whitchurch’s (2006) growing ‘third stream’ of professional staff with strategically important roles in our sector. Some delegates are the sales representatives of the service industries that support student mobility, such as insurance companies. Some are government agency officials, such as Austrade representatives. There is a minority of academics.

At times during the week I felt I was travelling over time and space in Dr Who’s Tardis, never knowing where I would next land nor what surprising past-encounters and unlikely academic relationships would be revealed. But when my head stopped spinning from daily back-to-back meetings and a string of wine drenched evening receptions with colleagues from Florida to Stockholm I realised that the highlights of my week sat outside the formal Expo agenda. Foremost, the post-conference visit to the downtown (Woodward) campus of Simon Fraser University, where the courtyard entrance is dominated by a huge, multi-screen, illuminated Stan Douglas image of a violent clash between protesters and police in the 1970s. The image is a centrepiece of the campus and extraordinarily evocative of the 70s student experience in the West – a global phenomenon played out locally over a range of issues from local urban development to the Vietnam War. Douglas’s image entitled Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971, is a representation of a little known but crucial moment in Vancouver's history. On that date, Vancouver police violently broke up a Smoke-In, a peaceful marijuana protest. This event was apparently ‘the climax to heightened tensions between local government, hippies squatting in empty industrial buildings and the predominately blue-collar families that had populated the neighbourhood for over a century’. The striking image has all the qualities of documentary veracity but in fact was created through an elaborate dramatic re-enactment of the scene, echoing Vancouver’s current status as a city of image-makers. http://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2010/02/17/GastownRiot/

Yet the image is even more astonishing in terms of its place within this contemporary university setting – the downtown campus often reserved for our most conservative of activities – the interface with the business and corporate worlds, but in this rather funky city that prides itself on its creativity, also the site of the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. I sat for some time in the SFU courtyard contemplating which Australian Vice Chancellor would take such a bold step to pose, in a very public and radical way, the enduring questions ‘What is the purpose of the university? How does it engage with its community? How do we reflect our place and history?’

At the beginning of the week I had discovered that the well-endowed University of British Columbia does it differently through a lush, open to the public golf course and an extra-ordinary Museum of Anthropology. The museum is an Arthur Erickson architectural and design triumph which offers a beautiful and respectful setting for the display of Indigenous material culture, the most astonishing of which are the monumental totems traditionally associated with Northwest Indian potlatch ceremonies – ceremonies that involved feasting, dancing and giving gifts to all in attendance, until such ceremonies were banned in 1885 by colonial powers.

The museum’s annotation of the potlatch again evoked my own student past – of Franz Boas and an American pre-occupation with material culture.  The ‘potlatch’ was firmly planted as an iconic ceremony in my anthropological discipline base, even though the retained detail was sketchy: recollection of conspicuous consumption, display, status and prestige, and, most important of all, the redistribution of wealth. Without intending disrespect for Indigenous colleagues or in any way underestimating the layers of symbolic and religious significance the ‘potlatch’ has amongst its cultural custodians, by NAFSA’s week end ‘the potlatch’ surfaced as the most obvious analogy for what must be the most extra-ordinary annual higher education event in the calendar.

I was a NAFSA conference ‘first-timer’, although through a fortuitous bureaucratic oversight my nametag was missing the purple satin, gold-embossed ribbon (akin to those one sees at rural shows for winning entries) that should have announced the same.  I did not know quite what to expect as, despite the multitude of emails that swamped me pre-conference, the program seemed to be rather content free unless you were a newbie seeking to build your international education operational skills and leadership base with a clear north-American focus.  I did not anticipate the scale, or the staggering market orientation of the event. If you ever wonder whether higher education has become a global commodity, land your Tardis in the NAFSA Conference Expo Hall – a hanger of a convention space with hundreds of booths in the style of a furniture fair or perhaps most accurately a travel fair. This is education as a commodity par excellence but, with the notable exception of the service industries and the ‘for-profits’ represented, the products for sale are not material goods, or even, as at other educational fairs, academic programs and student places.

At this commodity fair what is being sold is first and foremost the educational destination and student experience. Country exhibits dominate, populated by those who make up their sector – the Canadians showing an atypical degree of sectoral collaboration (or more likely funding) by showcasing their provinces. Most others, including the Study in Australia stand, showcase individual institutions. At the institutional level it is status and reputation that is being sold, and location of course helps.  At the individual level what is being reinforced and interrogated is the robustness of relationships and exchanges.  Students are the currency and they, as ‘incomings’ and ‘outgoings’, are counted, their quality of experience measured, and counted again. Balanced reciprocity is the aim – a particular challenge for those institutions whose student populations are mature age, part-time, and/or low SES.

Between individuals from far-flung institutions there is often a high degree of affection through experience that spans many years underpinned by an evangelical zeal for global student mobility. I do not know if NAFSA has the data but ‘the chat’ tells me that many who work in this field were exchange students themselves and many found their overseas experience life changing.  They are now close witnesses to their students’ life changing experiences: the development of fluency in a new language; the opportunity to study and work in parts of the globe less travelled; and inevitably, the cross-country marriages. What individual exchange students have gone on to achieve is a large part of ‘the chat.’

So, like the ‘potlatch’, this annual ritual revolves around conspicuous consumption (the investment in travel alone for 8,700 delegates is mind-numbing), sometimes quite elaborate display of relationship, status and prestige, and to a degree the redistribution of wealth, if we equate educational experience with wealth.  Also like the potlatch NAFSA is not strictly aligned with the sector’s economic imperatives. Exchange relationships do not necessarily translate into student load, although many hope it will, and research collaboration is more likely to be a precursor to student exchange than an outcome of student mobility.  It should also be noted that NAFSA is, by and large, a ritual of the West – the Americas (including South America) courting Europe and vice versa. Australia is apparently a perennial favourite with north-American students. There is limited engagement by the Middle East and Asia, although this may be changing.

On a ‘green’ planet do the costs (and carbon footprint) justify the benefits? It is hard to say.  It is certainly interesting to see how much colleagues value face-to-face contact and how apparent it is that there are conversations we simply not want to have using technology. Relationships do matter. Does NAFSA change the way we conduct our business in the international sphere? We undoubtedly pick-up examples of best practice but in student recruitment more broadly our ‘value proposition’, which drives the most successful of our exchange partnerships, is yet to dominate the equation. Was NAFSA a learning experience?  Most certainly, but through observation and lots of listening, not through the formal conference program. Is NAFSA 2012 Houston, Texas in my diary? Probably not but I would encourage every Vice Chancellor who has never attended to do so to gain a sense of the ritual hybrid to which our sector has given birth, and to gain a fascinating window into the context in which our international offices work.

The potlatch was banned in the 19^th century partly because the scale of the events being staged grew exponentially and questions were asked by colonial powers about the economic impact – the elaborate preparation necessary, the time expended attending the rituals, and the concomitant spread of contagious disease. This year part of ‘the chat’ was around whether NAFSA become too big and outgrown its purpose? We should at least be asking the question, even if the only disease symptoms being spread seemed to be those associated with jet lag and the occasional case of the common cold.

Sharon Joy Bell is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and International at Charles Darwin University in Australia

Wim Wenders in 3 Dimensions

There was a wonderful conference in Toronto that began on Saturday, June 11 and ended on the 14^th of June. Entitled 3D FLIC or Toronto International Stereoscopic 3D Conference the conference was centred on new developments in Stereoscopic 3D Cinema. Wim Wenders kicked off the meeting and among other things gave the speech of his life about his new 3D film on Pina Bausch the great dance choreographer who died in 2009. 

The speech was filled with his profound reaction to Bausch’s dances and dancers, to her theatre as he put it. His decision to translate those feelings into 3D was monumental largely because what he has done is reinvent the medium. Stereoscopic 3D has never looked like this with depth, added volume and most importantly the primacy of the dancing body coming to life. Wender’s film marks the dawn of a new era in the cinema and the people who attended the conference from IMAX pioneer Graeme Ferguson to Peter Anderson who has worked in mainstream 3D production for decades to Emily Carr University’s Maria Lantin whose research into 3D is leading the way to new forms of expression, all contributed to an exciting discussion of this new age of image creation.

Ocean breath from Maria Lantin on Vimeo.

There were many other presentations including one from Catherine Owens who was responsible for bringing U23D to the screen in 2008. This amazing film of a U2 concert in Argentina produced in both IMAX 3D and 3D Digital was path breaking. Her presentation about the making of the film revealed not only the challenges but also the kind of detail in production that is necessary to achieve a creative outcome.

3D is not easy and requires a profound rethink of conventional moviemaking methods. 3D changes not only how viewers interact with screens but also how stories are told. We are at the cusp of a transformative moment in the history of the cinema.

A Utilitarian World (2)

Imagine a world in which the daily experience of attending school does not exist. Take that a bit further and imagine learning as an experience that is both lifelong and not constrained by institutions, not necessarily located within institutions, but fundamental to everyday life.

In a utilitarian world, learning is sequestered to one place or one time.

Learning, in my opinion is by definition never finished. Of course there is a narrative to the learning experience — a beginning and an end, but the entire process of learning is always temporary and crucially, contingent.

In a utilitarian world, learning is first of all ‘located’ to some place and then given a particular time, fit into a schedule.

Even online education which should be open and less linear has in many instances been structured into a sequential process. If the digital age has so far taught us anything, it is that sequence should be based on multiple pathways and diverse strategies to learning. Learners want to map their direction based on a vast number of factors from state of mind, to the demands of everyday life.

This need to take control — manifested most fully in the rise of social media — has its own problems. For example, given the wealth of information that now suffuses everything that we do, how can we distinguish between good and bad information? This is a major issue for parents whose children are exposed to any number of questionable web sites and problematic claims from many different sources. But, the need to take control is also essential to the learning experience. After all, learning if it is to be valuable must also be seen to have value. Value is gained when learners feel some degree of empowerment from the process.

In this context, teachers have become curators as well as mentors and guardians of history. The word curator is derived from the Latin, “curator” which means overseer, manager and of importance to this discussion, guardian. Curator also comes from the word, to cure. The challenge is that curators have to be able to teach critical thinking.

In a utilitarian space, there is less and less time for historical and critical engagement with ideas. The rush is on to achieve a great deal as quickly as possible and the notion that for example, it might be important to spend some time on areas of study that seem peripheral to a set of pragmatic goals becomes less and less attractive.

In my next post in this series, I will explore contemplation which marks out a territory that is far more speculative than an overly utilitarian approach could ever permit.

Part 1 can be found here.

A Utilitarian World (1)

The Dilemmas of Learning              

Over the years (17 to be exact), this web site has turned into a vast enterprise. There are now no less than 1200 pages of material on the site and most of the articles and essays are original. I often comment on learning and research in education and industry. Today, I am beginning an occasional series that is part of my new book. So, I would appreciate any feedback and advice on this entry and others as they appear. I would like the book I am writing to reflect and incorporate the concerns and views of the large community of readers who visit Critical Approaches on a regular basis.

The work of research and learning, particularly in applied areas like design can be as pragmatic as required depending on the project or the demands of clients or the general challenge taken to various problems and issues. However, any learning process and research that is entirely governed and judged by pragmatic standards is rarely that useful. In saying this, I am trying to soften current trends and discussions among educational policymakers and the community that suggest that learning without a pragmatic outcome is not valuable and in the end will not add value to society or to the individual learner. The emphasis on outcomes in education has become so dominant that it seems almost heretical to raise some questions about it.

For example, a course in philosophy or ethnography may seem irrelevant to designers or engineers or medical practitioners. In fact, if you take a close look at the professional schools, there is a nod to the humanities in some of them, but for the most part, the curricula have narrowed to reflect the immediate challenges of the professions. Engineering schools often have courses in Technology and Society and do permit their students to take electives. But, the core training focuses on the perceived needs of specialized individuals to the exclusion of what are seen to be courses that are less important to the future employment of professionals. Martha Nussbaum has commented on this situation in her new book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010 Princeton University Press).

Part of the challenge here is that learning should not be narrow but also learning is by definition a process that is always unfinished. The idea that students can earn their qualifications in a linear and direct way actually contributes to failure unless the disciplines are very simple and the skills needed never evolve or change.

Three concepts to keep in mind here:

1. Learning is non-linear, therefore broad based skills provide students with multiple pathways to achieve the goals they set for themselves;
2. Pragmatism is not in and of itself a negative, but pragmatism in the service of limited outcomes decreases flexibility and inhibits creativity;
3. Professional disciplines need to integrate and not just pay lip service to other disciplines. 

Part Two will appear soon…… 

The Magic of Apple is really about the Magic of Design

The iPad came out last year and since then I have counted over 300 articles, commentaries and newspaper reports on both Apple as a company and as a cultural phenomenon with the iPad as the focus. I am sure that I have missed many hundreds more.

Most of the articles talk about Apple having a “magic touch” or “they seem to be magically aware of what consumers want.” Financial writers and researchers talk about a company whose valuations have gone into the stratosphere. The stock which just a few years ago was thirty dollars is now worth over 350 dollars.

So, what is all this magic about? I would like to suggest that there is only a little bit of magic and a great deal of wisdom. The wisdom is drawn from Apple’s intense connection to Design processes best exemplified by the central role played by Jonathan Ive, a graduate of the Royal College of Art and Senior Vice-President of Industrial Design at Apple. Ive is responsible for many of Apple’s innovations, including the iPad.

Design both as a profession and as a creative activity is not well understood. This has a great deal to do with the narrow base of knowledge of most commentators, but also reflects a general lack of comprehension about the role of the creative economy in the 21^st century.

For many, Design is “just” a craft, for others Design seems to be connected to architecture and engineering. For me, Design is about knowledge, knowledge production and the integration of knowledge into every aspect of how a company, community and learning institution works. Design is very much about putting intelligence into objects (see the work of James Dyson) as well as brokering relationships among creative people, entrepreneurs, outputs and audiences.

Designers often act like ethnographers. They learn how to examine everything from managerial processes in companies to how the best conditions for creative innovation can be generated from different clusters of people working within varied and often dramatically dissimilar contexts.

Most people work or live among clusters of people and for the most part, clusters are like networks. It is always a challenge to understand how information and intelligence flows through networks and designers are uniquely equipped to comprehend not only flow but the translation of relationships into productive innovation.

Apple from the start has always emphasized design not only to make computers look better, but also and more importantly in order to better understand how people use computers. This is why the Apple graphic user interface remains among the friendliest of any computer company and also why their mobile operating systems are transparently easy to use. Android comes close but only because they have copied Apple’s strategies. So, the magic of Apple is actually carefully designed and is evidence of some brilliant strategic choices, quite the opposite of the accidental. Good innovation most often gains its strength from good design, something Apple understood many years ago. 

Distractions, distractions……

I love the angst of commentators who deal with YOUTH in the digital age. They always seem to find the most negative things to say about contemporary culture and in particular anything to do with young people and their digital habits. Take as an example, David Carr of the New York Times. In a recent article Paying for Times at SXSW Carr talks about the multi-tasking and often disturbing young person who glances at their iPhone or Blackberry while engaging in conversations with others. I had a visit once from an individual who glanced at his Blackberry for the entire duration of our one hour meeting. Sure, this is disturbing but not because of the technology. Anyone who cannot maintain their connection with an interlocutor (daydreaming incessantly while I say important things!!), is saying as much about themselves as they are about the person they are not listening to. 

Conversations are by their very nature rather elliptical and fluid. This is after all why so much of what we say to each other goes off in many different directions, our words and sentences are often misinterpreted and more often than not we misunderstand each other. Distractions are at the core of the communications process. No one is ever fully attuned to an other and part of the challenge is to wend our way through this repetitive conundrum with some dignity and self-awareness. We need to stop blaming technology for modifying or creating habits that already exist! Perhaps then, we will actually take fuller control of our conversations and try and understand the inherent distortions as wonderful opportunities for further exploration and not as dead ends. Conversations, discussions and presentations gain their strength from our struggle to make ourselves understood which is why from time to time we are actually a little less distracted than usual!

TED (2)

Sunni Brown presented a defense of doodling. She suggested that doodling allows people to make spontaneous marks to help you think. Paul Nicklen who is Canadian shoots polar photography. It could also be described as extreme photography in difficult and challenging places. "National Geographic publishes pictures not excuses." What I really learned from him is that polar ice is actually an inverted garden with the seaweed hanging down. Fish live in close proximity to the ice. So do all the smaller bacterias and plankton that fish feed on. There are billions of anthropods underneath ice and these are one of the crucial links in the food chain.

Thomas Heatherwick is an extraordinary architect whose main goal is to bring the materiality of buildings into close contact with "soulfulness."

One the central but not declared themes of TED this year is visualization and data mining. Carlo Ratti has developed a method to understand the topography of cell phone use. Understanding this topography can encourage a deeper appreciation of the content that we exchange, but the problem with this approach is that it prioritizes the data over the message. Databases become messages and the depth of content, as well as its contradictions disappears within attractively designed maps and topographies.

Aaron Koblin suggested that the culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface. The interface becomes the message.

Julie Taymor gave a presentation that emphasized the importance of the ideograph both as metaphor and reality for the creative process. "Sunrises are important of course, but the telling is even more important."

One of the best presentations came from Salman Khan. Check out the Khan Academy on the Web where you will find 2200 courses on all sort of topics. He discussed the importance of a new commons for education and his talk was a genuinely important one for the future of education and learning in the 21st century.

More to come...