Teaching disruption… DisruptivelyDisruptionGood morning, I am Sonja Grussendorf, I am a Senior Learning Technologist at the LSE, the London School of Economics and in the next half hour I will explore, with you, the theme of disruption. What do we make of it, why do we embrace it – should we embrace it, what do we expect it might do for us, or indeed against us, in what way does it compel us (if indeed it does). Although I won’t draw too much on or delve into theoretical abstractions, I do want to question, together with you, notions such as disruption, innovation, transformation, immersion, change and resistance to change in education and of academic practice.

NEXT SLIDE: disruptive innovationThis conference came with a rallying cry, “inviting alertness to opportunities that may lie in gaps to deficits and opportunities (in education).” Its sub-theme of “breaks in continuity” evoked further the hidden, unclaimed, unpronounced, disordered, i.e. informal spaces that may harbour hidden treasures. So for me, here was a conference clearly designed for me to tell a story about Lourdes Sosa, an academic who came to us to realise an idea about how best to teach the concept of creative disruption/ disruptive innovation within the context of Management theory, her particular subject area.

The highlighted keywords, disrupting, transforming, practice, and established practice, all form a part of that story.

By the way, though I am reading this out, because I suck at ad-libbing or ex-temporising, do feel free to interrupt and I'll try to respond.

NEXT SLIDE narrative axisLourdes Sosa then: associate professor in the management department of the LSE provides me with the narrative axis around which I spin today's “discourse”. For a variety of courses – an executive summer school Management course at first, then an executive global masters in management, Lourdes decided to construct a session on the dynamics of creative destruction, that is the disruption of a market by the emergence of a radical technology. The theoretical concepts to be discussed were creative destruction, competition, patterns of innovation, competence- destroying innovation, inertia, efficiency vs innovation and of course disruption, resistance to change, important organisational themes. The formal, externally imposed (immutable) structure of the session was a three hour slot - time enough for a longish lecture and a discussion seminar style section that would relieve

and elevate the monological into the dialogical; and that constitutes the standard at the LSE: longish lecture, then a bit of seminar style. But Lourdes wanted to provide her students with an immersive experience and would therefore introduce disruptive elements to her teaching of 'disruption as a concept'.

There would be an hour of theoretical lecturing at. There would be an hour of interactive lecturing with, then there would be an hour of group work, reflection, discussion, feedback.

She used a range of technologies to create this immersion; the disruptive effect of technologies on their educational experience was to be their educational experience. Importantly, students needed to be oblivious to the change of format beforehand, so as to avoid preconceptions (or closed minds). The point was not to orchestrate a particular chaos, but to provide a disruption, that is it was a rather well-orchestrated pretence at chaos.

After the first hour in which she treated theoretical concepts, the class took a break, while Lourdes secretly moved to a different room, from which we live streamed her back into the lecture hall after the break, and where she now asked students to suggest aspects of market economy they wanted to explore further. Students could see and hear her, but she could only "hear them" via Twitter, so there'd be (almost) synchronous but very much mediated communication. Content and communication were key, but the delivery method was unfamiliar. Topics were scribbled on a whiteboard, streamed alongside Lourdes to the students. Votes on topics were conducted via our LSE PRS system. Students tweeted their thoughts and ideas. After about 20 minutes, Lourdes returned to the classroom, debriefed the students, and continued with the next part of her teaching, separating students into teams to discuss various concepts and come back to present on their group findings.I observed the very first of these teaching interventions and provided some assistance to students who were struggling with Twitter or the voting system. I can happily confirm that the disruption was pretty chaotic, but it also went exactly as planned.

NEXT SLIDE immediate questions/ objectionsI know what objections will be raised in your mind - because i have heard them in plenty of discussions before. (And I list here those that come from my own colleagues and from the reviewers of my draft abstract)1. This is a singe subjective experiment - what does it prove, how is it replicable, how can it tell us enough to decide whether or not it is successful? To which I would answer that it is not a single experiment in eLearning, but a simple case of an immersive "teaching intervention"2. It presents a false model of online education, and in any case, the technologies used are not new, but mainstreamTo which the answer is, there is no model of online education that is juxtaposed to traditional education and between which the students have to make a choice.. There is only an immersive learning experience of technology, disrupting. 3. The students themselves asked if the session shouldn't have been rehearsed, it might have been less uncomfortable to get used to the change - to which the answer is that it would lose an important part of the immersion: new technologies aren't designed as

disruptions, they disrupt. They bring change, and change is uncomfortable. The experience of discomfort was part of the message.

NEXT SLIDE academic practiceAnd so at this point we see that Lourdes' project was about academic practice. Lourdes explored the opportunities of teaching, she adapted her academic practice to provide an immersive experience that allowed the students to feel and learn by doing what they had moments before discussed theoretically. The objective was not to disrupt, but to experience disruption by technology, or technological possibilities. The objective was for the students to be disturbed only to the extent that they gain a sense of disturbance, of discomfort. And all the while, their experience was bracketed, or indeed buffered by teacher support and control and guidance. Their experience was an immersion.

NEXT SLIDE immersionAn immersive experience is a category of experiential learning. Lourdes told me: If you think of dry cleaning, the value of the service is not for us to stay there during the cleaning, you want to come back to clean clothes. "This is NOT the view we should have about education. The value of education is mostly created while you are there. It is not only about what you learn, but how you learn it. Any teaching approach should therefore always somehow involve a sort of immersion, so that the student can perceive the knowledge as being created with his or her participation. One of the ideas that i wanted to share was that some of the features of the old technology are still wanted but yet you have to forego them because the new technology in total will create more value. For this contrast to come across and to explain why there is resistance to change very often inside organisations, but not among consumers outside the organisations is for students to try that. And so that is why I devised an immersion where students are suddenly, after a break, taught in a different way. Most reacted to say it was brilliant. It made them think. But they also reported discomfort. Often i am asked would it have been good to have a rehearsal, but then it looses the immersion. If you think that education is an experience good, then you really need to get the message along the experience (of discomfort)"

NEXT SLIDE reflectionA key to the success of her teaching intervention – and the feedback from the students was overwhelmingly positive – was that the students reflected on their experience in the context of the theoretical concepts they had learnt the hour before. They weren’t asked to reflect on technology in teaching, they weren’t asked to compare two different models of teaching,

they weren’t asked to comment on the pros and/or cons of a falsely set up online learning experience. They were asked to reflect on the concept of creative disruption/ disruptive innovation and related notions, such as change, discomfort, resistance to change, organisational behaviour ... After having experienced disruption by and with technology, an experience which by all accounts - their accounts - aided them in their theoretical understanding and reflection.

NEXT SLIDE changeSo now I am halfway through, and as I have laid out in parts what Lourdes’ use of technology in teaching exemplifies about academic practice, experiential learning, and disruptive innovation as a concept in her field, I want to turn to change and transformation in our field. Lourdes' students experienced disruption and change in order to understand 'disruption' and 'change'. Lourdes changed her, and standard, academic practice only insofar it would aid students to learn by doing, within fairly uncontroversial parameters. So Lourdes' teaching is NOT exemplary of radical change, upheaval, or chaos. It is exemplary of good academic practice. It is exemplary of small change, incremental innovation, pockets of good practice.

Now turning to ourselves, us (eLearning) practitioners we want to, need to, and do effect change, we introduce and manage change, and (try to) break down resistance to change. That is because we are aware that things HAVE to change because technology disrupts, has already disrupted the education sector, and not always wholly for the better, but irrevocably so. We are not however change mongers, we are rather change managers.

NEXT SLIDE transformationAnd yet, at least speaking for myself, we are also often frustrated at the small scale changes we observe, frustrated by the smallness of it. In preparation for this talk today I have been reading an awful lot of papers that start with“eLearning concept x will transform teaching as we know it” or “it has long been said that eLearning will transform the education sector, but it hasn't”. Papers which hail the arrival of a "new technology or concept which will radically alter education as we know it; Other papers which deliver evidence that the promised revolution is still outstanding. And we wait. We wait as we endure a continuous cycle of enthusiasm giving way to inertia, despondency, despair, slowly coming up to enthusiasm again as we turn to another project or read about another disruptive technology elsewhere in the world which we believe might just about... Well, what? Why do we want to transform? Because we care. Because students tell us that they think they're being short changed and we believe we can make things better for them. And we want to transform academic practice, to enhance teaching and learning. We want to transform only that which we see as lacking or flawed, not because

transformation is "always better" than conservation, not because new technology is always better than old technology.Change managers, not change mongers.

Next Slide: detour: Airbnb, UberBut here is a question, too: why is it so hard to effect transformative change in our sector? Where are the educational equivalents of Airbnb and Uber? Those two things have ‘completely transformed their respective sectors’, ‘radically changed the hospitality sector. Put all black cab drivers out of business’.Except of course they have not.

For one, while they are good examples of how technologies have disrupted a market, here as elsewhere that disruption is not a revolution, or a transformation, merely a market change phenomenon (technology has added value to the service, but that does not equal ‘transformation’). More importantly however, to compare hotels or chauffeur services to the education sector is unrealistic in terms of scale. Education is vast like 'parliamentary democracy' or 'the legal system'. Using terms like radical overhaul and sector-wide disruption are part of telling a colourful story.

NEXT SLIDE: Rhetoric This brings me to rhetoric. I suggest we pay attention to rhetoric, where it is at work, why it is at work and how it does its work. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. A conference like today's is a battlefield of rhetoric, as we try to convince each other of our research, our thoughts, experiences, findings, the value of our work. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device; and grand themes, hopes and dreams are convincing as they pull us with them. That is not a bad thing. Rhetoric is not a bad thing, it can be entirely in the service of the public sector good. But we should be aware of it, alert to it, of who uses it and what their agenda is.

NEXT SLIDE buzzAnd we should certainly distinguish rhetoric from hype. Hype, I suggest, is recognisable by buzz words, and, by a lack of substance. Hype tries to convince too, but without grounded argument. A rhetorician is not a the same as a car salesman or a mattress king. There is value in persuading others of joining your cause, believing in your ideas, convincing through well-thought out as well as well-crafted argument. At any conference, we each want to to convince the other of our views, why else would we stand here? I would suggest that hype on the other hand should make us at least a little suspicious, even if it can be seductive, because it is so very LOUD.

In order to distinguish between hype and reasonable idea, we might start with the following question:

NEXT SLIDE: Cui bono? Who benefits from the hype? Who benefits from introducing new systems which promise the world - which promise revolution, transformation, radical change?

Let’s say a university roughly contains three main stakeholders or agencies, students, faculty and administrators, where by administrators I don't mean departmental administrators, but the ones who keep the place running, the senior management team, the director, vice chancellor, "the administration".

Who should benefit from new systems? The concerns (such as cost-effectiveness) of the administration are by no means unimportant, but if a learning system, a learning technology etc is introduced to the school on the grounds of "improving teaching, learning, research", then it is those grounds that should command our attention. I would suggest that student concerns (learning enhancement) and faculty (teaching and research quality) should most benefit from learning technologies. And to link this back to our desire to transform: I believe we can be satisfied with achieving small transformations, and we can be proud of effecting change in the small in between places, the gaps.

NEXT SLIDE: cautionSo to get to some sort of point, when we are on the up, back to being enthusiastic embracers of something, a new technology, or a new technological approach which we think might make a difference to , we should certainly explore these opportunities. But we should have these as our watch words, our “watch concepts”:• Patience (we should not expect too much, but ready to embrace change if its

benefits are to students and academic staff)• Research (we should consult the research experts in our sector, rather than to sales

hype)• Reflection (we should look forward but also back on past promises, to see if we

might have ‘been there before’)

Of course I am not saying anything new here, but I suggest that this advice bears repeating.

FINAL SLIDE: small messageI end then with a rather small message: transformation is desirable, if a need for it has been identified. Disruption can be embraced if it pulls us along a path of improving learning, teaching, research too.

In short, I think I am making a(n uncharacteristic) plea for moderation.