That humans think automatically, 2. Over the past ten years, I have worked so hard to build trust within my family. But co-optation of learning and higher ed as a wholesale entity is, for me, a different story. What does it mean to tell an aspirational narrative? I didn’t follow this falling out closely, but my sense is that they didn’t like the book because it is, in part, consumerist in its recommendations to students about how they should think about their education. I think the fear is that entities with great prestige, such as elite universities, well resourced philanthropies, mainstream media outlets and the like are at a distinct advantage in creating and selling grand narratives at the expense of more nuanced explanations. There would be some truth to that statement too. If those stories are failure stories, then how would a success story be different? If there is a more effective strategy or a higher goal for “changing the narrative,” I would like to understand what it is. They are something we have, not something we are. This is where I think the focus on first principles is useful (what does it really mean to be open, how does massive change the equation, etc). Marketing has those kind of words too – “engagement”, or “insight”, or “disruption”. Stories of overcoming oppression and pain create aspirational narratives that promote change and a view of a better world. This is going to transform our university! Not in institutional terms or journal articles, but in the media, where people with decision-making power can hear them and begin to believe they’re valid & valuable. So I don’t think we can make cMOOCs fit the formula without twisting it out of shape (or perhaps some MIT professor will take it up as a pet cause, at which point he (always a he) will be seen as the father of MOOCs and connectivism). You work very hard to help people in dire circumstances, as do many physicians. There does need to be a shared understanding among academics of what we can aspire for an education to do for students beyond ticking fairly low-level competency boxes and giving them pieces of paper to get them over a basic employability hurdle. They will write about the things that fit their definition of news. Bryan Stevenson: It’s time to change the narrative around race and poverty. I see that already happening (with potential for even more activity), even if it isn’t reported as a story about cMOOCs. I am missing the theory of cultural change. Another way to change your narrative is to add the word “yet” to any situation. Changing the Narrative - | cMOOC xMOOC review |... Changing the Narrative - | Informática E... Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: The Battle for “Open”. We think socially, and 3. … This makes the definition of our desirable self and our future narrative acts of enormous importance. But we see it as a part of organizing, a set of tools to use to help us build support and create real change. My point in the panel, for what it’s worth, was that GIVEN our human tendency to gravitate towards simple stories, we better learn to tell our stories about education better. Please make the MOOC by next week.”, Somebody in the faculty senate declares, “I heard that MOOCs give you cancer and melt the polar ice caps.”. It can mean getting a broader picture of the problem and seeing it from another person’s point of view. The sense I got is that everybody is really grappling with the questions of where we can take the concept of a “MOOC” and what MOOCishness might be good for. That can’t be glossed over. One of the great things about his story is that he doesn’t buy into the idea that one has to choose between providing a rich and empowering liberal arts education and improving students’ marketability. (Arguably they did that a long time ago and this is just edtech Groundhog Day, but that is maybe another conversation). Narrative change is an intentional effort to replace an existing narrative with something new. Note that we are talking here about narrative in the dramaturgical sen… Like you and I talked about at the Mexican restaurant the first night, giving administrators or potential learners a slightly better, slightly more complex box to open: one that isn’t just full of hot air that bears no relationship to viable learning. Anya’s book title could have been simply DIY U: Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Education. Learn about ageism, the business case for older workers, the power of intergenerational relationships and much more on our blog. So this is an emerging success story from the little movement that everyone had written off in 2012, not failure. The Power of Communication In Relationships. You could also say that “edupunk” infected or informed the narrative about the student debt crisis. The best you can do, according to this view of the world, is continually destabilize the dominant narrative—to challenge people to look, for a moment, beyond the easy and search for the true. Narrative therapy is a psychological approach that seeks to adjust the stories one tells about one’s life in order to bring about positive change and better mental health. We must be creative and rigorous in building the research foundation for narrative change. You could say that the term “edupunk” was co-opted, and there would be some truth to that statement. There are other narratives that could have served her purpose. When Bryan Stevenson spoke about the narrative of fear and anger, he added: “I will tell you that you can’t do justice rooted in fear and anger. Find out more about our campaigns and ways to get involved in ending ageism. Narratives do shift from the roots, and I have the sense of a common narrative coalescing slowly in recent years, around openness, and around connectivism. It is about how learning and knowledge are understood. Do you imagine that Thomas Friedman or David Brooks would pick it up and carry the flag forward? There is some very good exploration happening now. Stephen (and Bonnie), I think part of the potential of connectivism and cMOOCs is to go beyond developing “it” and to more broadly influence and change in a positive direction the online ed world. Small steps each day will create a new reality. One way to change the narrative is to build better tools, offer better opportunities for learning, create new ways for learners to get recognition, and improve peoples’ lives. So my point, I guess, to Bonnie is that there is probably no way to tell our story sufficiently well, sufficiently simply and sufficiently broadly to attract the attention of media – not only US media but even media in our own countries. It is not easy to uncover and change deeply rooted narratives. Learn more. As far as I’m concerned, the connectivist/open ed crowd has been spectacularly, stunningly successful at “changing the narrative,” and I’m not at all clear what it would look like to somehow do it differently. With “MOOC,” we can ask questions like, “Really, what do we mean by ‘massiveness’ and ‘openness’, and why (and how, and where) are those useful features of an educational experience?” No such possibility would exist in “Internet-scale Courses.”. If learning is basically “transmission” of generally accepted general knowledge, then if you take the Net and a set of technologies, at some point someone will invent a prototype xMOOC. Despite the fact that Anya explicitly cited Jim and some of his peers as sources of inspiration for her book, the edupunk crowd was not amused. Journalist Anya Kamenetz picked up this term in her book DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. narrative meaning: 1. a story or a description of a series of events: 2. a particular way of explaining or…. Prioritize area (s) of life. Wow. Pinpoint negative narrative. It raises questions for the reader: What is an edupunk? Once I did that, my entire journey shifted. "to change the narrative" is standard jargon meaning "to change the framework within which events are perceived and interpreted". But Morozov’s provocations are important, I’d argue (even if folks feel they’re impolite) as the adjective “open” becomes ascendant, or indeed, as “open” wins. One can buy this much of the theory without buying the idea that meaning is radically relative, but connectivists in particular should grok this concept. – change or conflict (the bigger the better, disruption is ideal, and preferably change that is opposed by unions, workforce, residents, etc) It’s not about wresting “MOOC” back to its roots a la edupunk, or fighting co-optation. To grow less anxious, start acting and achieving your goals. So building that shared narrative should perhaps focus first and foremost on those issues. While messages are ephemeral, humans connect and remember stories and narrative thanks to the basic elements of story-building. Adapted from a paper by Brett Davidson ‘Narrative change’ seems to be a catch-phrase at present. Warning: This post is long and lit crit wonkish. What do punks have to do with edupreneurs, or the coming transformation of higher education? I wanted to challenge the norm, the narrative, and the way I valued myself. Usually the word “narrative” was brought up. They *might* (and should) write about the $16 million grant that you got. Where did that term come from? Narrative change can lead to shifts in attitudes, behaviors, practices and policies — and can lead to deeper and lasting changes in systems and cultures. But imagine if they had latched onto or made up a different term, like “Internet-scale Courses (ISC)”. Not so much that media would actually notice it even if they were in a room full of connectivists (they were, and they didn’t). Or whatever. And with everybody on the thread. So yeh, changing the narrative doesn’t mean one new narrative, but moving away from the One MOOC to Rule Them All mentality/vision of our educational future, IMO. Jim Groom observed that even the famously curmudgeonly Stephen Downes appeared to be enjoying himself, and I would make a similar observation about the famously curmudgeonly Jonathan Rees. In this post-pivot moment, what conversation would that have provoked? I wouldn’t have BEEN in Texas last week were it not for that crazy train, which I think is in part your point to Stephen in the reply above. But this talk of “alternative narratives” or, as Bonnie put it, “changing the narrative”, confuses me. Jim mentioned it in his blog post: At the same time[,] Bon Stewart’s admonitions for some kind of organized response to start filling the temporary void of direction with alternative narrative still rings in my ears—and it is very much the lesson I took away from Audrey Watters keynote at OpenEd. The events of this summer continue to prove that we must change our national racial narrative to keep moving forward together. We are at one of those rare moments when there’s enough confusion that real conversation happens and possibilities open up. The narrative will change. Phil and I aren’t thinking about e-Literate TV as a work of critique—we’re just not that smart—but I suppose you could say that one of our goals with it is to change, or at least destabilize, narratives. (Major congratulations, by the way.) Before there was “MOOC,” there was “edupunk.” Jim coined this term in 2008 as a way of describing an anti-consumerist educational ethos. And somewhere in the NYT hype, the future of learning and higher ed got not only conflated with MOOCs but with a marketized fantasy in which it appears natural that for-profit companies can offer free mass learning for everybody with no downsides. Given this view of the world, what does it mean to “change the narrative” or “create alternative narratives”? A narrative, story or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) For The Professional Stepdad Podcast host and father of five, Franco Zavala, this means shifting the way the world sees the label ‘step.’. […], […] is an excellent post in which Michael Feldstein reflects on the conference in a bit less of a sensationalistic and a bit […], […] He comments on another post in e-Literate blog by Michael Feldstein «Changing the Narrative» […], […] He comments on another excellent post in e-Literate blog by Michael Feldstein «Changing the Narrative» […], […] As Phil mentioned, he and I were both lucky to attend the MOOC Research Initiative conference, which was a real tour de force. This is precisely what was so inspiring about the MOOC conference, and it’s the most that we know how to aspire to. What does it mean to ‘change the narrative’? It considers people the experts on their own lives and views them as separate from their problems. You need to change the underlying narrative. I have largely put away the theoretical tools that I learned as a graduate student in media studies, but one that has stayed with me is the notion of critique in the Derridian sense. | bavatuesdays, The greatest MOOC conference in the history of MOOCs | Monstrous Thoughts, Where’s all the Dominant Narratives at? There is just one final thing to say. I only let it feed my self-doubt. But one thing that I did take away from Derrida (and Foucault, in a different way) is that there is an inherent, inevitable, and eternal tendency in human culture to develop simple stories about what is. What does it mean to ‘change the narrative’? As Bon Stewart says there is a need to build a shared narrative. I said no. We are making a MOOC. And this brings me back to the thing that I don’t get. Or frankly, viable business models for higher ed. You’ve grown into the habit of negative thoughts. Stories make sense through the context of a narrative which ultimately proposes responsibility and action, bringing our audience into a shared vision sustaining a deeper narrative to change underlying assumptions. The question Dave asked toward the end of the panel was would we rather start again with a new word, to separate from the DisruptionTsunami side of the Two Solitudes I’d talked about. By the way, I think Jim provided us with a fantastic example of this in his presentation on the Domain of One’s Own. Identify patterns. For The Professional Stepdad Podcast host and father of five, Franco Zavala, this means shifting the way the world sees the label ‘step.’ Here’s what he had to say, re-posted from Momish Moments: If you think about ‘changing the narrative,’ think about the movie, Jaws. I think you actually said this better to me in a side conversation at the conference. When we’ve actually been pretty successful here? Successful Change … So, there’s that. This list was created by Beth Hallowell and Jos Truitt from their workshop, "How to change a narrative: A guide for activists and peacebuilders," at AFSC's 2017 Centennial summit. As a stepparent, I don’t want to be compared, labeled, or seen as anything else other than someone who stepped up and committed to the journey. Co-optation of “MOOC” is irrelevant, to me. Here’s what he had to say, re-posted from Momish Moments: If you think about ‘changing the narrative,’ think about the movie, Jaws. So while it may seem when you see a series of these conferences in a row that we’re completely hung up on the narrative, I think ultimately it’s related to our success, and I think the minute that it gets too theoretical and detached from real action, the community corrects itself. Part of my point is that we need to have a realistic understanding of how these narratives work and what is and is not possible. Posted on December 8, 2013. What Are Narrative and Narrative Change? I think the best way to start tackling the latter problem is to create dialog among the individual campus communities. A strategic narrative can set the change within a clear and inspiring journey, helping employees to understand this context and relate it to their own experiences. The problem is with a single (especially state sponsored, legitimate, official) grand narrative. – profile (study, book or plan by someone from Yale, MIT, Stanford, Harvard, or maybe Princeton or Berkeley, in a pinch a 2nd tier US university (like UPenn)) I’ll start with Michael Feldstein’s thoughtful post “Changing the Narrative” that does an excellent job framing one of the concerns that arose in Arlington: the open education […], […] Reading Michael Feldstein, my impression, after experiencing a MOOC debate at EDUCA Berlin, and following #mri13, is that the narratives issue raised by Bon Stewart is and discussed also by Jim Groom, is not about MOOCs at all. Problems don’t define us. There was a lot of conversation, really throughout the conference but coming to a head at the end, that the term of MOOC is somehow damaged goods and that…something…should be done about it. I think that Jim expresses this difficulty very well in his response to this post. If we examine the way we view and define the problems we face, we can explore different ways to look at them and transform the effect the problems have in … To change the narrative is either to (a) change the cMOOC story into something that fits the story above, or (b) change the formula above into something that fits cMOOCs. How is it different from what has already happened with “edupunk” and “MOOC”? He was rejecting LMSs, course cartridges, PowerPoint decks, and other tools that tend to encourage (in his view) the notion of education as something that can be packaged and delivered. | Impact of Social Sciences, The campus president announces, “I just met with the very nice people at [insert commercial MOOC vendor]. You change the narrative by changing the reality. But when I discuss those issues, the differing opinions (tend to) appear to be informed by different understandings of what learning is, and of how knowledge is. What we see happening on campuses is something like this: We want to challenge both the president’s and the faculty member’s narratives, not because we want to replace them with a “better” or “truer” one, but because the most interesting conversations happen when people on both sides of the argument start realizing that the situation is more complicated than they thought it was. Stephen, I agree that the right way forward is to build something. If the best we can say for the college education that we are delivering is that it provides the same value as waiting on line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, then we are in deep trouble. Public narratives around criminal justice offer an example of how this idea plays out in practice. In this case, I believe the xMOOC proponents were largely unaware of the connectivist work when they took up the term. Change management require a compelling change story, communicating it to employees and following it up with ongoing communications and involvement. The only way to change to formula itself is to ignore it, and focus on building something that can’t be ignored. As Phil mentioned, he and I were both lucky to attend the MOOC Research Initiative conference, which was a real tour de force. But I was only sucessful because I chose to be different in my approach as a stepfather. That said, does it feel a bit omphaloskeptic to talk each and every conference about the narrative? The role of narrative change in influencing policy. Discovering worth: Junior Abby Sullivan wants to help others based on her own struggles. And that’s the narrative I think we need to take on. One thing happened toward the end of the conference that has me puzzled, though. It is a powerful contributor to social change. I never knew that the fact that things were difficult or hard could mean many things. First, let’s state some basics as we understand them here at Beemgee: a story consists of events that are related by a narrator; events consist of actions carried out by characters; characters are motivated, they have reasons for the things they do; there is conflictinvolved; one and the same story may be told in different ways, that is, have varying narratives. I suspect that “MOOC” was a convenient term that they and others latched onto without giving it a lot of deep thought. They are just different sets of perspectives that clash in the marketplace of ideas. One narrative we should be particularly careful of is the narrative of co-optation. Phil and I spent a lot of the time interviewing folks for a future e-Literate TV series (coming to a computing device near you in March or April of 2014), so we were lucky to hear a lot of perspectives. At The Opportunity Agenda, we define narrative as “a Big Story, rooted in shared values and common themes, that influences how audiences process information and make decisions.” Narratives are conveyed in the political and policy discourse, but also in news media, popular culture, social media, and at dinner tables across communities. These stories are always wrong, in part because they are simple. The co-option in the MOOC context is perhaps simply a question of people applying their understanding of learning to an idea. “Narrative change” is a hot communication buzzword right now. Tim O’Reilly is a well-liked guy, not simply a powerful one. ... We have to start talking about what it would mean to be fully engaged in crime prevention, to alleviate the conditions that give rise to criminality. Narratives enable leaders to change the direction of the organization without disrespecting the hard work past leaders and employees have invested in it. Bonnie, I agree that the way to do that is to start with slightly more complex stories on the local level. Bon Stewart made a nice clear distinction on the Venus blog between credentialling (where the money is), and learning (which appears to me to be where the cMOOC is). It’s not that the narrative doesn’t need to be changed or that the press coverage isn’t horrible or that corporate influence isn’t at a level that we would have considered obscene twenty years ago. Like, oh, learning. You say this: “the connectivist/open ed crowd has been spectacularly, stunningly successful at ‘changing the narrative’.” But as Phil Hill points out in another post, the only media coverage of the most significant gathering of cMOOC people ever is of some fairly minor UPenn study of xMOOCs. More broadly. I can see where it can feel like that, but I don’t think of it that way. Nuance as a virus. But at the moment, I am having a failure of imagination. Replace it with affirmation (new thought) Developing sustainable habits is possible. I believe it was the former in this case. So “changing the narrative” isn’t getting Thomas Friedman to write about connectivism. Or networks. Is there a world in which an original idea like “edupunk” or “MOOC’ could both become dominant and remain true to its roots? | Ida Brandão - Doutoramento, Changing the Narrative | Ida Brandão - Doutoramento. But it’s not really a problem to have differing communities of discourse. In the run up to the Changing Narrative sessions at OPEN 2018 we interviewed Indra Adnan, Co-Initiator of The Alternative UK with Pat Kane, and contributor to CTRLshift about the evolving landscape of real, local politics. The only way to make the cMOOC story fit is to give it profile and money, and maybe make it more controversial. Changing the Narrative is a strategic communications and awareness campaign to increase understanding of ageism and to shift how Coloradans think about aging. Philanthropy can support that research as well as the creative partnerships and strategy needed to reframe the story of poverty in the United States. Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig cited Salman Khan as their inspiration; I don’t recall them ever mentioning George Siemens, Stephen Downes, or David Cormier. Good thing we have blogs. Too many change programs don’t fully deliver due to lack of foundations – a clear and compelling reason for the change, understood and bought into. The education system is not doing all that well, and the Internet offers opportunities for more people to get involved and experiment, and come up with better ways. Jim Groom observed that even the famously curmudgeonly Stephen Downes appeared to be enjoying himself, and I would make …  […], […] Not surprisingly, Morozov’s article about Tim O’Reilly wasn’t well-received in many open government, open source, and open data circles. You must demonstrate your commitment to narrative change. Audrey Watters has been writing about the need to know our history. I don’t understand what they mean here. You may be right, it’s probably not true to say we have to change the narrative as much as it is to say we should continue to do what we have done best, which is to infect the dominant narrative with history, context, unseen possibilities. I think I agree with YOU. The higher ed media outlets are going to write about UPenn, and they’re going to write about retention. That’s my challenge to every stepparent who comes across our page — let’s change the narrative — together. In that movie, everything centers on this predisposed fear around the narrative of sharks and why they’re scary. Oh, wait. – money (preferably US venture capitalist money, foundation money, or in a pinch, government money). Perhaps what is needed is a shared undersanding of what might be involved in a “literacy” of learning. Now I can chant something dreamy, like: ‘ think positive!’ but we all know simple things like that won’t really work. (Anya’s Gates-funded sequel, The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Credential, is essentially a consumers’ guide.) The secret is to identify the ideas that trigger a narrative reset, that get your brain out of a negative spiral, and into a productive mindset. […], […] MOOC Express – Less Hype, More Hope Jim Groom: De-Icing the MOOC Conference Michael Feldstein: Changing the Narrative Bonnie Stewart: the post-MOOC-hype landscape: what’s REALLY next? It means to change the way you look at things, such as life in general, or a particular opinion on a matter. You can’t fix this. Tags:Anya Kamenetz, David Cormier, George Siemens, Jacques Derrida, Jim Groom, Jonathan Rees, MRI13, Peter Norvig, Peter Thiel, Salman Khan, Sebastian Thrun, Stephen-Downes. The story of “MOOC” is different but it shares some important characteristics. All these horribles are true, but as you said, I think correctly, the open pedagogy crowd has been “punching above its weight” the past 12 months. More simply. Martin Weller: The Iceland of […], Where’s all the Dominant Narratives at? http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/12/11/what-will-happen-to-moocs-now-that-udacity-is-leaving-higher-ed.aspx?m=1, […] to try and capture a few of them. My impression, experiencing a MOOC debate at EDUCA Berlin, and following #mri13, is that the narrative issue is not about MOOCs at all. Whatever we’re used to, whatever we’ve been told — that becomes our norm, our narrative. See this list and others from the summit online at