Just-In-Time Curricula: Credit Hours, Competencies, and/or Care?

Date
2019-09-26
Authors
Boyle, Casey
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Abstract
In 2013, The U.S. Department of Education stipulated that federal student financial aid can be spent not only on “credit hours”, the standard measurement of achievement in higher education, but on “competencies.” These moves away from “seat-time” (as well as traditional instructors) intensify concerns about education in a digital age, many of which Bernard Stiegler identified in Taking Care of Youth and the Generations (2010). For Stiegler, digital networks/entertainment industries circumvent long-established material networks of education. The changes demonstrate that higher education is adopting more corporation logic for a “just-in-time” production model that leverages digital networks to solve assumed “brick-and-mortar” problems. Rather than uphold the boundaries and resist these changes, in what ways might higher education institutions leverage the tensions enacted by competing physical networks alongside emerging practices of instant digital education? In response, my presentation attempts to affirmatively engage our “problem” by examining the contours of an emerging “just-in-time curricula” whose goal would not be to smash boundaries but to work with/against them through a new approach to digital education.
Description
Digital Frontiers Session: Education, Dark Reboot
Keywords
digital education, curriculum, credit hours, competencies, just-in-time curricula
Citation
Boyle, C. (2019). Just-in-time curricula: Credit hours, competencies, and/or care?. [Conference presentation]. Digital Frontiers Annual Conference, Austin, TX, United States.