The Meaning of Plus

Wicket the Ewok and his Luddite comrades destroy the technologically advanced Imperial AT-ST walkers.

I've been feeling uneasy with recent discussions about Blackboard, iLearn, and other course management systems/learning management systems (CMS/LMS) for a few reasons. First, it seems to me that we are, through our humanist criticisms of the systems, more and more becoming Luddites, the group and labour movement of the 18th-19th centuries that aggressively resisted the Industrial Revolution and technological advancement by destroying machinery. To be clear, I do include myself here in the collective first-person plural because I, too, balk at the cold, impersonal qualities of CMS/LMS.

The term Luddite, to me, has several connotations. It suggests pro-human-ability. In this case, I think our Luddism may be virtuous for being in favour of a physical classroom that needs structure, design, and maintenance--basically the human touch. Conversely, it thus also suggests anti-automation, which is more of a mixed sentiment because it's a matter of efficiency, and whatever values we attach to it in different contexts. Therefore, the CMS has un/favourable qualities depending on the situation. But the term also suggests complacency and anti-progression, which is the one that worries me the most. It occurs to me that, while we criticise the impersonal CMS/LMS, we're not really looking forward at how to use it. Our resistant attitudes aren't really helping the student, who, according to Stephanie Coopman, is much more active in an online setting. We may consider it to be useful to store syllabi, readings, other documents, but I don't feel as though we're really trying to figure out how to use it effectively. CMS aren't very conducive of discussion--so how can we make it that way? I don't have an answer myself, but am heading toward a better understanding of my own resistance:

Alpha 60 narrates: "Sometimes... reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form... which enables it to spread all over the world."

In his Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard creates a society that has become a complete technocracy--authority and power are not held by those with wealth, but by those with knowledge and skills. While not quite there, our reality is slowly moving away from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Likewise, as we become more and more technocratic, it becomes crucial for all involved--students, teachers, administrators--to have the know-how and skills to effectively maneuver CMS interfaces.

Alpha 60, the menacing supercomputer that monitors society, states ominously, "Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus." We've figured out that learning requires the variables "curiosity, destruction, presence, patience, effort, work, engagement, participation, doing, digestion, creation, need." We can add up these variables and solve the equation when "plus" means the pedagogy of the physical classroom discussion. We just need to use these same variables to solve the equation when "plus," instead, refers to the pedagogy of the CMS forum discussion.