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Buzzwords Are Stifling Innovation In College Teaching
jyosim writes: Tech marketers brag about the world-changing impact of 'adaptive learning' and other products, but they all mean something different by the buzzword. On the other side of it, professors are notoriously skeptical of companies, and crave precise language. Richard Culatta, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, says the buzzwords have thus become a major obstacle to improving teaching on campuses, since these tribes (professor and ed-tech vendors) must work together.
Here's a buzzword with no common meaning: Online classes.
Does it mean:
The class meets in a traditional classroom, but assignments are submitted electronically?
There is no class meeting? Only assignments are posted online. There is no lecture and students work independently?
The class meets online in realtime?
Only a recording of the classroom lecture is available online?
FWIW, I am a community college prof and have seen ALL of the above describe "online" learning.
This faculty comment pretty much sums it up:
"Curiosity, imagination and critical understanding are reduced to rodent responses in an academic Skinner-box."
Sadly, this might acually be better than sitting in a 300-student lecture taught by an adjunct.
How can you maximize the advantages of outcome-based education, without standardized linguistics targeted to areas of core competencies? Hiring managers have expressed interest in consensus oriented, business ready, net native, grey hats, who speak in code and collaborate in dynamic non-traditional employment. To breed a culture of millenial code beasts, we must reach into their social sphere, and peer coach them with best practices.
You're referring to jargon. Jargon is a set of specialized terms that people familiar with a field use to talk about it. Jargon terms have more specific meanings than regular terms. Using them with outsiders is bad.
The article is talking about buzzwords. Buzzwords are terms that have less specific meaning than plain language. They're designed to be general, nonspecific and impressive sounding. You use them to mislead, obscure, or impress.