student learning

Digital Didactical Design is neither a step-by-step guide for developing educational curriculum, nor a compendium of creative teaching methodologies tweaked by the latest digital technologies. It is, however, a thought-provoking treatise aimed at educational institutions, teachers, and decision-makers in need of a better understanding of learning in a digital world. Readers are reminded that “instead of focusing too much on new technology-driven designs or content design” (13) attention should be placed on developing Digital Didactical Design that facilitates meaningful and deep learning.

Equipped with research gathered in varied cultural and educational settings, Jahnke challenges educators to develop teaching methods that appeal to a variety of learning preferences that fall “outside-the-lines.” The author claims that many educational institutions remain fixated on a hierarchical, trickle down, teacher-student relationship that does not take into full consideration the varieties of learners in any classroom context. She also believes there has been an over reliance on the written text as a means of disseminating information. To facilitate greater surface and deep learning, Jahnke calls for a transformation of the language and mindset shaping didactical design and teaching at all levels – from early primary to tertiary.

The book proposes certain key concepts as departure points for shaping a pro-active educational design that merges digital media and learning into new communication spaces called “CrossActionSpaces.” These space are seen as “dynamic, overlayered, expanded… where the boundaries of physical buildings and walls are somewhat irrelevant” (18).

Learning communities, Jahnke believes, exist as much in cyber space as within the classroom, taking place across several boundaries to thousands of humans who are online, in different settings. In such a milieu, human communication becomes a catalyst for shrinking the distance between people, culture, and knowledge, and acts as a new form of social action (73).

Another key concept put forward by Jahnke is the idea of “learning expeditions rather than that of learning experiences which are seen as more open ended” (99). In such an environment, formal structures and processes for teaching and learning combine to create communities where students and teacher are co-collaborators and sojourners of learning content.

Additionally, readers are asked to consider learning as a social process constructed within an inclusive offline and online community. Instead of arranging learning around lectures and workshops, Jahnke contends that learning should be more open ended, student centric, and should emphasize social action and active learning, rather than information consumption (186).

Digital Didactical Design is a reminder that the traditional teaching space is no longer the central metaphor (197). In its place has come a greater need for peer reflective learning, group activities, and collaborative unbounded reflection.This book affirms that in a digital world interactive technology and didactical design are to be wedded and used in proactive and progressive ways so as to advance student learning.

Since new forms of learning are evolving, Jahnke has effectively placed her energies on helping readers better understand digital didactical design, rather than on supplying packaged solutions in all situations. She makes no claim to have all the answers, but she does provide countless opportunities for reflecting on the best way forward in shaping effective digital didactical design and learning strategies for today’s hyper-connected world.

The crisis of the American higher education is no longer news. Rather than prosecuting the state of educational affairs with the dominant approach of “crisis zeitgeist” held among educationalists and analysts (65), Harrison and Mather examine the positive contributions of higher education and analyze problems through positive inquiry, alongside their critique as learners, professors, and administrators in the system. Throughout the eight chapters, the authors show how older and current research in theories, applications, and empirical data can strengthen the interdisciplinary and interconnected industry – both within and outside of itself (ch. 2). While mindful of the current commodification of education or the consumeristic mentality currently involved in reprogramming or (re)structuring education, the authors urge a more holistic evaluation of not just the value of higher education towards vocationalism but also its purpose for cultivating individuals, community life, and public service: to see that education as a means of vocationalism (career development, preparing learners for better paying jobs) is not more important than to embrace the intrinsic value of liberal arts education for nurturing knowledgeable citizens who will in time contribute to the democratic ideals of public society (chs. 3 and 5).

The thrust of Harrison and Mather’s proposal is a hopeful, though realistic, imagination of “what can we create together” (46) not just with educators, but also with community engagement (50). Thus they recommend a shift from a pedagogy of “standardization testing” to cultivating attentiveness to the different “narratives” for “meaningful student learning” (ch. 4), and from a focus of merely cognitive and pragmatic (applicable) knowledge to building a holism of cognitive, affective, and other facets of learning, and developing the whole person (chs. 6 and 7). Accordingly, universities and community colleges need to learn to leverage what each offers best without denigrating one another (denigration happens when leaders wrongly conflate or differentiate vocational and remedial goals of education in both types of institutions). They need to create  infrastructures that provide level-playing fields for learners of different economic and ethnic standings in matching institutions, curricula, and related discourses on the recipients and goals of education (59; 83-86).

The volume does not only register theoretical concerns; the authors report positive efforts from select institutions that have redirected discourses and implementation for overcoming crisis. The selection includes well-known and lesser-known institutions, such as Ball State University, Berea College, College of Wooster, Columbia University, Denison University, Duke University, Emory University, Kentucky State University, Ohio University, Santa Clara University, St. Mary’s College, University of California Santa Cruz, University of North Carolina, Wake Forest University, and Western Governors’ University in the United States, and it even provides occasional reviews of institutions outside of North America, such as the Asheshi University in Ghana.

Though discussions in the volume would resonate with colleagues in religious studies programs, the volume did not provide application for religious or theological studies programs. Various efforts by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) to overhaul religious offerings (curriculum, faculty, student enrollment, and so forth), such as granting reduced M.A. and M.Div. curriculum to requesting member institutions have both helped and added to the challenges of re-envisioning religious studies programs in light of the current educational crisis. The search for better resolutions in the sea of analyses continues with no clear landing in sight.

This book is an invitation, and is itself a somewhat circuitous reflection on teaching and learning. Directed at writing teachers, much of Danberg’s advice applies to teaching in general, and not just because faculty teach forms of writing in class. The title borrows an image from a famous rabbinic story in which Rabbi Hillel was asked by a nonbeliever to teach the whole of Torah in the time the nonbeliever could stand on one foot. “That which is hateful to you do not do to others,” Hillel instructed, “The rest is commentary; go and learn it” (13). Danberg reminds us that standing on one foot is a posture of instability, the position of both teachers and learners. He encourages teachers to remember their own difficulties in learning. Following Rosenzweig, Danberg suggests that Hillel did not mean “the rest is only commentary… To know Torah is to know the lesson, but also to participate in an ongoing conversation… into the lesson’s value” (14). Students often seek facts, principles, or methods that they can then apply, but good teachers are able to set them on a path of lifelong inquiry. A series of autobiographical vignettes in prose and poetry, the book is punctuated by reflection prompts, or “commentary.”

The author employs several metaphors, but cooking images dominate. A good cook has learned not just to follow a recipe but knows how to see the possibility of a meal in the ingredients on hand; a good cook knows what a dish needs and when it is done. The implied parallel perhaps works best with the craft of writing but the larger point is about what Danberg calls “enfolded knowledge.” Teaching involves confronting the tension “between what we must tell students and what they can only know for themselves” (71).

He offers a compelling description of his own learning disability – his struggles, the strategies he developed, and how teachers reacted to him along the way (47). Danberg laments that schools often define gifts narrowly and he suggests the following exercise: “Spend a couple of days observing the people around you and see how many gifts you can identify… Think of yourself as a zoologist whose great pleasure it is to wait for a butterfly they’ve never seen before” (58). Later, he describes class as “an invitation to inhabit forms of attention and attunement, patterns of caution and regard… If all goes well, it is no more mysterious than the heart and mind, that tangle we are always entangled in” (73).

Danberg invokes the kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum, the contraction of the divine making space for creation. (This comes in a piece entitled “Four Principles and a Fifth” – but I counted six!). A good teacher knows when to get out of the way in order to make space for learning: “You can shape the problems and anticipate the obstacles. You can decide what a student encounters and the time it takes. But in the end, you simply must get out of the way, and leave them to do the work of learning” (98-99).

Reading this book is a bit like ruminating on a Zen koan. Danberg contradicts himself and revels in paradox. The bizarre organization and genre shifts can be frustrating. This is a quirky book, but one with many moments of glittering insight into the difficult joys of learning and teaching.