Constructions of knowledge

Having recently switched jobs from a classroom to an elearning environment, has gotten me thinking about the way knowledge is constructed in each of these places. It seems to me there are two models on which knowledge acquisition and dissemination are constructed: the "expert" model and the "searcher" model.

In the classroom, the traditional, and still the most prevalent model is what I would call an "expert" model. An instructor, expert in the subject, shares his or her knowledge with a group of assembled learners. Experts in this case have spent years and years accumulating their knowledge, which they are able to access at any time.

We all know examples of really fascinating instructors who can pull information out of their head on almost any aspect of their subject. These experts rarely seem to require lecture notes to remember things, and can answer any question asked on the topic (and some outside the topic at hand!) with a narrative that incorporates the question into a larger framework and seamlessly integrates into the lecture topic of the day.

These experts are afforded some respect for their knowledge. They are sought out by students (even if just by the fact that the educational institute tells the students to go to their class), and by their peers and recognized for their knowledge. They often have guaranteed jobs or are sought out by other educators, researchers, new scholars, or even by journalists looking for an "expert" news bite for a story.

Such experts don't only exist in educational institutions. We can all think of such experts that we've encountered elsewhere, whether they are sports statistic fanatics, collectors, or just amateur scholars of some subject that they care deeply about.

And that's one thing both professional and amateaur experts have (or are at least imagined to have): a passion for the subject of which they are an expert. This passion is understandably necessary. The process of becoming a recognized expert usually requires years of schooling, or at minimum years and years of study to accumulate that knowledge that they carry around in their head all the time.

These experts might use computers, and file cabinets and notes of various sorts to help them remember and locate information, but just through their long and extensive acquaintance with the subject matter, most of it is located right at their fingertips whenever they want: it's encoded in their memories and accessible whenever someone asks them a question.

In elearning, we regularly talk about SMEs - Subject Matter Experts - who provide this service to users of elearning. They are often this first kind of "expert" and they provide what they know to an instructional designer, or content manager, who then shapes the information for delivery in an electronic environment. So in some ways in elearning, the function of the instructor at the front of the classroom is split, with the SME providing the content, while the instructional designer provides the delivery mechanism.

Although not a universal feature of elearning, one of the elements we frequently include in our programs are links to other web resources for learners who wish to know more about a given subject. These links lead them into the world wide web, from which they can continue to follow links, find new keywords and use those to conduct their own searches, or follow threads until they lead to new learning experiences.

This ability to navigate through the internet to learn is something that we as educators are beginning to recognize as a valuable skill, and are beginning to teach to students. This is what I would call the "searcher" model of knowledge. Knowledge is out there, and the smartest students will be the ones who will be able to use the resources they have at their disposal to search and find the information they need.

In other words, you don't have to be an expert, you just need to know where to find one on the internet. The sentiment behind this model then becomes "Who needs to spend years and years learning a subject when someone else out there already knows all this?" Now, from a certain perspective, the "searcher" model of knowledge is an efficient one, and certainly has a value for students who are beginning to enter a particular field. We often expect students to demonstrate a familiarity with the material in the field that they can only gain by rapidly acquiring it from other sources i.e. experts.

But the "searcher" model of knowledge construction can only carry a person so far. The adage about the student exceeding the teacher's knowledge strikes me as the kind of goal scholars-in-training should aspire to. If the only thing you ever do is search out the information that others have created (and posted/published) then the advance of knowledge will never occur.

I really don't think that knowing where to find information on the internet will ever produce new insights. I believe that moving beyond what others have done requires the kind of immersion within the subject matter that the expert attains. The expert becomes so immersed in her or his subject that it becomes an intimate part of life - not just the life of the study or the computer screen - but spilling over into other parts of life. The subject becomes something you see absolutely everywhere. That's what it means to be an expert. Because everything is there in your brain, not just at your fingertips, it infiltrates other parts of your life, emerging when you least expect it to connect seemingly disparate elements to create new insights.

Now, some of that last paragraph was conjecture - perhaps even wishful thinking. As I aspire to become an expert in a field, I'm certainly not at the point where my subject matter is second nature. I still rely heavily on EndNote to remind me what I've read, and I usually don't fully integrate what I've read with everything else that's filling up my brain until I've written about it. But I am starting to see the beginnings of this kind of expertise - where my subject matter begins to infiltrate every aspect of my life, leading me to look at everyday things around me in a different way. (If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might also be getting that sense with all these technology-related posts lately.)

What got me thinking about these two different models was a movie I watched on Victoria Day, you know, the unofficial first day of summer in these parts when we had that snow? Yeah, that day... (though at least is wasn't as bad as Thursday's record breaking dump!)

I was watching National Treasure, a movie I'd seen before and not been particularly impressed with, but the snow and holiday conspired to keep me from getting off the couch and doing something else.... I suppose it wasn't all bad 'cause it got me thinking about this post at least...

But, back to the movie. If you remember the plot, Nicholas Cage's character, Ben, is searching clues for a national treasure. He has spent his whole life tracking down clue after clue (and his father spent his life before that doing the same). In the course of all this searching, he has a acquired a lot of information, which he shares with other characters in the film, particularly his young sidekick who apparently knows none of it, which gives Ben the (annoying) opportunity to give a mini history lesson at every plot point of the movie. (Yeah, that's one of the things that I didn't like about the movie...) His arch rival in this search for the treasure is Sean Bean's character, Ian, who has oodles and oodles of money and is usually just one step behind Ben.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Ben's spent his life acquiring the knowledge of the treasure, following an expert model of knowledge construction, while Ian uses money, the internet (his henchmen carry a wireless laptop everywhere they go), and Ben's trailblazing path, to follow - a searcher model.

The difference between the two models is nicely demonstrated in a scene where Ben figures out that the numbered code he found refers to individual letters contained within a series of correspondences housed in a museum. They send a boy into the museum with the code to pick out each of the letters, which the sidekick puts together to form a sentence, which is the next clue in the search. Ben and his buddies then head to the next clue.

Ian meanwhile has caught up to them and clues in that the kid is working for Ben. He interrogates the kid, but the kid only has the last word of the message - Stow. Ian punches "Stow" and "Declaration of Independence" into a search engine and quickly finds that Stow is one of the creators of the liberty bell (btw, after two hits from the movie, you'll get the same results). Ian arrives at the bell just after Ben and his friends have. Ben knew that Stow and Pass made the bell because he's immersed in U.S. history, but all Ian had to do was look it up on the internet.

Two different forms of knowledge. Notice how Ian's form relies on clues from an expert however. Without knowing WHAT to look for, he would never find it.

So you can guess who wins in the end. Yep, the expert. Who knows a thing or two that the searcher can't find on the internet, or even know to look for. And who employs a bit of misdirection that the searcher doesn't pick up on, because he's not expert enough to know that it's a misdirection (I could go on a rant about misinformation on the internet, but that's a whole other topic).