Yesterday at the WCET14 conference in Portland I had the opportunity along with Pat James to moderate a student panel. ((Pat is the executive director of the California Community College Online Education Initiative (OEI) – see her blog here for program updates.)) I have been trying to encourage conference organizers to include more opportunities to let students speak for themselves – becoming real people with real stories rather than nameless aggregations of assumptions. WCET stepped up with this session. And my new favorite tweet ((I’m not above #shameless.)):
@kuriousmind @lukedowden @wcet_info @PhilOnEdTech Best. Panel. Ever. Massively insightful experience.
— Matthew L Prineas (@mprineas) November 20, 2014
As I called out in my introduction, we talk about students, we characterize students, we listen to others talk about students, but we don’t do a good job in edtech talking with students. There is no way that a student panel can be representative of all students, even for a single program or campus ((As can be seen from this monochromatic panel, which might make sense for Portland demographics but not from a nationwide perspective.)). We’re not looking for statistical answers, but we can hear stories and gain understanding.