SLO Requests

From Sociotechwiki

Challenging concepts, classic misconceptions, theoretical bewilderment and other learning pathologies that might benefit from a dash of SLO gin.

List problems that you have with teaching some aspect of sociotechnical systems. Perhaps someone has a resource, method, metaphor, story or activity that can help. If you are that someone, please create a SLO.

Problems

• explaining why we have to bother doing this sociotechnical thing. Isn't life complicated enough?

• "It's not for the likes of me - I'm not a techie"

• "It's not for the likes of me - I don't do squishy stuff"

• stopping too soon: finding just one likely cause of problems with a system and failing to look for others

• Rumplestilstkinism: the tendency to think a problem is solved once you give it its true name. Student: (lots of verbiage) "...And then I realized.... It's a sociotechnical system!" (pauses for dramatic effect). Instructor: "Yes, and...?" Student: "No, that's it." Teacher: "Er, that's just the start"

• Getting from critique to fixing. Many students are very good at moaning. You give them a new analytic framework for moaning about what is wrong with a given sociotechnical system (usability, flexibility, equity, sustainability, accessibility, whatever) and they just love it and dig in. But then you say: "Good, you've identfied lots of problems. So if we were hired as consultants how would we recommend fixing it - or at least making it a little less awful?" Deathly silence. How do I help students think about how to make the world a better place by fixing clunky sociotechnical systems?

• Connecting specific instantiations of accepted (and often invisible) technological practices to the bigger picture of social contexts in which these practices are embedded