For DS 106 this week we had to read Gardner Campbell’s “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure“. Here’s a link to his blog as well.

In essence, Campbell feels the main goal of higher education is to inspire the imaginations of students, and LMSs and template-driven-software is a backwards step toward this goal.

I don’t necessarily agree. First I don’t think the main goal of higher education is to inspire imagination–it’s to teach. I have no problem with imagination being a secondary goal, in fact I think it should. But one must start with the basics. You have to write “Hello World” and GPA calculator programs before you can create Facebook. And I think, it’s the primary goal of higher education to teach those fundamentals, and expound on them.

That said, I think the idea of giving students their own cyberinfrastructure is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s the purpose of higher education to force that on the student. After all, any student who had ever wanted to set up a domain and a blog can do so at virtually anytime. Why should universities force them too?

I’m not convinced it’s necessary. I question what skills it teaches? Are learning how to buy a domain, point it to a site that’s hosted by some company, and install WordPress blog essential skills? And you could say blogging helps to teach writing, but more so than an English class? The simple things we learn through blogging are those useful skills? I’m not so sure. I certainly don’t think it’s been more useful than say my class in data structures thus far.

On the whole, I’m not against people setting up their domain and creating a web presence, I just don’t think it should be the goal of higher education to force them to. It should be something people do on their own, because they want to.