The Flattening of Learning

Professor Tara Brabazon makes a fantastic argument that students today have no way to discern truth from validity because they have no training when it comes to judging multiple truths.

On the Internet, and in scholarly searches, all returns are provided back to the searcher in a "flat mode" where every return appears as valid as the next.

Instead of challenging that fact, students merely cut-and-paste those flat search returns into their papers without doing any actual reading or critical analyses of the texts:

“Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments.

“Google is filling, but it does not necessarily offer nutritional content,” she said.

Professor Brabazon, who has been teaching in universities for 18 years, said that the heavy reliance on the internet in universities had the effect of “flattening expertise” because every piece of information was given the same credibility by users.

Professor Brabazon’s concerns echo the author Andrew Keen’s criticisms of online amateurism. In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Keen says: “To-day’s media is shattering the world into a billion personalised truths, each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile.”

We are thrilled to see Professor Brabazon's push for more credibility in the classroom.

Providing students with sharper tools for critical analysis that can then be used against what they read is a paramount concern if we ever hope to continue our ingenuity and creativity beyond the flatness of the Internet.