Creating Transformative Online Communities in Higher Education

Patrick R. Dempsey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000393156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Creating Transformative Online Communities in Higher Education provides a practical approach for building authentic learning experiences into the design and delivery of online teaching and learning systems. Combining three conceptually related ideas—complexity theory, transformative learning, and the Community of Inquiry—this novel, highly applicable framework enables instructors to create compelling virtual learning experiences for students. As higher education faculty, instructional designers, and graduate students shift from presenting information to creating experiences, the book offers an evidence-based disruption of the current thinking on and practice of course design.

Part 1

THEORY

1

Openness to Otherness

A 2019 article in Skeptic magazine examined the schools of thought that govern a growing community of like-minded individuals committed to the belief that the earth is flat.

Far from an isolated community of fringe conspiracy fanatics, Loxton (2019) explored results from a 2018 study showing that “several million Americans believe in a Flat Earth. Tens of millions more are open to the idea or unsure what to believe” (p. 10).

“You would think,” Loxton (2019) opined,

the hundreds of thousands of photos taken from space would be enough to convince anyone that the Earth is round. But many Flat Earthers claim all space photos are faked, as are rocket launches, astronaut excursions into space, and the nearly 5,000 satellites that have been put in orbit.

(p. 15)

Satellite imagery is just one line of evidence that flat-earthers reject. Gravity, the patterns of night and day, the seasons, etc., all of these and more are either explained away or are defended by alternative accounts by flat-earthers.

While religious commitments and personal experience provide many flat-earthers with sufficient justification for their beliefs, Loxton (2019) offered that there is both less and more behind such beliefs.

Perhaps most importantly, Loxton (2019) argued that belief in a round earth is actually rather unnatural. Common experience and intuition would suggest a flat earth. To the eye, the earth surely seems flat; and as we stand on the earth, it certainly does not feel as if it is rotating at 1,000 miles per hour nor that it is—nor that we on it are!—revolving around the sun at 66,000 miles per hour. Partially because our own experience seems to speak to a flat earth, and belief in a round earth must somehow make sense of that experience—a somewhat cognitively complex task—conviction that the earth is round is positively correlated with age (Loxton, 2019). That is, the older you are the more likely you are to profess belief in a round earth.

While few adults have ever truly experienced a round earth as such (that is, they have never personally flown into space or tested the scientific theories themselves), they come to be convinced by general consensus that it is indeed more rational to affirm what the scientific theories suggest—the earth is round.

Said another way, few adults have very good reasons for their belief either way. Most people simply do not think about the evidence for or against a round earth very much. As children it seems to us the earth is flat. Certain adults whom we trust eventually tell us the earth is round. Over the years, we hear from others about the evidence for a round earth and, as we get older, we tend to affirm those ideas. Thus, we all know the earth is round, even if our experience seems to run contrary to it and we do not personally have good evidence for it.

Maybe that is you, and right now you are starting to think maybe the earth is flat?!

Even if not, and you are still convinced the earth is round, perhaps you can begin to see how someone might start believing otherwise.

And, here is how Loxton (2019) explained the phenomenon of flat-earthers:

Skeptics often talk about cognitive dissonance. One of the interesting things about people is just how little of it we experience. Yes, it’s uncomfortable to confront a contradiction between two beliefs, but we rarely have to. Our contradictory ideas can co-exist in unexamined harmony until something forces us to contrast them against each other. Noticing a contradiction takes mental effort. Resolving it takes more effort. This is especially true when our ideas are fuzzy or incomplete to begin with. There is little obvious contrast between two patches of mental fog.

(p. 15)

In other words, we believe the earth is round even while our direct experience seems to suggest otherwise. Further, most of us have never studied the scientific evidence to any extent such that we could, with confidence, confirm or deny a round earth. But, none of that typically matters because we simply do not think about it.

However, when someone interacts for the first time with arguments for a flat earth, arguments based on personal experience and supported by alternative—and seemingly plausible—explanations to taken-for-granted assumptions about what science tells us about a round earth, cognitive dissonance sets in. For most people, an encounter with flat earth arguments might be the first time they have ever thought deeply about whether the earth is in fact round.

And, once they are open to the premise that perhaps the earth is flat—or at least are willing to concede that their belief in a round earth is based on nothing more than hearsay, evidence they have passively received from other people—arguments and evidence for a flat earth abound. YouTube, social media, and the internet more generally are filled with evidence to support the flat earth hypothesis.

Overall, then, there is less to the belief in a flat earth because an initial belief in it is based on a lack of belief either way. At the same time, there is more to the belief in a flat earth because once a person is open to it, they get locked into a cycle of seeking out and finding more evidence to support it. This cycle of looking for only that evidence that supports existing beliefs is called confirmation bias.

Confirmation Bias

Nickerson (1998) defined confirmation bias as a “one-sided case-building process” (p. 175)—an active, though perhaps unwitting, attempt to first gather, then overestimate the value of evidence that favors an individual’s preexisting ideas.

Because of its natural inclination to delimit cognitive and relational possibilities, Kreber (2012) called confirmation bias “one of the most pervasive human weaknesses” (p. 334). Nickerson (1998) argued that confirmation bias could be responsible for “a significant fraction of disputes, altercations, and misunderstandings that occur among individuals, groups, and nations” (p. 175).

Indeed, the ubiquity of confirmation bias cannot be overstated. Confirmation bias is present in diverse fields. It is prevalent in medical research, where research participants are typically selected because of their alignment with specific reference standards resulting in lower predictive values of those treatments for the broader population (Bashir et al., 2015). It is seen in ecology, where researchers’ preunderstandings of specific phenomena significantly influence their research findings (Kozlov & Zvereva, 2015). It is prevalent in economics, where it distorts the analyses of investors and has been shown to be negatively correlated with investment returns (Park et al., 2013). It is prevalent in the field of technology, where it increases incidences of defects as testers attempt to enable codes to run effectively rather than employing strategies that might result in uncovering errors (Calikli & Bener, 2015). It is prevalent in forensics, where evidence for crimes is made to fit a primary suspect, resulting in wrongful convictions (Perez, 2015). Confirmation bias has been proposed as a cause of anxiety disorder (Dibbets et al., 2015; Muris et al., 2014). And, somewhat ironically, treatment for mental disorders is also affected by confirmation bias as therapists project onto their clients the changes they want to see in them, even in the absence of any actual changes (Lilienfeld et al., 2014).

Of course, confirmation bias is prevalent in education. Dyer and Hall (2019) studied how critical thinking could help learners overturn their “epistemologically unwarranted beliefs.” Dyer and Hall defined epistemologically unwarranted beliefs as any belief not grounded by empirical evidence from the natural sciences. For Dyer and Hall, epistemologically unwarranted beliefs include belief in the supernatural and extra-terrestrial life (apparently unaware of https://seti.org/). To Dyer and Hall, the consequences of holding such epistemologically unwarranted beliefs range from harmful to “potentially devastating” (p. 294).

The problem with such a narrow definition of epistemological warrant is that it is confined by a confirmation bias. That is, Dyer and Hall (2019) demonstrate a confirmation bias toward only one way of knowing, namely claims verified exclusively by the scientific method as they understand it.

Though it is well outside the scope of this book and our discussion here, it should be noted that epistemological warrant extends beyond the strict evidentialism proposed by Dyer and Hall (2019). Basic beliefs, such as I exist and you have a mind independent of my own, comprise much of what we take to be true knowledge. Beyond basic knowledge, Plantinga (2000) offered a coherent case for the warrant of certain religious beliefs, with similarly cogent cases being offered for ways of knowing that are relational (Baumgartner, 2012; English & Irving, 2012; Lee & Nicolaides, 2014; Schapiro et al., 2012), conative (MacKeracher, 2012), aesthetic (Cranton, 2016), and spiritual (Charaniya, 2012; Dirkx, 2012).

The point here is not to support any one way of knowing over another. Quite the opposite. It is, rather, to show how, quite ironically, even as Dyer and Hall (2019) suggest critical thinking as a method to overcome limited knowledge and the dangers associated with it, their proposal in fact limits knowledge and can itself lead to potentially devastating consequences! Indeed, supposing that true knowledge is only that knowledge that can be verified scientifically shows how confirmation bias can and indeed does lead to misunderstanding and conflict as Nickerson (1998) suggested. When individuals reject a priori some other possibility, some other idea, and even entire ways of knowing, then discourse is impossible. When discourse is impossible, relationships are impossible.

Dyer and Hall’s (2019) proposal is guilty of confirmation bias not just because it excludes every way of knowing that is not based on empirical scientific data, but also because the scientific method they propose is itself based on confirmation bias. Fforde (2016) offered that the scientific and statistical methodologies so prevalent in Western culture, and upon which Dyer and Hall formulate their case, are completely constricted by a basic confirmation bias—a confirmation bias that stands on the assumption that all problems are ultimately solvable, that all uncertainty is only temporary, and that all present ignorance is replaceable by sure knowledge. Fforde pointed to common hypothesis testing to demonstrate that knowing is implicitly favored over uncertainty. Theories postulated at 5% or 10% alpha levels allow a picture of “true reality” to be painted despite the presence of inconvenient data, non-trivial amounts of uncertainty, or both.

Therefore, a confirmation bias of this kind, applied to all studies and situations, tends toward affirming some measure of knowledge as opposed to accepting some limitations to it. In other words, it is a confirmation bias toward knowing certainly, rather than knowing tentatively, or not knowing at all. And, it is precisely between the space of what is known and what is unknown that learning occurs (Vygotsky, 1978).

What is missing because of this confirmation bias is an appreciation of the very real possibility that “true reality” may in fact not be that way; that perhaps some other solution is possible; that perhaps the problem has not even been correctly diagnosed.

Overcoming Confirmation Bias

As noted in the introduction, while critical thinking is variously (Uslu, 2020) and typically only vaguely defined (Paul et al., 1997), it is useful to consider Dewey’s (1916) definition of it as a way of comparing what it was intended to mean and what it is often taken to mean today.

To Dewey (1916), “The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution” (loc. 916). In other words, critical thinking is the act of, or at least involves, setting aside preconceived notions of both the problem and the solution in favor of an open-minded, flexible, undetermined investigation of the full breadth of the challenge at hand.

Today, we would hardly consider critical thinking as ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART 1: Theory
• PART 2: Practice
• References
• Index