Nearly two years ago I wrote about “The Odyssey Project,” in a post outlining a grant proposal submitted to the MacArthur Foundation in 1997. The proposal was not funded, but the idea lived on, and became what Jim Groom would later brand “A Domain of One’s Own.”

Turns out my idea emerged even earlier than I had remembered, in fact just before I left Mary Washington for a brief sojourn at the University of Richmond.

I’d completely forgotten that I’d described the essence of the idea in my essay “Education, Information Technologies, and the Augmentation of Human Intellect” (Change, The Magazine of Higher Learning, 38:5, 26-31, DOI: 10.3200/CHNG.38.5.26-31). The article appeared in the September/October 2006 issue. To the best of my recollection, I’d finished the revisions by June or July of 2006, or early August at the very latest.

Here’s what I wrote at the end of that essay:

What About an Odyssey?

Do all these new opportunities add up to something greater than the sum of the
parts? I believe they can. Imagine a project called “Odyssey,” named after Homer’s great epic. Upon matriculation, every student would be assigned a certain amount of Web hosting space that would act as a virtual server, containing open-source tools that would allow blogs, wikis, image galleries, content management, discussion forums, and even survey generators to be installed, maintained, customized, backed up, and uninstalled easily and quickly. (Such tools already exist at inexpensive web hosting services such as Bluehost.com.) By creating, revising, and modifying the resulting Odysseys—supported by teachers, fellow students, information-technology designers, and any expert or fellow learner with whom they come into contact—students would consider what an education is (or might be) and master the tools of its construction.

Although it would include coursework, the Odyssey would take the learner, not the course, as its central organizing principle (my thanks to Martha Burtis for this idea). All of its elements would thereby pull together an otherwise fragmented, connect-the-dots education into a set of integrated experiences. The Odyssey, begun upon matriculation, would not end at graduation but would reflect the education one creates for oneself during a lifetime of learning. More than a narrowly academic exercise, this Odyssey would contain meaningful links to social networking sites such as Flickr, Facebook, or whatever the student virtual hangout du jour happens to be. And of course Odysseys will link to other Odysseys.

The Odyssey could be an education’s foundation and capstone. Colleges and universities would distinguish themselves by the resources, guidance, and enriched contexts they place at the service of these Odysseys and their writers. Others could read it; the evidence of the work we do in a community of learning would be plain to see. But the learners would control access, deciding for themselves, with the guidance of advanced learners, which kinds of growth are served by sharing the narratives of process and which by proceeding privately until the curtain is ready to go up. The work students chose to display as evidence of the quality and extent of their education could be routed to potential employers or used as data for university outcomes assessments.

What would be the focal point for this Odyssey, the metaassignment that would give it some overall shape and purpose? To reconceptualize the self in view of civilization and civilization in view of the self and its unique agency. That, I take it, is the implicit goal of all education and the ongoing task of civilization itself.

I look back at these words from fifteen years ago and I wonder at the energy, ambition, and hopefulness they express. I remember being that person.

I can also see how exuberantly wide-ranging my “resources” were, even then. I’ve always wanted to discover, demonstrate, and use these complex connections. I’ve always thought that the Web encouraged and empowered this connectivity.

Most importantly, I still believe that “odyssey” is an apt metaphor, and that these ideas take the notion of e-portfolio (itself an archaism … but I digress) and raise it to a much higher and more interesting level.

The context for the Change article was a moment in which participatory culture offered a glimpse of ways in which creation, communication, reflection, and awareness might be part of the same complex web of activity, a kind of mindfulness that would gain purpose and direction from opportunities for creation and sharing. That mindfulness would not happen automatically. Participation in itself (like the term “interactive”) does not necessarily lead to good outcomes. A “like” button increases participation; where has that led us? But participatory culture within environments rich with integrated domains and structures encouraging reflection and mindfulness can set up all sorts of lovely feedback loops, reciprocalities, and serendipitous encounters.

I still think that, in spite of everything, even as my optimism continues to ebb.

My heartfelt thanks to Executive Editor Dr. Margaret (Peg) Miller for the opportunity to write the essay for Change.

My thanks also to André Craeyveldt, whose “Internet Doorway” was the lovely image that accompanied my article. (You can find the image at the article link, above.) I’m grateful as well to the editorial and design staff at Change in 2006 who worked with me on the article and presented it so handsomely in the magazine.

And my thanks to the “dream team” at Mary Washington, along with our leader Chip German, for the odyssey we shared for a little while, all those years ago.