Shifting paradigms about homework

Discussion about an on-line discussion component to a course:

Teacher 1: "I've got an idea about how you could get students to engage with the material more, increase opportunities for contribution and hold each other accountable for the material and the ensuing dialog."

Teacher 2: "It would take too much time"

1: "Nope, it would take less time than the current structure which is poorly executed and allows students to avoid contribution, collaboration and meaningful connection to the material."

2: "I don't know how it would work. I don't know how to control it."

1: "You don't have to, that's they beauty of it."

2: "No, they don't have time."

Conversations like this must happen all the time all over the place. How do we get people to look at their goals of a course and reconsider the ways in which they encourage thinking in their students? Simple changes can be really scary and require major shifts in beliefs about what constitutes work and school and the role of teachers.

And, as we learned in reading the work of Robert Evans in his book chapter, "The Culture of Resistance", the time it takes to make these meaningful shifts can be painfully slow. In particular, the "unfreezing" process can seem like coming out of an ice age.

Here are some (WRONG) assumptions that need to be dismantled in order for the preceding conversation to be fruitful:

1) Homework looks like this: a single student reading a paper text alone in the library.

2) Collaboration takes more time than individual work for the same gains in understanding.

3) Teachers have to have complete control of student conversations to ensure accuracy.

3) Teacher have to be able to reliably predict student output to know that they are doing a good job.

What else is missing? Where to start? How many assumptions should be tackled at a time? What time frame makes sense? So it goes. . .