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Keynote Abstract

'Do you YouTube? Wanna come to MySpace? Musings on narcissism in the 21st Century Student'

Yoni Ryan
Director of the Centre for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Scholarship
University of Canberra

The explosion of subscriptions to social networking and video sites such as YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace leads us as educators to some fundamental questions about the purpose and nature of university education, issues which have been ignored in the last decade as successive Western governments, along with vice-chancellors and presidents, have trumpeted the utilitarian and vocational benefits of a university education. Such sites may be designated 'social' in nature, and in one sense they are. But they also draw the camera and the attention to the individual, as the 'centre' of a virtual 'exclusive' group. What does it mean to an education system notionally geared to 'the class group', inclusivity, and exposure to 'difference', when there is such a clear young adult preference for these displays of self? Or should we be encouraging such activities as a healthy way of asserting self in a world characterised by increasingly undifferentiated and global selves?