Grantees Brainstorm #1: What does transformed teaching and learning look like?
15 Responses to “Grantees Brainstorm #1: What does transformed teaching and learning look like?”
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Musings on open educational resources by Mike, Cathy, Phoenix and Vic
A world of teaching and learning transformed:
Students and learners will have access to the tools that empower them to learn what they want to learn when they want to learn as swiftly and as deeply as they can learn no matter what their learning styles and without regard to their personal financial circumstances.
Teachers and instructors will have access to the tools and resources they need to continually improve their ability to convey the information their students need to achieve their goals.
The world transformed is one of new opportunities for the learner as they find their own learning material and tools. The learner no longer has to join a University or even track down the course they want to study, instead they pick and choose from the challenges they face or what interests them now. In return they are offered quick helps, guided learning or ways to join a learning community: the offerings refine themselves as they understand where the learner seems to be going. Everything that is learnt is summarised and presented back. Along the way they develop their own creations which enhance the experience for those that follows. One day they may be in the premier league with other great learners, but for now they are just happier and more satisfied. It is fun, and learning is just part of being.
The world transformed is also one of challenges: who needs school or university anymore?
As a learner, I feel that I want two apparently contradictory opportunities: On the one hand, I want superior educational pathways that are intentionally designed. On the other hand, I want freedom and access at my fingertips to pursue any avenue of thought I personally find stimulating.
By “intentionally designed,” I mean that someone much more expert than I in whatever-the-area-is has thought deeply about someone like me, my background, my learning styles, my (lack of) preparation in the subject matter, etc. and has devised a likely useful scope, selection, and sequence of learning experiences for me. (BTW: I know I didn’t invent this, but I am afraid I don’t recall who I am plagiarizing! Deepest apologies to the concept originator.) That said, it still isn’t enough. In addition, I want total access to ideas, knowledge, and debate, and I want to learn multiple ways to use that access and ways to evaluate the quality of what I find.
OK - I want everything!
Transformed Teaching and Learning:
It will break down the walls between the teacher and the learner. It will embed the learner in the process of doing and being, and ask the learner to be part of the knowledge building. The teacher, as a guide and mentor, will help the learner analyze their environment, ask the right questions, and become a scholar. This will prepare the learner (which is all of us, all the time) for collaboration and interaction with a variable world and teach them to access and integrate knowledge as they move through it.
Technology will provide the means to access, acquire, synthesize, and express ideas, facts, and discourse. The activities and engagement that help synthesize, debate, and make relevant that content will happen in face to face and virtual learning communities that are sometimes formal and sometimes informal. Learners will move seamlessly between the virtual and in-person communities. Opportunity to participate in these communities will be readily available to all.
Transformation will be a shift of control from the teacher to the learner. The learning could be a teacher, student, parent or community member, having access to materials that address all learning styles will also be critical. Once these materials are available the learning will be able to utilize the materials, then assessment their understanding through small formative assessments imbedding in the learning object. If not successful the learner will have an opportunity to review and revisit the materials in a different mode. Finally having a learning self reflect of what they learned will move the learning to more of a medacognitive level.
Transformed learning increases the learner’s sense of control within their environment by at once creating distance and encouraging immersion. The distance is provided via analytic tools which set the safe boundaties of a mental space opened for the play of imagination. The immersion is a matter of applying that play to real life issues with real life consequences so that imagination, empowered by play, can do the transformative work necessary for the improvement of lives.
Technology broadenes access to this type of experience, but we should also be intentional about the ways in which our technologies shape the learning experience itself—determines the times/pace at which learning happens (as when electricity is available or pay-as-you-go fees have been paid or cell towers are in workign order).
Optimized delta for the heirarchy between “teacher” and “student” with an honoring (with reward structures) and encouraging of amateur academic production. The ∆ cannot be zero but must be smaller than it currently is. In addition a move from the traditional classroom experience and “schools” as knowledge push structures to more of a focus on social networks and knowledge synthesis. Encourage backchannel use and explore ways to exploit digital technologies and personas (games, semisynthetic environments, etc).
I received the following responses on my weblog:
http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/brian/archives/037107.php
Wayne Mackintosh: “Learning environments that conflate teaching and learning (like open wikis) are an interesting thought. Learners become teachers through content authoring and teachers become learners by observing and commenting on content development processes
“If we are serious about Education for All - we must find scalable ways in expanding access. In some cases this may involve the “de-institutionalisation” of education - not in a revolutionary sense - but I don’t see that we are able to build enough classrooms and/or train enough teachers to satisfy demand in the developing. The majority of secondary school age children will not have the priveledge of seeing the walls of a classroom. Free cultural works can make a difference - but we will need to think outside the box. We must find ways of linking those who are willing to provide teaching support. Teaching philanthropists who would be willing to donate say 3 hours a week to interact with kids learning from free content materials in a rural village in Africa. Community members who are willing to support this kind of informal learning. National governments would need to think about an assessment and accreditation system from learners who have acquired knowledge through free cultural works etc. We have to think outside of the box if we serious about education as a common good.”
Marion Jensen: One problem I see that needs to be solved sooner rather than later is accreditation. You have two thousand freshmen enter college in any given year at any given school. For those that finish, they will all take about the same amount of time. Why is that? Aren’t some of them quicker than others? Don’t some come more prepared?
It seems we have this conveyor belt education system, and if you want the ‘degree’ (the foundational currency in the workplace), then you have to get on this conveyor belt and go along for the ride. Never mind that some of the material you already know, or that you are spending entire semesters on information that you will likely never need to know again.
There is also a distinct ‘expert/learner’ model that needs to be beat out of kids long before they get to college. Wikipedia has shown us the wisdom of mobs. Sure, it’s not perfect, but neither is the professor/student model. I feel like I can learn with a group of 20 other self-learners much better than sitting in a 15 week class with an expert. The expert still has a valuable place, but it’s not in front of the class room.
Keira McPhee: - I’m obsessing about informal learning networks these days. I love the idea of the learning party and the tupperware model of connecting hosts (someone who wants to learn something or needs something done) and their friends/community connections to a teacher (someone who has some experience/knowledge and a desire to share it).
An example:
I want to see Vancouver transformed with perennial food/medicine gardens in the backyards, parks and commons fast. I think a network of 2 hour hosted workshops could start that. What does the website look like that facilitates these kinds of connections between hosts, teachers and learners?
How do we encourage people who’ve learned a skill to start teaching it as the next step in learning (i.e. you don’t have to be the guru of everything to start teaching what you do know)?
Jim Groom: Something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgpuSo-GSfw
Stephen Downes It is directed by the learner, rather than the learner. It ceases to the the focus of activity, and becomes a support for whatever is the focus of activity. It creates empowerment, rather than dependence.
Brian: Where teaching and learning are almost indistinguishable from one another. I’m not saying that the roles cease to exist, but that teachers model excellent learning in their practice (among other skills), and learners model the sorts of skills we associate with teaching — for instance, can we ask students to create useful learning resources as their assignments? If we bust the “walled garden” model, at least some of the time, what will happen?
Education that is fun (or at least painless) and universal; not restricted to a few people around the world, but available to everyone everywhere.
Transformed teaching and learning is focused on individual performance: building individual capability; enabling, measuring, and “credentialing†individual performance.
A system that enables this would likely include:
- Massive OER
- match.com, e-harmony style mechanism to resources and people that enables teacher and learner capability
- Plenty of open outcome/performance assessments
- “credentialing†bodies such as formal organizations, institutions and even communities of practice that “endorse†various assessments and value them within their communities.
In 1978, UNESCO published the “Delors” Report with a set of four ideas for transforming education: Learning To Be, Learning To Do, Learning To Know, and Learning to Live Together.” Learning is then inherently local, rather than localized.
In the physical environment, I can imagine schools taking on the best of non-formal education that correspond to this learning to be, do, know, and live-together paradigm: local culture centers, work centers, study centers and community centers.
This can be complemented by an OER environment of how one culture can assist another in these areas. I saw this happen with my own two ideas, where we connected the lessons of women’s reading circles in Bangladesh with a group of Bedouin women desperate to read. In short, it was learning to be, do, know, and live together - ON THE GROUND.
Uncommercializing education: moving towards a more moderated free education.
Teaching and learning become indistinguishable - peers guide each other and learn together from freely avaialble resources, calling on experts whenever needed.
In other words, much as all of the above. But there are two of the comments I’d like to take up.
Accreditation, and “who needs school or university anymore”.
Was the latter comment made by someone whose qualifications enabled him to get a job? Would any teacher have got their job without accredited qualifications? Are those now holding administrative positions in colleges and schools now willing to give jobs to people without accredited qualifications? And give people with “lower” qualifications equal pay?
Until we get to that point, or find a way of accrediting Open source education, the transformation is unlikely to occur, and remains something of an idealist dream.