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kathleen johnson

Why Learning Should Be Messy | MindShift - 2 views

blogs.kqed.org/...why-learning-should-be-messy

disciplines

shared by kathleen johnson on 26 Oct 12 - No Cached
    • kathleen johnson
      kathleen johnson on 26 Oct 12
       
      They have always been interconnected. We just could not see it until we had the internet.
  • “If you were to hike the Appalachian trail, which would take you months and months, and you reflect upon it, you do not divide the experience into the historic, scientific, mathematic, and English aspects of it. You would look at it holistically.”
  • In practice, this means the elimination of English, mathematics, history, and science class.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • arrange the curriculum around big ideas, questions, and conundrums
  • Diana Laufenberg, former teacher at the Science Leadership Academy, described to me, “The role of inquiry is the starting point of learning.
  • School-based education has always been about telling and getting of information, rather than exploring or investigating
  • the pedagogical unit of Brightworks is the arc, which is divided into three phrases.” Each arc, he says, has a central theme.
  • first phase of the arc is called exploration
  • The second phase is expression
  • take the ideas to completion — within the deadline
  • The final phase is called exposition, where the public gets to view what the kids have done.
  • “The point is to see the topic in as many ways as you possibly can,” says Tulley.
  • “T-shaped” students
  • depth in a particular field of study but also breadth across multiple disciplines.
  • David Kelley, whose mission is to transmit “empathy” into his students to encourage them to see the human side of the challenges
  • The school concentrates on four areas: the developing world, sustainability, health and wellness, and K-12 educatio
  • Similarly, the M.I.T. Media Lab has an anti-disciplinary approach to learning
  • “Suppose you and I decided to build a boat. Our hypothesis might be: we can build a boat under $30 using recycled materials and sail it across the Hudson River. Our teacher or mentor can help us shape that to ensure that the challenge meets our cognitive and intellectual development
  • At the Brightworks School, students will leave with an iPad, filled with all the projects they completed in their term
  • The role of the teacher in project-based learning as Laufenberg likes to say is an “architect of opportunity.
  • kathleen johnson on 26 Oct 12
     
    Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, told me that rather than interdisciplinary education, which merges two or more disciplines, we need anti-disciplinary education, a term coined by Sandy Pentland, head of the lab's Human Dynamics group.
Rob Parsons

A Pedagogy of Abundance : The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly... - 0 views

www.bloomsburyacademic.com/...-9781849666275-chapter-008.xml

scholarship

shared by Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • If we use this perspective to examine education we can consider how education may shift as a result of abundance. Traditionally in education expertise is analogous to talent in the music industry – it is the core element of scarcity in the model. In any one subject there are relatively few experts (compared with the level of knowledge in the general population). Learners represent the ‘demand’ in this model, so when access to the experts is via physical interaction, for example, by means of a lecture, then the model of supply and demand necessitates that the learners come to the place where the experts are located. It also makes sense to group these experts together, around other costly resources such as books and laboratories. The modern university is in this sense a solution to the economics of scarcity.
  • As a result, a ‘pedagogy of scarcity’ developed, which is based around a one-to- many model to make the best use of the scarce resource (the expert). This is embodied in the lecture, which despite its detractors is still a very efficient means of conveying certain types of learning content. An instructivist pedagogy then can be seen as a direct consequence of the demands of scarcity.
  • It may be that we do not require new pedagogies to accommodate these assumptions as Conole (2008) points out: Recent thinking in learning theory has shifted to emphasise the benefit of social and situated learning as opposed to behaviourist, outcomes-based, individual learning. What is striking is that a mapping to the technologies shows that recent trends in the use of technologies, the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 echoes this; Web 2.0 tools very much emphasise the collective and the network.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      Though i think it is true that students learn collaboratively, and always have done, they don't act as if they do (any more than teachers act as if they do, and quite often less). Perhaps our students still come from experiences that value authority and, whatever is said, do not value constructivism and collaboration.
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  • Any pedagogy of abundance would then, I suggest, be based on the following assumptions:
  • Jonassen (1991) describes it thus: Constructivism … claims that reality is constructed by the knower based upon mental activity. Humans are perceivers and interpreters who construct their own reality through engaging in those mental activities … What the mind produces are mental models that explain to the knower what he or she has perceived … We all conceive of the external reality somewhat differently, based on our unique set of experiences with the world.
  • Given that it has a loose definition, it is hard to pin down a constructivist approach exactly. Mayer (2004) suggests that such discovery-based approaches are less effective than guided ones, arguing that the ‘debate about discovery has been replayed many times in education but each time, the evidence has favoured a guided approach to learning’.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      Interesting, because my immediate reaction was that there's no contradiction between guided learning and constructivism. Just don't expect that your students will always go where you guide them.
  • When Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) claim, with some justification, that ‘the epistemology of a discipline should not be confused with a pedagogy for teaching/learning it’ that only highlights that the epistemology of a discipline is now being constructed by all, so learning how to participate in this is as significant as learning the subject matter of the discipline itself.
  • However, the number of successful open source communities is relatively small compared with the number of unsuccessful ones, and thus the rather tenuous success factors for generating and sustaining an effective community may prove to be a barrier across all subject areas. Where they thrive, however, it offers a significant model which higher education can learn much from in terms of motivation and retention (Meiszner 2010).
  • Abundance does not apply to all aspects of learning; indeed the opposite may be true, for example, an individual's attention is not abundant and is time limited. The abundance of content puts increasing pressure on this scarce resource, and so finding effective ways of dealing with this may be the key element in any pedagogy. However, I would contend that the abundance of content and connections is as fundamental shift in education as any we are likely to encounter, and there has, to date, been little attempt to really place this at the centre of a model of teaching.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      Agreed. Great conclusion. At the moment, if I had to single out one key point Martin makes, it is this.
Lone Guldbrandt Tønnesen

Stanford's open courses raise questions about true value of elite education | Inside Hi... - 4 views

www.insidehighered.com/...out-true-value-elite-education

Change11 stanford courses MOOC

shared by Lone Guldbrandt Tønnesen on 15 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Search form |  Follow us: Get Daily E-mail Thursday, December 15, 2011 Home NewsAssessment and Accountability Health Professions Retirement Issues Students and Violence Surveys Technology Adjuncts Admissions Books and Publishing Community Colleges Diversity For-Profit Higher Ed International Religious Colleges Student Aid and Loans Teaching and Learning ViewsIntellectual Affairs The Devil's Workshop Technology Blog UAlma Mater College Ready Writing menu-3276 menu-path-taxonomy-term-835 od
  • This made Stanford the latest of a handful of elite American universities to pull back the curtain on their vaunted courses, joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare project, Yale University’s Open Yale Courses and the University of California at Berkeley’s Webcast.Berkeley, among others. The difference with the Stanford experiment is that students are not only able to view the course materials and tune into recorded lectures for CS221: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence; they are also invited to take in-class quizzes, submit homework assignments, and gather for virtual office hours with the course’s two rock star instructors — Peter Norvig, a research executive at Google who used to build robots for NASA, and Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford who also works for Google, designing cars that drive themselves. (M.I.T., Yale and Berkeley simply make the course materials freely available, without offering the opportunity to interact with the professors or submit assignments to be graded.)
  • MOOCs question the value of teaching as an economic value point.”
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  • Based on the success of Norvig and Thrun’s experiment, the university’s computer science department is planning to broadcast eight additional courses for free in the spring, most focusing on high-level concepts that require participants already to have a pretty good command of math and science.
  • It raises the question: Whose certification matters, for what purposes?
  • For one, the professors can only evaluate non-enrolled students via assessments that can be graded automatically.
  • it can be difficult to assess skills without being able to administer project-based assignments
  • With a player like Stanford doing something like this, they’re bringing attention to the possibilities of the Web for expanding open education
Tai Arnold

Systemic Changes in Higher Education | in education - 9 views

ineducation.ca/...temic-changes-higher-education

siemens higher education future

shared by Tai Arnold on 16 Sep 11 - Cached
Vanessa Vaile liked it
  • When control over information shifts from organizations to individuals, considerations of new models in universities is required, as evidenced by historical transitions of information-based institutions. As an industry fundamentally concerned with “creating and communicating information” (Carey, 2009,
    • Tai Arnold
      Tai Arnold on 16 Sep 11
       
      This is probably the most important element; control=power and the other changes are expanding individual control of content
  • Recognition of only formal learning is a needlessly limiting mindset currently held by higher education.
    • Tai Arnold
      Tai Arnold on 16 Sep 11
       
      Yes!!!
  • Many of the assumptions that inform higher education today – such as classrooms, textbooks, physical space, co-location of educators and learners, pairing of research and teaching, bounded curriculum – are called into question by emerging learning theories and technologies.
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  • However as education in the developed world moves in new directions, we must be cognizant of how this move impacts the learners in the developing world. How will learners in these areas access, explore and contribute to the creation of knowledge? Will social networking technologies, and the emergence of next generation technologies further exclude the greatest number of undergraduate learners. Will this new reality result in too few voices connecting and validating knowledge? How can non-Eurocentric voices be heard? One must ensure that there is some democracy in this new model.
  • Educators and leaders in academia are confronted with important questions. How should institutions of learning be designed to serve the needs participative, social, and global information cycle? What assumptions about the system of higher education need to be abandoned due to technological advancements? How can the vital roles of research and teaching and learning be addressed through distributed means? How can accreditation be broadened to include the full spectrum of formal and informal learning activities?
  • Failure to recognize the pivotal role of digital technologies will result in institutions at odds with the world in which they operate.
  • The American Faculty: The Restructuring of Academic Work and Careers (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006) propose that universities are experiencing a revolution—with tremendous consequences. They write, Everything is in play, as nearly every aspect of academic life is being driven by a host of inter-related developments: dazzling technological advances, globalization that permeates academic boundaries, rapid increase of tertiary students worldwide, expansion of proprietary higher education, a blurring of (the) public/private distinction, and entrepreneurial initiatives on and off campus. (p. xvii)
  • Technological innovations in bandwidth, storage, processing speed, and software directly impact education (Downes, 2009), creating new opportunities for learner-learner/educator and learner-information interactions.
  • ome researchers have turned to complexity theory to advance education, suggesting that emphasis be placed on the whole system rather than reductionist views often found in "mainstream science" (Mason, 2008). Increased collaboration in a model of "interlocking partnerships among researchers, among universities, and across international borders” (McFadden Allen, 2007, p. 3) promises a new model of not only what it means to be an academic, but also what it means to be an academic institution.
  • Vanessa Vaile on 16 Sep 11
     
    a very important article - as someone commented (either about this article of another of George's), those who most need to read it probably won't. I'm going to see what I can do about changing that
  • Robert Maxwell on 18 Sep 11
     
    Education, as knowledge presentation, assessment and learning is not the only concern about the modern university system. We must also concern our selves with helping student acheive their goals, or as mentors, helping them to discover what they want to contribute to society. While part of this is job placement, a great deal of it is helping the learning see the possibilities out there and providing them with the tools to acheive those possibilities (such as knowing what types of credentials, certificates, degrees, etc.. they may need). It is also about helping them develop their abilities to filter material, think of material in new or different ways. One problem is the rigid, ego centric hold provided by discipline specific education.
Rob Parsons

Openness in Education : The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly P... - 3 views

www.bloomsburyacademic.com/...-9781849666275-chapter-009.xml

scholarship

shared by Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Anderson (2009) suggests a number of activities that characterise the open scholars, including that they create, use and contribute open educational resources, self-archive,
  • From my own experience I would propose the following set of characteristics and suggest that open scholars are likely to adopt these.
  • Leslie (2008) comments on the ease of this everyday sharing, compared with the complexity inherent in many institutional approaches:
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  • citation levels of articles that are published online versus those that are in closed access journals. Hajjem, Harnad and Gingras (2005) compared 1,307,038 articles across a range of disciplines and found that open access articles have a higher citation impact of between 36 and 172 per cent. So publishing in an online, open manner aids in the traditional measures of citation.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      Openness as a working method, and openness as a movement, with a definable set of values.
  • This section will look at the most concrete realisation of the open education movement, namely that of open education resources. In particular I want to revisit the notion of granularity and how changes in this, afforded by new technologies, are changing scholarly behaviour.
  • Zittrain (2008) terms ‘generativity’, which he defines as ‘a system's capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences’. Little OERs are high in generativity because they can easily be used in different contexts, whereas the context is embedded within big OERs, which in turn means they are better at meeting a specific learning aim.
  • Big OER projects have a variety of models of funding, and Wiley highlights three of these demonstrating a range of centralisation: a centralised team funded by donors and grants (such as MIT), linking it into teaching responsibilities (as practised at Utah State University) and a decentralised collaborative authoring approach (e.g. Rice Connexions, http://cnx.org).
  • The reasons for this are varied, including technical complexity and motivation. One other reason which the OpenLearn team suggest is that the ‘content provided on the site was of high quality and so discouraged alteration’.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      I wonder how much of a barrier the final integration of the material is - in a well structured object internal integration is high so the cost rises of extracting part or repurposing even the whole.
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