The real difficulty...is in escaping from old ideas

Or to give you the full quote: “The real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones” (John Maynard Keynes)

If you have twenty minutes, make a cup of tea and take a peek into the future. In this short video, John Seely-Brown (JSB) - a futurist, formerly of the XEROC-PARC research centre – highlights the many ways in which the intersection of people, information and technology is transforming how we understand knowledge.

In the video, JSB begins with the above quote from J.M. Keynes to illustrate how we struggle to move away from old, trusted ideas and into new, uncertain times. Although delivered at a conference on the future of Libraries JSB goes far beyond this to grapple with knowledge management and innovation, highlighting that progress in the 21st century now follows a rapid series of 18-month s-curves driven by exponential advances in computation. The implication of this is that we no longer have the time that we had in the 20th century to reinvent social practices and adapt to change – today, change is rapid and unrelenting.

I’ll do my best to provide a summary of the key points (please note that although I wish I was as smart as John-Seely Brown, almost all the ideas that follow are his...)

We are moving from knowledge ‘stocks’ to knowledge ‘flows’

As change speeds up, we are moving from a paradigm where we ‘stored’ knowledge to one in which we participate in ‘knowledge flows’. Perhaps the most important implication of this is the difficulty in storing the tacit knowledge created by these flows – we no longer have the time to identify this knowledge, make it explicit, and store it. This poses significant implications for organisations who are investing significant capital in trying to capture and store knowledge (an example of how we have difficulty escaping from old ideas).

The half-life of our skills is shrinking to about 5 years

The speed of change potentially renders our skills obsolete every 5 years. This highlights the major problems this poses for formal schooling and the need to move away from education that is based around learning content. Instead, we need to learn the critical skills that enable us to dip into relevant knowledge flows in order to find and apply relevant content to a given problem. We also have to learn how to participate effectively in the vast, complex networks in which we increasingly find ourselves.

Homo Sapiens is becoming Homo Faber
Or rather, ‘Man who Knows’ is becoming ‘Man who Makes’. The default mode of operation in networked societies increasingly involves making and sharing knowledge, not simply consuming it. But rather than just building content and things, we are now able to build contexts as much as content. JSB highlights how maker culture, blogging and remixing enables us to change the context of a message or a piece of content. Millenials with increasingly sophisticated devices now expect to be able to remix and adapt content, and the implication of this is that we have to learn how to read ‘context’ as well as simply ‘content’. Maybe ‘context marketing’ will soon be on the horizon…

‘Effective play’ is needed to help us un-learn

If our skills will become obsolete every 5 years, JSB points out that ‘unlearning’ will become just as important as ‘learning’. He argues that our ability to learn through play is integral to helping us unlearn and develop a new, flexible and creative mindset. At the heart of the triangle of knowing, making and playing, are ‘imagination’, ‘curiosity’ and ‘agency’. This need for millenials to learn through doing, playing, and making should be shaping how we conceive of the future of work.

How imagination, curiosity and agency are shaping how we work (adapted from John Seely-Brown)

Reverse mentorship is a source of innovation

We may have instructed those young graduates we just employed to make the tea and hang out on social media. But instead we should be creating opportunities for them to mentor us so that we can learn about how they see and understand the world. If ‘yesterday’s cutting edge is today’s dust bin’, as JSB argues, then we need to be embracing the mindset, energy and inquisitiveness of those new to the workplace in order to stay as close as we can to the s-curve.

We need to ‘leverage the edge’ in the exponential age

Echoing the practice and language of lean startups and entre/intrepreneurship, JSB highlights the need to create now and seek forgiveness later. Leveraging the exponential power of social media, easy access to computing power and micro-financing and crowd-funding, JSB argues that the aim should be to excel on the edge and use this success to draw the core towards us. This is another way of escaping old ideas and making sure we are at the start of the new s-curve rather than on the tail of the old one.

So there you have it, a whistle-stop tour of some of the concepts and ideas that will shape – and are already shaping – our future. It’s scary to think that my skills are already slightly more out of date than they were when I began typing this article…

Why we need to reclaim our brains

This post was written for the Creative Huddle newsletter, 18th May 2015. Sign up here.

It’s easy to think that we are becoming smarter than ever before. The internet has placed the information of the world at our fingertips, and Google has made it incredibly easy to find both useful and relevant information. We are truly living in the information age, so what’s the problem?

 

The problem is that the internet is making us lazy. It’s reducing our attention span (so much so, even goldfish can focus better than us). Worse still, it’s making us think we’re smarter than we really are.

 

We think that all this technology is enabling us to work better, communicate better, and relax better, but there is a real danger that these perceived benefits are all in our minds. This has significant implications for learning: just because you’re reading something online it doesn’t mean you’re learning it.

 

The problem is that even Google can’t compare with real-world experience. But it’s important to remember that this isn’t a new phenomenon – the eminent philosopher and educationalist John Dewey was arguing for an experiential approach to learning in the 1930s. But in a world in which our daily activity is increasingly mediated by online technologies, it’s easy to think that an increased choice over what we can do equates to empowerment.

 

So before we become unconscious slaves to the internet, what can we do about it?

 

The answer is that we need to place much greater emphasis on understanding how our brains work. If we are to navigate this information-rich century, each of us needs a personal understanding of why we do what we do. To coin an educational word, we need to be more metacognitive and really take an active interest in how technology and information are shaping our reality.

 

If we know that students only remember 3% of a 45 minute lecture, we should really stop talking at them. If we know that constant multitasking is having an adverse affect on our productivity, we need to have both an awareness and a clear strategy to cope with the distractions brought by technology.

 

What does all this have to do with creativity? It's been shown that taking mental breaks, especially breaks from technology, can benefit creativity.

If creativity and innovation are in such high demand we need to help people learn how to reclaim their brains from all this distraction. This is especially true at the executive level, where creativity is increasingly perceived as a critical leadership quality.

 

The more we can increase our conscious awareness of why we are doing what we are doing, the more we are able to develop our own personal strategies to managing our thinking. In a world of work full of distractions, we need to fully grasp the importance of giving our brains more downtime. Understanding the impact of distractions is a critical first step to reclaiming our brains.

We call this approach Productive Creativity.

Students don't use email. So why do we keep emailing them?

Students like social media (via Mindshift)

Imagine you were born in 1995. You would have been three years old when Google launched in 1998. You would have been five at that millenium party you went to. Nine when Facebook arrived in February 2004. Eleven when Twitter arrived in March 2006.

Why would you have set up an email account? To activate your social network profiles of course! And how many of your teenage friends would have been sending you excited status updates via email? Probably not very many.

I make this point because I've been having conversations with students recently around their perception of email. As each year goes by, the demographic of students moves on another year - next year most of the new arrivals will have been born in 1996. Then 1997. And they will be even more bewildered by the university's constant attempts to contact them via email.

I accept that 'students don't use email' is a generalisation - of course some students do use email. But the vast majority are more active on social networks than are busily ploughing through their university inboxes, so is it any wonder that tutors and administrators get frustrated when students say 'I don't check my university email' or 'I didn't get your email'?

There is a point to be made about the extent to which universities are responsible for educating students about the conventions of email. After all, after graduating they will be entering a world in which email is still a key means of communicating. But social media is revolutionising the way in which organisations and businesses communicate both internally and externally. So do we not have an equal responsibility to educate students about the ways to use social media effectively and appropriately?

Social media is a democratising form of communication in that it gives anyone a voice. So it's interesting to consider the above argument in the context of the recent video (one of many) about the Future of Higher Education:

 
Many of the points made by participants in this video are not new: "more collaboration", "more accessible", "greater ability to learn at your own pace" etc. If the sector truly believes in 'student-centred learning', a concept which is easy to say yet not so easy to deliver, then communicating with students via social media is an important way to demonstrate that the sector is prepared to embrace the change that is coming. 

Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed proposed a 'new relationship between student, teacher and society' which treats the learner as a 'co-creator of knowledge'. The book was first published in 1968, thirty years before Google, nearly forty before Facebook. And yet much of Higher Education still operates in a very top-down manner with students very much as the 'recipients' of knowledge rather than co-creators.

In the same way as the music industry, Higher Education will experience a revolution. And the more strongly we resist the change that our students demand, the more uncomfortable that revolution will be.

Thanks to David Hopkins for sharing the video on his blog.

What Higher Ed can learn from Dave Grohl and Sound City

I've just finished watching the excellent documentary Sound City by Foo Fighter and Nirvana legend Dave Grohl. If you get a chance to watch it, do so - it's inspiring. The documentary tells the story of the legendary Sound City studio in Los Angeles, which gave birth to some of the greatest rock albums of all time: Fleetwood Mac 'Rumours' and Nirvana 'Nevermind' to name just two. But during the film, Grohl shares some insights that I feel are of particular relevance to some of the current debates in Higher Education. Let me explain.

Recently, much has been written about the way in which new technologies and pedagogies are causing students (and educators) to question the value of the classroom experience. Martin Weller has raised the possibility of MOOCs as 1st year undergraduate replacement, which the recent HEA report Flexible Pedagogies: Technology-Enhanced Learning proposes that "if students do not perceive traditional lectures and seminars to be valuable from a learning perspective then the age of campus-based education could come to an end". These articles effectively suggest that the combination of affordable personal technology, widespread internet access and availability of free online learning materials could ultimately lead to campus-based lectures becoming a thing of the past.

So what has this got to do with Sound City? One of the key factors contributing to Sound City's legendary status was its refusal to embrace digital recording technology. In the 1990s, digital audio software such as ProTools revolutionised the recording industry by making it possible for anyone to record and produce music in their bedroom. While this can be seen as empowering creativity by lowering the barriers to entry into the music business, the adverse effect is eloquently articulated by one of the Sound City team as 'making it possible for people to get into the music business who had no business getting into the music business'. By removing the filter of having to go into a studio and record music live - with other people - it became increasingly easy for anyone to create average music. 

As the film draws to a close, Grohl explains that one of the most valuable aspects of writing music in a band is the opportunity to develop ideas in real time, with the help of like-minded people. Often there is no pre-determined output other than the desire to make a record, but by exchanging ideas, trying new things, and collaborating with other musicians, it is possible to achieve great things. It is through real-time human collaboration that magic happens, the magic of creating a composition using the fragments of ideas and inspiration that exist in the minds of each musician. Of crucial importance is the need to spend time on this process, creating through experimentation, then refining ideas through negotiation, trial and error.

For me, this is what Higher Education can learn from Sound City and the process of writing music. The one element common to most university experiences is the opportunity to be in a room with like-minded people, all keen to learn and to try new things. When this face-to-face time is used effectively this is where the magic can happen, the 'light-bulb moments' where somebody asks a question and we suddenly understand a concept. Where a discussion takes place that enables us to see something in a whole new light, or from an entirely different perspective. While it is possible to access the same content from home using a computer, without the opportunity to be in a room with people and share the experience of learning we are less likely to experience the magic that comes from collaborating with other human beings.

Higher Education is currently struggling to articulate the value of campus-based education in an age of rapid technological enhancement. If it is able to refocus on the value of an effective tutor in creating engaging learning experiences for students, then campus-based education will survive. But if pedagogical models based on information transmission are allowed to persist then students will vote with their feet.

The tutor has never had more power to determine the fate of the university.

Higher Education in East Asia - students and grads share their views

In doing some research into sustainability I came across the above video from the World Bank, summarising it's report into Higher Education in South East Asia. The research interviewed students and graduates about their experience of Higher Education, and they provided some thought provoking quotes:

• "Higher Education can help us get better jobs but not necessarily the jobs we want."
• "Experience and capability are more important" than a paper diploma.
• "Lack of work experience is the biggest obstacle to finding a job. Many companies do not have time to train graduates."

When asked what changes they would like to see the provided the following responses:
  

• More room for students to be entrepreneurs
• A global teaching system that respects local values
• "What I learned was completely divorced from reality. Copying the western model is not suitable."
• "I hope schools don't become too utilitarian, teaching just for employment. There should be in-depth knowledge."
• "Developing learning methods that help teachers and students think creatively and out of the box"

What about you? What are your thoughts on the above statements? Do these statements confirm or challenge your experience of Higher Education?

A New Year's Day educational message from Seth Godin

I've had an enjoyable break from Twitter over the Christmas break. But having switched on the computer on New Year's Day I came across this thought-provoking video from Seth Godin in which he outlines the reforms he believes are needed for compulsory and post-compulsory education. In questioning the fundamental philosophy which informs current approaches to pedagogy, Godin's observations echo those of Sir Ken Robinson in highlighting the need for a fundamental reevaluation of the educational system.

Why aren't more governments and educational policy makers listening to people like Seth Godin and Sir Ken Robinson? History shows that resistance to change never succeeds in preventing change from occurring. It seems evident that the sooner governments, universities and schools embrace 21st century educational thinking the more likely they are to ride (and potentially profit from) the wave of change. And yet report after report is written highlighting the problem of entrenched views hampering the uptake of new pedagogical approaches (see, for example An Avalanche is Coming, Innovating Pedagogy 2013).

Why is there so much fear of change, particularly in the Higher Education sector which for centuries has been at the forefront of intellectual thought and new knowledge?

We are already entering a post-digital world where ubiquitous access to information should inform a fundamental reevaluation of 19th and 20th century working and pedagogic practices. MOOCs represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of a new view of education, and Thomas Friedman has issued a stark warning to universities that they should strongly consider moving away from a model of 'time served' and towards one of 'stuff learned'. Friedman believes that "increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for,  what you can do with what you know". Those institutions that are able to adapt their provision successfully will most likely lead educational innovation well into the the next decade and beyond.

Seth Godin, Sir Ken Robinson and all those offering an alternative view of education for the 21st century should be congratulated for continuing the march on the ivory towers of educational practice.

We hear you Russell, but what's the alternative?

 
 
Jeremy Paxman's recent Newsnight interview of Russell Brand provided a platform for the comedian to wax lyrical about the woes of the current political system. The second half of the interview highlighted Brand's ability to be a convincing public speaker. After all, it takes an agile mind and flawless delivery to render Paxman at a loss for words. 

But what was worrying was Brand's call for revolution without presenting any suggestion of an alternative system of government. There have been many figures in history capable of stirring an otherwise passive public to rise up against the status quo, but these speeches usually include a proposition for an alternative system of government. To me it feels irresponsible for Brand to call for a revolution without offering a corresponding vision for how things might be different.

What struck me most about the interview, however, were the parallels between Brand's portrayal of dissatisfaction with democracy and the current debates around the future of higher education. In recent months a significant amount has been written about the viability of the current university model. Topics of concern range from the sustainability of rising fees to the impact of MOOCs and new technologies on student expectations. Anyone new to the higher education sector reading these articles could easily believe that the entire system was on the brink of a revolution.

But what is lacking, in the same way as in Brand's interview, is a convincing view of an alternative vision of higher education. While few would argue that there is no shortage of innovative ideas, pedagogic models or technologies, there is a surprising lack of debate around what an alternative system of higher education might look like. In much the same way as western democracy, western higher education has been exported across the globe. Despite its flaws, many countries strive to replicate the western university model.

The world needs people like Russell Brand and the thousands of commentators who are able to articulate the faults with our current systems of government and education. But the debate would also benefit from the voice those who are able to present a convincing alternative.

Higher Education, MOOCs and global fluency

What is the purpose of Higher Education? I don't pretend to have the answer - after all, it isn't a simple question. But having read George Siemens' recent assessment of the debate around MOOCs it strikes me that the unwillingness of Higher Education to respond to the networked environment is at the heart of its existential crisis:
 

University of Wisconsin-Madison from gsiemens

Today's students are in some way connected almost every hour that they are awake. But while they (and we) are using 21st century technologies to access knowledge the majority are being forced to learn according to 20th century delivery models.

According to Siemens (2013)...                  ...but from what I'm reading...

That's not to say there aren't some interesting innovations. The adoption of competency-based learning frameworks at several US universities is just one example of an innovative response to the challenges of higher fees. But these are tempered by worrying stories of entrenchment, such as the recent news from Duke University that Faculty have rejected a plan to enable graduates to gain credits for online courses. Then again, if it is true that "digital literacies are still too chaotic and random a concept... to deal with at a senior level" then it is unsurprising that the paradigm shift represented by MOOCs is a conceptual leap too far for many universities at present.

But in business, if your customers get networked, social, self-organised, adaptive and global, and you don't, you days are numbered.

Remaining relevant

If Higher Education is to remain relevant to the future needs of its students it will have to accept the fact that a new delivery model is needed, perhaps even several. Bonnie Stewart observes that MOOCs are a symptom of the change currently taking place in HE rather than the source, and makes a strong argument that universities should be seeking to adapt in response to the new ways of knowing and learning that the networked era has created. We've already been warned that an avalanche is coming, and MOOCs currently represent the first flurry of snow. But whether the snow settles or not, MOOCs will be followed by innovation after innovation, each potentially more disruptive than the last, until traditional models of Higher Education disappear under a glacier. Grainne Conole's paper calling for a new classification of MOOCs is a positive step towards convincing university decision makers of their value in terms of pedagogy and social inclusion.

50 years ago the top 5% of school leavers went to university to become professors and push the boundaries of knowledge. In today's society the top 50% of school leavers go to university to avoid being in the bottom 50% of wage-earners. But despite this, many Higher Education Institutions are clinging to an operational model that belongs in the previous century and are unwilling to accept the changes that digital technology has forced upon the music and publishing industries. And look what happened to them.

The purpose of Higher Education

It is clear that universities fulfil a complex function in today's society. Although it can be argued that the traditional view of Higher Education as a public good unto itself is largely outdated, nobody is advocating that universities' sole focus should be on employability. But it is important to realise that the overwhelming majority of students go to university in order to access more highly paid jobs than would otherwise be possible.

Higher Education should therefore aim to prepare Bachelors students for the changing world of work, while at the same time providing postgraduate students with an environment in which they can develop the base knowledge of their disciplinary area. Graduates should leave feeling confident that their investment has prepared them for a wide range of jobs, rather than fearing their degree was a waste of time. Business should be able to have confidence that the majority of applications they receive will come from candidates who are literate, capable and appropriately skilled.

Universities could be better at aligning some aspects of their provision more directly with the needs of the global economy. The Higher Education Academy highlights the value of skills such as creativity to employers, but at the same time states that universities need to articulate more explicitly the 21st century skills that students are learning during their course.Students considering a Bachelors degree should have a clear understanding of how the course will equip them with the skills and abilities to obtain a good job. Graduates at Bachelors level should then be able to demonstrate the skills and literacies they need in order to be globally fluent and able to succeed in the global economy, incorporating:

• creative & critical thinking
• collaboration
• network and social media literacy
• information literacy
• knowledge management
• connected leadership

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Global fluency and the need for 21st Century skills

I keep reading articles full of alarmist rhetoric such as 'Higher Education is broken', or that 'An Avalanche is Coming'. Following a recent visit to the Google and Hewlett-Packard campuses in Palo Alto I'm beginning to understand why.

As a member of the International Microsummits delegation, the aim of the visit was to discuss how the needs of Business, Education and Government could be aligned more coherently. We were fortunate enough to meet with Jim Vanides, Educational Programme Manager for Hewlett-Packard, whose work on STEMx education is gaining traction in both educational and business spheres. Jim believes that the current focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is too narrow and risks depriving students of the skills that they really need to be successful graduates. Amongst others, these skills include:

• Global Fluency
• Global Citizenship
• Digital Literacy
• Collaboration
• Knowledge Management
• Community Management
• Connected Leadership

Adapting a model found on the Langwitches blog, I'm trying to unpick the notion of Global Fluency and what it means for Higher Education in terms of skills and literacies (this is a work in progress):

Harold Jarche makes a strong case that in the new world of work the network is the solution. Business and the global economy need workers, managers and leaders who can organise information and work collaboratively to find rapid solutions to complex problems. Higher Education has a clear responsibility to equip students with the necessary skills. This can be achieved without universities simply becoming training institutions, but curriculum development needs to clearly articulate where these skills are being taught during a programme of learning. 

It's a win-win: students can see more clearly how their investment will prepare them for the new world of work, and Higher Ed can respond to criticisms that it is not adapting to the shifting demands of the global workplace.

Massive Opportunity Of Course: transforming global learning with MOOCs

This article first appeared on the International Mircosummits website.

MOOCs? Bit of a fad, aren't they? We'll probably be talking about something else this time next year. Or will we? The continual appearance of new MOOCs and growth of platforms such as Cousera and Udacity suggests that they might be around for some time to come. But what does this mean for Higher Education, and what could be the potential impact of the MOOC on global learning?
 
As the cost of higher education in the western world continues to rise, even parents with deep pockets are beginning to question its affordability and value. And with Ivy-League universities such as Harvard charging upwards of $70,000 a year, who can blame them? In the UK there have been calls to reduce fees for students who attend a local university in order to make the cost of obtaining a university degree more bearable. But if an aim of a university degree is to help you become a 'global citizen', then the spiralling cost of Higher Education risks denying many students the opportunity of a global, inter-cultural learning experience. Faced with the prospect of crippling debt, there is a risk that the overseas students who would contribute to the development os a university's global community will instead choose to study in their country of origin.
 
Enter the MOOC. Although their honeymoon period is only just drawing to a close, MOOCs have already demonstrated their potential to facilitate learning on an international scale, drawing together hundreds of thousands of learners across the globe. If global citizenship is an aim of a university degree, then surely having an ambition to bring teachers and students together globally is a good place to start? Although awarding credit for participation in MOOCs is still an issue, some institutions such as the UK's Edge Hill University are already developing mechanisms to offer credits for studies completed through a MOOC.

Those educators who have embraced the concept understand that for their students, the opportunity to participate in a global community of learners is too good to pass up. The connected nature of learning in a MOOC provides enormous opportunities to expose students to global attitudes and diverse opinions that are not solely derived from a western perspective. Research has indicated that some of the main non-monetary benefits of global learning include a reduction in xenophobia and cultural stereotyping, creation of international good-will through collaborative team projects, and the development and nurturing of intercultural and social capital.
 
But what about the learning? Well, if you haven't seen it already this video features the opinions of leading ecuationalists and thinkers about the changing nature of learning in a networked society:



 

New skills

 

Higher Education's monopoly on credibility could also be in the early stages of decline. Michael Ellsberg points out that while for many years employability has depended upon the credibility of obtaining qualifications (preferably from a fancy university), the business world is increasingly measuring credibility by a changing yardstick. Companies now take very seriously a candidate's ability to build professional networks, write informed and informative blog posts, and develop legitimate, healthy followings on Twitter and other social media platforms. These skills are precisely those that participation in a MOOC support as they drive learners to be independent, inquisitive and informed.

The Open Educational Resources that feature in many MOOCs have come under scrutiny in recent months, with questions being raised about the general level of quality and sustainability of OERs. This is a valid point - who will monitor and update these OERs in the same way that textbooks are updated? But to criticise OERs for their quality is to miss the point: ten years ago it was difficult to find anything like the quality of resources that can now be accessed online. Admittedly the quality can vary, but shouldn't we then as educators not be focusing on helping our students develop digital literacies so that they have the skills to critique and evaluate the quality of these resources for themselves? To continue thinking in a 20th century mindset where 'someone else' is responsible for evaluating and updating educational resources is dangerous. If we are truly to prepare students to succeed in the 21st century they will require the ability to take control of their own education and teach themselves the skills and knowledge required for their new world or work.

Much has been written about the failure of technology to have a significant impact on transforming learning. But ask the international students who are accessing top quality resources via a MOOC whether technology is failing and they may well provide a different viewpoint. There continues to be much debate about the impact MOOCs will have on the current model of Higher Education. But what has already been demonstrated is the desire of many educators to give away their knowledge for free, sharing it with anyone who is interested for the altruistic benefit of educating humanity. It may be that the concept of the MOOC is a passing fad, and we may well be talking about something else this time next year. But for the time being MOOCs have the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in the delivery of Higher Education at a global level. And for a lot less than $70,000 a year.

Changing Educational Paradigms

This is a winner - an inspirational talk on the challenges facing education combined with awesome animation from RSAnimate. Well worth 10 minutes of your time:

An avalanche is coming: look out Higher Education

‘Should we fail to radically change our approach to education, the same cohort we’re attempting to “protect” could find that their entire future is scuttled by our timidity.’
David Puttnam, MIT, 2012

A detailed and insightful look into the uncertain future of Higher Education - download the full report here:

http://www.ippr.org/publication/55/10432/an-avalanche-is-coming-higher-education-and-the-revolution-ahead

Truly awesome: Daphne Koller explains Coursera

There has been much discussion in recent months about the impact of MOOCs and online courses on the traditional model of Higher Education. Coursera, an online platform where you can take a range of online courses for free, has caused much hand-wringing about the future of the university in an increasingly online world.

But this TED talk by Coursera founder Daphne Koller should go a long way to calming the fears of all those who truly believe that education can make the world a better place. For anyone working in Higher Education, this short video is well worth 20 minutes of your time:

Isaac Asimov's future of education - 1988

An amazing interview with sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov. Recorded in 1988, it's as if he had already glimpsed the future of technology in imagining an education system that would finally put the learner at the centre:

e-Learning and Digital Cultures

This excellent blog post by David Hopkins provides a useful summary of the activity in the short #edcmooc currently being run by Coursera and the University of Edinburgh. David also draws attention to the near-future of education and technology and provides a useful critique of 'utopian / dystopian' discourse (Hand and Sandwell, 2002) and provides links to some interesting videos:

The changing role of the teaching in a personalised learning environment

Just came across this post which explores how the role of the tutor could change in response to an increasingly personalised system of online education:

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/6-possible-roles-for-teachers-in-a-personalized-learning-environment/

Given all the recent debates about MOOCs and their impact on HE it's interesting to consider if and how the age-old practice of teaching might change. Perhaps we will just return to a more Socratic method of personalised instruction?

Impact of MOOCs on Higher Education

An interesting discussion from the recent TIME conference on the future of Higher Education - this particular clip explores the impact of MOOCs on HE delivery:

The Future of Learning, Networked Society

A thought-provoking video on the new challenges of learning in a networked world, featuring respected marketing blogger Seth Godin:

What would a disrupted education system look like?

Great presentation as ever from George Siemens considering the ways in which technology is disrupting education:

Edgex Disruption

View more PowerPoint from gsiemens

"Deliberate practice" - another way of "flipping the classroom"?

I came across an article suggesting that "deliberate practice" is a more effective way of teaching students than the traditional lecture. I've not heard of deliberate practice so I decided to investigate.

According to the article, the deliberate practice method involves the tutor providing students with a multiple-choice question on a given topic. The students then discuss the question in small groups before providing their answer electronically, presumably using a clicker tool or polling application. The tutor can then see their level of understanding about the topic; he answers the question by way of a short discussion before moving on to the next topic.

This sounds great, and it's certainly something I'm going to try myself, but isn't this similar to the concept of 'flipping the classroom' as suggested by Salman Khan in his seminal TED talk? Khan's method of using video to deliver core content as a means to free up the face-to-face time for more constructive discussion is a powerful new way to enhance student learning. The article on deliberate practice indicated that students exposed to this method of teaching did more than twice as well in a test than those in the traditional lecture setting. The phenomenal impact of the Khan Academy's approach to teaching also suggests that technology now provides a legitimate way to challenge the centuries-old method of teaching that is the lecture.

Educators such as George Siemens and Stephen Downes are also challenging Higher Education to with their concept of Massive Open Online Courses. With students able to access unlimited content online, universities are increasingly under pressure to justify the very nature of their existence. Maybe changing the dynamic of the traditional lecture using 'deliberate practice' or by 'flipping the classroom' will be enough to quell the unrest.

Let's hope that more research is conducted in this area.