David Powelstock on 2009-06-05
Marvin Bressler, with a 'B'! Jeez.
This link has been bookmarked by 20 people . It was first bookmarked on 04 Jun 2009, by Will Richardson.
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Mare BV"Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning", he writes. "There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learni
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09 Jun 09
Sonya FaustVery interesting article that I think is fairly spot on. The eventual evolution of university learning may be different, but something will have to change.
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They're used to multi-tasking, and have learned
to handle the information overload.
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08 Jun 09
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The universities are not primarily institutes of higher learning, but
institutes for science and research -
Taylor
argued that graduate education must be restructured at a fundamental
level to move away from the ultra-narrow scholarship - 48 more annotations...
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he called for more cross-disciplinary inquiry, the creation of problem-focused
programs, with a sunset clause, as well as more collaboration between
all educational institutions, and the abolition of tenure -
Another academic accused Taylor of "poisoning the waters of higher
education. -
In the industrial
model of student mass production, the teacher is the broadcaster -
I'm a professor and I have knowledge. You're a student you're an
empty vassal and you don't. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to
take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition
build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test
you. -
They play a limited role of interesting an audience, changing their view
or possibly motivating them to do something different. But I dare say
that 90 percent of what I've said is lost -
young people who have grown up digital
are abandoning one-way TV for the higher stimulus of interactive communication
they find on the Internet -
Some writers,
of course, think that Google makes you stupid -
My research
suggests these critics are wrong. Growing up digital has changed the
way their minds work in a manner that will help them handle the challenges
of the digital age -
two-way conversation
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handle the information overload
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the new model of learning is not only appropriate
for youth — but increasingly for all of us. In this generation's culture
is the new culture of learning. -
they should
encourage students to discover for themselves, and learn a process
of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the professor's
store of information -
universities
are vulnerable, especially at a time when students can watch lectures
online for free by some of the world's leading professors -
There are shining examples of interactive education
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Warm-up questions, written
by the students, are typically due a few hours before class, giving the
teacher an opportunity to adjust the lesson "just in time," so
that classroom time can be focused on the parts of the assignments that
students struggled with -
"Education is so much more than the mere transfer of information.
The information has to be assimilated. Students have to connect the information
to what they already know, develop mental models, learn how to apply
the new knowledge, and how to adapt this knowledge to new and unfamiliar
situations. -
Compared with students enrolled in conventionally
taught courses, students who use well-crafted computer-mediated instruction
... generally achieve higher scores on summary examinations, learn their
lessons in less time, like their classes more, and develop more positive
attitudes towards the subject matter they're learning -
Education was about absorbing content and
being able to recall it on exams. You graduated and you were set for
life — just "keeping"
up in your chosen field. -
Today when you graduate you're set for say,
15 minutes -
What counts is your capacity
to learn lifelong, to think, research, find information, analyze, synthesize,
contextualize, critically evaluate it; to apply research to solving problems;
to collaborate and communicate. -
It's not only what you know that really counts
when you graduate; it's how you navigate in the digital world, and what
you do with the information you discover. This new style of learning,
I believe, will suit them. -
Universities should be places to learn, not to teach.
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"The scandal of education
is that every time you teach something, you deprive a child of the pleasure
and benefit of discovery." -
when a child first learns how to speak, she or
he is totally immersed in a social context and highly motivated to engage
in learning this new, amazingly complex system of language -
"once you start going to school, in some ways you
start to learn much slower because you are being taught, rather than
what happens if you're learning in order to do things that you yourself
care about -
once
you learn to honor the mysteries of the world, you're kind of always
willing to probe things … you can actually be joyful about discovering
something you didn't know … and you can expect always to need to keep
probing. And so that sets the stage for lifelong inquiry." -
Another fixture of old-style learning is the assumption that students
should learn on their own -
Sharing notes in an exam hall, or collaborating
on some of the essays and homework assignments, was strictly forbidden -
individual learning model is foreign territory for most Net Geners,
who have grown up collaborating, sharing, and creating together online -
how you internalize information
into something that makes sense to you. Learning starts as you leave
the classroom, when you start discussing with people around you what
was just said -
The big thing these
days is to get an "A" without ever having gone to a lecture.
When the crème de la crème of an entire generation is boycotting the
formal model of pedagogy in our educational institutions, the writing
is on the wall. -
A Challenge of the Revenue Model
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If all that the big universities have to offer to students
are lectures that you can get online for free — from other professors
— why pay the tuition fees? -
A Challenge to Credentialing
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One of the most important roles of the university is to screen human
capital for future employers, and more broadly stratifying society -
Those who graduate — better still with distinction —
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have proven they have a degree of discipline and that
they're prepared to play by the rules. -
credential and even the prestige of a university is rooted in
its effectiveness as a learning institution -
But if campuses
are seen as places where learning is inferior to other models, or worse
places where learning is restricted and stifled, the role of the campus
experience will be undermined as well. -
real value of what they offer is not the lecture per se, but
rather the whole package — the content tied to the human learning experience
on campus, plus the certification. -
universities should use the Internet to create a global
centre of excellence -
choose the best courses you have
and link them with the best at a handful of universities around the
world to create an unquestionably best-in-class program for students. -
So why hasn't
it happened yet? "It's the legacy of established human and educational
infrastructure," -
We're challenged by obstructive, non-market-based
business models. We're also burdened by a sense that doctor knows best,
or professor knows best." -
Old
Paradigms Die Hard -
Yet the Industrial Age model of education is hard to change. New paradigms
cause dislocation, disruption, confusion, uncertainty. They are nearly
always received with coolness or hostility. Vested interests fight change.
And leaders of old paradigms are often the last to embrace the new. -
A powerful force to change the university is the
students -
There is a huge generational clash
emerging in these institutions. It turns out that the critique of the
university from years ago were ideas in waiting — waiting for the new
web and a new generation of digital natives who could effectively challenge
the old model.
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and the individual professor. The great liberal arts
colleges are doing a wonderful job of stimulating young minds because
with big endowments and small class sizes students can have more of a
customized collaborative experience. My son Alex graduated fro
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06 Jun 09
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05 Jun 09
Susan DineenWill Rich suggested this one, though, as he notes, it's filled with false assumptions.
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Mireille J on 2009-06-05
There's quite some research indicating that Tapscott is wrong. I've bookmarked some interesting articles at Diigo, 'generations'-tag.
My impression is that the generation fad has been invented by marketeers and consultants, who hope to make some good money out of it. -
federico Corno on 2009-06-09
Thank you Mireille, i red the articles you suggested.
i'm really intersted on the topic of education, at least because i'm still a student. Even if 'net generation' literacy gap is not such a tremendous force -as researches you suggested says- it is undubitable that digital era changed the way we all research information and the way we all learn day-by-day moment-by-moment (more younger than older).
That's the point: tenure and the way universities teach is less efficient and less "fascinating" then it was in the past. Today they should reshape themself to stay as acctractive as they were.
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Yet the students,
who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently.
Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on
the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation,
not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast
one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or
even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities,
and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their
peril.
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Steve RansomTHE IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY by Don Tapscott
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f universities
want to adapt the teaching techniques to their current audience, they
should, as I've been saying for years, make significant changes to
the pedagogy. And the new model of learning is not only appropriate
for youth — but increasingly for all of us. In this generation's culture
is the new culture of learning. -
"The scandal of education
is that every time you teach something, you deprive a child of the pleasure
and benefit of discovery."-
Steve Ransom on 2009-06-11
Great quotation...problematic from an efficiency standpoint though.
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Learning starts as you leave
the classroom, when you start discussing with people around you what
was just said. It is in conversation that you start to internalize what
some piece of information meant to you."-
Steve Ransom on 2009-06-11
I wouldn't disagree with that for the most part.
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If the curriculum is well structured
and interesting, then large proportions of students at any given grade
level will "tune in" and get engaged with the information.
But too often, it doesn't work out that way.-
Steve Ransom on 2009-06-11
Curriculum and how curriculum is learned are two very different things. Curriculum may be intrinsically interesting, but often we kill it by controlling the learning and destroying any sense of curiosity and discovery
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Videotaping lectures can free up intellectual capital — on the part of
both professors and students — to spend their on-campus time thinking
and inquiring and challenging each other, rather than just absorbing
information-
Steve Ransom on 2009-06-11
This is what I have been working towards. But, students have to watch/listen/process the lectures. The same students who often don't do the readings and come to class unprepared for any meaningful dialogue will be the ones who skip out on the lecture.
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Jeff UtechtFor those of us like me who have been working on the Internet for years, it was very clear you couldn't encounter free software and you couldn't encounter Wikipedia and you couldn't encounter all of the wealth of cultural materials that people create and exchange, and the valuable actual software that people create, without an understanding that something much more complex is happening than the dominant ideology of the last 40 years or so. But you could if you weren't looking there, because we were used in the industrial system to think in these terms.
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04 Jun 09
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Will RichardsonUniversities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning, as the web inexorably becomes the dominant infrastructure for knowledge sweeney both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people.
Meanwhile on campus, there is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn.-
Universities
are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning, as the web inexorably
becomes the dominant infrastructure for knowledge sweeney both as a container
and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people.
Meanwhile
on campus, there is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there
is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big
universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up
digital best learn.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
I really hate blanket statements like this though I think it is true for some schools.
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The old-style
lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large
group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses.
It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and
the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students,
who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently.
Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on
the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation,
not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast
one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or
even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities,
and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their
peril.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Nothing really new here, is there?
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David Powelstock on 2009-06-04
Nothing new, and nothing true. This is so far from describing what goes on in today's university as to be ludicrous. Students and faculty interract in a wide variety of modes, including digital ones. The difference between the university and Don Tapscott sitting in his office with an internet connection is that students have guides to help them explore the world of information and ideas and help them learn the critical skill necessary to evaluate info sources. A lot has changed at the ol' university since Don's salad days.
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a deep debate on how universities function
in a networked society.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
We all need to be more open to this debate or conversation, even in K-12.
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"Broadcast learning"
as I've called it is no longer appropriate for the digital age and for
a new generation of students who represent the future of learning.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Again, nothing new here.
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If someone frozen 300 years ago miraculously came
alive today and looked at the professions — a physician in an operating
theater, a pilot in a jumbo cockpit, a engineer designing an automobile
in a CAD system — they would surely marvel at how technologies had
transformed the knowledge work. But if they walked into a university
lecture hall, they would no doubt be comforted that some things have
not changed.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Ugh. You're kidding me right? We can't come up with something original?
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Steve Ransom on 2009-06-05
Perhaps, but those surgeons, pilots, engineers, and the like who are so innovative and progressive also came from those very same lecture halls.
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My research
suggests these critics are wrong. Growing up digital has changed the
way their minds work in a manner that will help them handle the challenges
of the digital age. They're used to multi-tasking, and have learned
to handle the information overload. They expect a two-way conversation.
What's more, growing up digital has encouraged this generation to be
active and demanding enquirers. Rather than waiting for a trusted professor
to tell them what's going on, they find out on their own on everything
from Google to Wikipedia.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
This is where he really riles me. Most of this is fiction. And I wish he would use the correct adverb. Sheesh.
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Mireille J on 2009-06-05
There's quite some research showing Tapscott is wrong. I have bookmarked some interesting articles at Diigo, 'generations' -tag. My impression is that the generation fad has been invented by marketeers and consultants, who hope to earn good money with it...
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Chris Duke on 2009-06-09
The notion that learners are inherently different riles me as well... At the very least:
I'm certainly NOT a millenial; the first six years of my teaching career were spent teaching pre-millenials (or prior to 2000, at least). So, how can MY most valued learning experiences have exhibited characteristics of what's supposed to be unique and new with millenials just now coming to secondary and early college classrooms?
Easy. Millenials are NOT different learners than those of us not-so-millenials trying to teach them. When given the opportunity, I reacted positively to engaging, social, experiential, visual, connected learning experiences, and I'm pretty confident most learners would have if they encountered those unique teachers - no matter how long ago they were sitting in a student seat.
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The professors
who remain relevant will have to abandon the traditional lecture, and
start listening and conversing with the students — shifting from a
broadcast style and adopting an interactive one. Second, they should
encourage students to discover for themselves, and learn a process
of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the professor's
store of information. Third, they need to encourage students to collaborate
among themselves and with others outside the university. Finally, they
need to tailor the style of education to their students' individual
learning styles.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Again, anything new here?
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Smart but impatient, they like to collaborate and they reject
one-way lectures, he notes.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Didn't he just say that one way lectures online was a threat?
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One strategy being used in this program is called just-in-time teaching;
it is a teaching and learning strategy that combines the benefits of
Web-based assignments and an active-learner classroom where courses are
customized to the particular needs of the class. Warm-up questions, written
by the students, are typically due a few hours before class, giving the
teacher an opportunity to adjust the lesson "just in time," so
that classroom time can be focused on the parts of the assignments that
students struggled with. Harvard professor Eric Mazur, who uses this
approach in his physics class, puts it this way:
"Education is so much more than the mere transfer of information.
The information has to be assimilated. Students have to connect the information
to what they already know, develop mental models, learn how to apply
the new knowledge, and how to adapt this knowledge to new and unfamiliar
situations.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Better, but still not original thinking here.
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Universities should be places to learn, not to teach.
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Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Der
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Yet the individual learning model is foreign territory for most Net Geners,
who have grown up collaborating, sharing, and creating together online.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
This is what he wants us to believe, but for the vast majority of kids, they haven't been doing much of this at all.
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Created by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology
at Kansas State University, it is a stinging indictment of the education
delivered by standard large-scale American university.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Oddly, this was the one video of Wesch's that I really didn't like.
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Steve Ransom on 2009-06-11
Yes, but did the students write those statements on their own volition?
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Anyone in the world can watch the entire series of lectures for some
30 courses, such as Walter Lewin's ever-popular introductory physics
course, which gets viewed by over 40,000 people a month on OpenCourseWear,
MIT's version of intellectual philanthropy. Universities worldwide have
joined the movement.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
But why would they if they couldn't connect and collaborate and co-create etc? Or are we just expecting them to figure that out?
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But a credential and even the prestige of a university is rooted in
its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions
are shown to be inferior learning environments to other alternatives
their capacity to credential will surely diminish.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
I do wonder about this. How will credentialing change in a transparent world?
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Steve Ransom on 2009-06-11
But will those "other alternatives" provide the credentials that we are all looking for/expecting? Or, is the very notion of credentialing changing?
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The university campus has been "a wonderful place for young people
to go for four years to get older", as Princeton sociologist Marvin
Dressler told me a decade ago. "While they're there they're bound
to learn something" he said.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Nice quote
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David Powelstock on 2009-06-05
Nice quote, but it's Marvin Bressler, with a 'B.' Jeez.
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The video lectures allow students to absorb the course content
online — whenever it's convenient — and then get together to tinker,
invent new things, or discuss the material.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Would love to know how much this happens absent the physical space.
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Why should a university student be restricted
to learning from the professors at the university he or she is attending.-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
Great question, and this holds true for high schools to some extent as well.
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"We're more like health care. We're challenged by obstructive, non-market-based
business models. We're also burdened by a sense that doctor knows best,
or professor knows best."-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
That's a stretch though, too.
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The digital world, which has trained young minds to inquire and collaborate,
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Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
I really wish he would stop saying this.
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And sparks are flying today. There is a huge generational clash
emerging in these institutions. It turns out that the critique of the
university from years ago were ideas in waiting — waiting for the new
web and a new generation of digital natives who could effectively challenge
the old model.
-
Will Richardson on 2009-06-04
This I agree with.
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Public Stiky Notes
i'm really intersted on the topic of education, at least because i'm still a student. Even if 'net generation' literacy gap is not such a tremendous force -as researches you suggested says- it is undubitable that digital era changed the way we all research information and the way we all learn day-by-day moment-by-moment (more younger than older).
That's the point: tenure and the way universities teach is less efficient and less "fascinating" then it was in the past. Today they should reshape themself to stay as acctractive as they were.
My impression is that the generation fad has been invented by marketeers and consultants, who hope to make some good money out of it.
I'm certainly NOT a millenial; the first six years of my teaching career were spent teaching pre-millenials (or prior to 2000, at least). So, how can MY most valued learning experiences have exhibited characteristics of what's supposed to be unique and new with millenials just now coming to secondary and early college classrooms?
Easy. Millenials are NOT different learners than those of us not-so-millenials trying to teach them. When given the opportunity, I reacted positively to engaging, social, experiential, visual, connected learning experiences, and I'm pretty confident most learners would have if they encountered those unique teachers - no matter how long ago they were sitting in a student seat.
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