Threaded Bookmarks 08-February-2010

In a happy coincidence we get three recent reports on the future of education from three very different perspectives. The article by Diana Oblinger is based on a report by organizations in Australia (CAUDIT), North America (EDUCAUSE), the United Kingdom (JISC), and the Netherlands (SURFfoundation). Information technology provides a filtering lens, and Oblinger adds a nice series of questions at the end of her article. You can almost hear the creaking of present institutions under the weight of current and impending change.

The second article, called The Learning Society, is unique in its source (a corporation), its breadth of external review and contributors, and its call for a new learning system concurrent with existing systems but based on a new set of principles and organized differently. The recommendations, however, don’t live up to the promise of the new principles.

The third document is cast as a challenge: “how can technology increase access, improve quality and lower cost?” It was published by Contact North, which was founded in 1986 by the Ontario government to serve the education and training needs of people in rural and remote areas of that Canadian province. It’s unclear exactly how the document was prepared and by whom. Some parts make provocative reading.

After considering each of the documents separately and in conversation with the others, I’m left a bit unsatisfied. Maybe that’s not unexpected. Imagining the unknown devolves with the degree of specificity.

My own take is pretty squishy at this point. Yes to a new learning society of some sort. Yes to the inclusion of everyone. Yes to its inception in entrepreneurial innovation rather than strategic planning. Yes to the criticality of innovation under the severest of constraints. And yes to concurrency with, but alternatives to, existing educational and financial systems. Beyond that the fog deepens and visibility disappears.

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The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus
CAUDIT, EDUCAUSE, JISC, SURFfoundation. 13-January-2010.

From the Campus to the Future
Diana G. Oblinger. EDUCAUSE Review. January/February 2010.

Higher education faces numerous challenges posed by the drivers of change, including worldwide demand for education, financial constraints, and a constantly changing knowledge base. Those of us involved with information technology in higher education thus need to ask ourselves several critical questions:

• …
• If we were to transform the student experience, what would it look like? What would we do differently? How would those changes affect the individual? The workplace? Society?
• …
• If the college/university metaphor today is a network rather than a campus, what does that mean for our work in information technology?

The Learning Society
Richard Halkett. Cisco Systems (GETideas.org). 2010.

The principles that characterize the Learning Society are informed by the demands of the 21st century, by emergent innovations at the very leading edge, and by what we now know about how learning happens. The result is the following set of principles designed to meet society’s new demands for learning and to realize the learning potential of every part of society and every part of the globe.

The Learning Society:

• Engenders a culture of learning throughout life.
• Aims to develop motivated, engaged learners who are prepared to conquer the unforeseen challenges of tomorrow as well as those of today.
• Takes learning to the learner, seeing learning as an activity, not a place.
• Believes that learning is for all, that no one should be excluded.
• Recognizes that people learn differently, and strives to meet those needs.
• Cultivates and embraces new learning providers, from the public, private, and NGO sectors.
• Develops new relationships and new networks between learners, providers (new and old), funders, and innovators.
• Provides the universal infrastructure they need to succeed—still physical but increasingly virtual.
• Supports systems of continuous innovation and feedback to develop knowledge of what works in which circumstances.

Fast Forward: How Emerging Technologies are Transforming Education and Training [.pdf]
Contact North. Challenge Paper, January 2010.

This is a foresight paper, not a policy or planning paper. It seeks to imagine what could happen for learning systems with technologies currently in various states of development. It does not address how change could be made or what these changes may be.

To provide a flavor, here’s one implication that appears in a section called Knowledge Engines, Networks, and Hubs:

Students will leverage technology, peer networks, robots and artificial intelligence in support of their learning challenges before institutions adopt them — acting as consumers, they will drive some changes in the system. They will access knowledge from global knowledge engines available through the semantic web. They will seek credit recognition for their work. They will demand acknowledgement of learning from a variety of sources. The opportunity thus exists to shift to a new paradigm for the management of learning outcomes — a paradigm likely to be resisted to those committed to the old paradigm, which has a strong and successful six hundred year history.