designing for the twenty first century

[Yishay Mor]

Peter raises an interesting question:

"How will design for the twenty first century differ from design for the twentieth century? are spans of one hundred years the appropriate units to use?"

Your thoughts?

Yishay
____________________
Dr. Yishay Mor
Senior Lecturer, Educational Technology
http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/yishay.mor
+44 1908 6 59373

 

On 10 January 2013 07:43, <clacks...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Yishay

I downloaded the launch event and watched it last night, setting aside the technical and audio quality issues a number of things struck me:

1. As an occasional website and database designer my definition of design includes and ranks highly satisfying the needs of my customers / users within a set of resource and other constraints. In the launch event there was not much mention of who our customers / users are, what do they need and how best can we deliver it to them.

2. The course is about designing for the twenty first century... there did not seem to be much attention paid to what this means. How will design for the twenty first century differ from design for the twentieth century? are spans of one hundred years the appropriate units to use?

3. It is early days in the course but it is exciting and a project based MOOC has the potential to be like a large onlione 'hackathon' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon

Peter

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[Joshua Underwood]

It's a great point. I'd guess 100 year spans are certainly not the right units. What would be a better phrase?

- Design for change?

- How will design for today (tomorrow) differ from design for yesterday?

....

[Andy Wright]

Hi

I'm Andy Wright, dLearning Developer for the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, UK.

I think we can safely say that due to the exponential increase in tech development, the incorporation of these new technologies into education and the unprecedented, immediate access to info on the internet, 100 year units are no longer appropriate. I think maybe somewhere around the 10 year mark would be a more useful unit for discussion (although it sometimes feels like an online resource that took 6 months to create feels outdated almost as soon as it's finished!!) 

:-)

Cheers

Andy

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[Hugues Chicoine]

stand and deliver systems | organisations vs open distance education

We are sometimes lead to believe that the roots of modern education belong to 19 Century scientific and technical advancements as something to be criticized, for example when concepts such as public education and mass education are merged ideologically: “Built on the factory model, mass education taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, a bit of history and other subjects. This was the ‘overt curriculum’. But beneath it lay an invisible or ‘covert curriculum’ that was for more basic. It consisted -- and still does in most industrial nations -- of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in tote, repetitive work.”[5]

The educational stand and deliver systems | organisations date back to the Greek and Roman empires[1] but were not conceived as a public system before the 17th century by Ratke 1571-1635[2] and especially Komensky 1592-1670[3] in his Didactica Magna, the first cognitive approach to education. Komensky (Comenius) was the first to propose a systematic approach that determined the distribution of curriculum in classrooms, established the roles and responsibilities of parents and teachers, discipline in the classroom, duration of classes, supervision, exams and even school holidays[4].

Open (distance) education belongs to the 20th century as of the early and mid-1970s and keeps on evolving experimentally.

/HCh

[1] CURTIS, T. 2009. Didactic and rhetorical strategies in Galen’s De pulsibus ad tirones. Taub, L. & Doody, A. dir., Authorial voices in Greco-Roman technical writing. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 63-80.
[2] RIOUX, G. 1963. L’oeuvre pédagogique de Wolfgangus Ratichius (1571-1635). Paris: Vrin.
[3] BUISSON, F., dir. 1911. Coménius. Nouveau dictionnaire de pédagogie et d’instruction primaire. (goo.gl/NAMxM)
[4] « la répartition des matières par classe [qui] souligne les devoirs des parents et des maîtres, fixe la discipline, précise la durée de chaque enseignement, et ne laisse rien au hasard concernant la surveillance, les examens et les vacances » (Rioux 1963:273).
[5] TOFFLER, A. 1980. The third wave. New York: William Morrow, p.45.
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[Arthur Oglesby]

I am pretty convinced our personal digital assistants ten years from now will have individualized learning design built in. 

It will learn what we want or need and deliver it in a way that enables our learning.

[Will Stewart]

The other question to consider is this:

Could a curriculum designed for the 21st century, exist within a 20th century institution?

Will

[Yishay Mor]

I think some 20c institutions (esp. educational institutions) are feeling the pressure to change. 

The question for us, as innovators, is: when is it easier to drive change from within, and when is it better to start fresh. I'm in the within phase for now..

Yishay

[Ricardo Carvalho]

The reality is that teaching the way that we know, probably already doesn't exist. We are always changing our way of teaching with new methods, new objectifs, and so  it's necessary adapt our systems of teaching to the new way of see the teaching. The students have new skills on the computer they know how to use them sometimes better then we do. The 20c brought to us some evolution that we can forget and brought some evolution the internet is coming must faster the computers are much better and all this become from the past if someone diddn't exoplore this we couldn't be in the level that we are.

 

Ricardo

[just4...@gmail.com]

I can't help but think the 'within' approach will bring change that will result in a group of early adopters achieving innovative and productive advances while the mainstream plods on year after year unaffected by the change. The question then goes back to how to bring institutions into the 21 st century i.e. to develop an environment where innovation becomes mainstream.

[Will Stewart]

Me also, Yishae. But sometimes I think it would be so much easier just to start afresh ;)
Will

[Niall Watts]

We are more than 1/8th of way through C21st already! So perhaps we are designing for today, tomorrow or maybe 2020.

[Nathalie Ferret]

Good afternoon, from Portugal :)

Well, about my thoughts... and regarding the second question...

I’m leaning to believe in a change from within. The changes should be brought by inside people and institutions to fulfilld real needs and expectations.

 Like it was said, by Yishay Mor, there’s already a big pression on teaching organizations for changing…but there is also a lot of resistance. Not quite from teachers themselves, in my opinion, but perhaps from who’s in charge (afraid to lose their privileges and power or high positions of “command”?) because, it's my conviction, the new design of education is leading us to a wilder democratic education system…(is merely a simplistic thought).

Never the less, where I put the focus of the problem is in “Time” for changing and in “Sense/Meaning” of the change. Within “rigid” and hierarchic established 20c’s institutions and structured curriculum, it will take time…more than we have, isn’t it? And what’s the meaning of changing? What “good” it will bring? Aren’t we building paths before knowing there’s end or purpose? To be involved in a change, people must, first of all, understand it and believe in it…

Now, in a more optimistic point of view, I feel that we are going to live some further more years within a hybrid teaching-learning design, with the coexistence of two models of curriculum: the 20^th and 21th. One growing and the other adapting and smoothly disappearing …

Best regards,

Nathalie

[Jonathan Vernon]

Perfectly put. A period of hybridization ... or just as the print press resulted in an evolving and changing educational world, so will e-learning. I think some class sizes of 1000 studies will become the norm. That these numbers on the periphery of the learning experience will, or will not, be managed, motivated or drawn by stick or carrot towards the centre. (Thinking Seely Brown, Duguid, Wenger et al here)

Jonathan

On Thursday, 10 January 2013 08:35:16 UTC, Yishay Mor wrote:

[Jonathan Vernon]

I'd say 18 months. I entered this field in 1999/2000 and have migrated rich content from DVD to the web, and for the last three years have been studying with the OU on their MAODE while keeping up some professional activity - working in Brighton companies have a short shelf life as ideas, people, projects, software and platforms get picked up or crushed, spun around then spat out. There's constant agitation - on the one hand careful evolution, on the other, a desire by some to be the first with a revolution. It all goes into the mix. My view is that we need to feed content to tablets and smartphones and look beyond these to a headset and ear-piece. Personally I'd like to have chips in my teeth so that I can activate a device without having to use fingers or voice :) 

Jonathan

On Thursday, 10 January 2013 08:35:16 UTC, Yishay Mor wrote:

[Yishay Mor]

The connected learning report may be interesting to consider in this context:

http://connectedlearning.tv/what-is-connected-learning

"We are living in a historical moment of transformation and realignment in the creation and sharing of knowledge, in social, political and economic life, and in global connectedness. There is wide agreement that we need new models of education suited to this historic moment, and not simply new models of schooling, but entirely new visions of learning better suited to the increasing complexity, connectivity, and velocity of our new knowledge society. Fortunately, we are also able to harness the same technologies and social processes that have powered these transformations in order to provide the next generation with learning experiences that open doors to academic achievement, economic opportunity, and civic engagement."

Learning Principles

• Interest-powered
  
• Peer-supported
  
• Academically oriented
  

Design Principles

• Production-centered
  
• Openly networked
  
• Shared purpose
  

Core Values

• Equity
  
• Social Connection
  
• Full Participation
  

[Ida Brandão]

Hi Yishar,

Today I watched parts of an intervention of Tony Bates of last year, in Vancouver Community College,about technology trends and change - http://youtu.be/GNNfuTQgbAI
A pleasant and humorous communicator.

[Ida Brandão]

[Yishay Mor]

Another possibly interesting input for this thread is the OU's innovating pedagogy report:

http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovating/

The series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation.

The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education.  You can see a summary of each innovation at the menu on the right. Please contribute with comments on the report and the innovations.

Una versión del informe en español está disponible en:innovating-pedagogy.wikidot.com

[Paige Cuffe]

Jonathan you will put me on the mailing list for pre-orders of that toothset, won't you? ;-))

[Cristina Neto]

I believe that institutions feel the pressure for change, yes. However, people inside them are always resisting, it's of human nature, to resist to changes.

Yet, as new generations of educators are arriving to educational institutions, things are beginning to change effectively. We must be very aware of the needs and preferences of the new students, who were already born in this new technological environment and can't imagine a world with no Internet. I should know that, I'm the mother of two of these, and as a teacher, I'm aware of this changes, recalling my own experience as a young student.

[Ida Brandão]

In Portugal HE institutions spread like mushroom, some decades ago. They face huge financial constraints and it's being hard to survive. Some institutions merged, and I wonder what will become of smaller institutions.
There's a lot more students accessing HE, but with the financial crisis, many families won't have the capacity to keep up with increasing tuitions.
I think that the creation of Polytechnics in almost every capital of district turned the cities more alive with this youth and some economic benefits were brought to these places, but when we look at the number of so many institutions for the size f our country, the problem would emerge sooner or later.

Merging movements and reorganizatin of courses, curricula and methodologies have to take place.

Domingo, 13 de Janeiro de 2013 0:15:41 UTC, Yishay Mor escreveu:

[Apostolos Koutropoulos]

The counting system is arbitrary.  We can go binary, octal, hexadecimal, or something else :-)

I think that we gravitate toward 100 because it's something we can sort of relate to in the "not your grandfather's education" sense.

For this reason, I am not sure that we should use a "design for the XXth century" moniker, unless we are doing it a bit tongue-in-cheek, or for a catchy-slogan.  I think education is (or at least should be) on a continuous improvement cycle. If we make the analogy to software, when was the last time Google showed you (and advertised) their "all new, version XX Chorome, now with superduperawesomeness!"  Do they have internal version numbers? Of course! But do they bother having standard decimal release cycles? No.  The product is released as soon as it's stable, and then updates come frequently.  Educational design should be like this too; therefore it doesn't matter what century it is.

[Apostolos Koutropoulos]

This seems like a chicken or egg dilemma but I don't think it needs to be.  If you have a 21st century curriculum design, you can STILL run it in a 20th century institution.  I firmly believe that change comes from within, and faculty need to want to change, and need to do it.  If they don't do it, no matter what the institution does and what century it brings itself in, change won't happen.  Grass roots all the way ;-)

[Paula Cardoso]

I do agree with the notion of hybridization, with what it implies, although a strange image pictured in my mind when I thought of hybrid learners of tomorrow (or today) :)

What I don't agree with is that in the future classes of thousands will be the norm. No, I refuse to believe it. Are we going back to the education for the masses? For sure not following the factory paradigm, but most certainly a "not-so-hidden" curriculum. What I do believe is that there is a great pressure for that to happen, not so much an educational pressure, but an economic one.

I found some food for thought that got me thinking and so I would like to share a video, Changing Education Paradigms, which is an animate based on a talk by Sir Ken Robinson at the RSA. Although the general content is not new at all, after watching it, a question remained: is learning an aesthetic experience? What's your view on this?

 

Paula

[Apostolos Koutropoulos]

If I were a corpse, this would have me rolling in my grave "My view is that we need to feed content to tablets and smartphones and look beyond these to a headset and ear-piece. Personally I'd like to have chips in my teeth so that I can activate a device without having to use fingers or voice :) " :-)

I love my technology, but learning, and consequently teaching, are actions that are conscious and require conscious effort.  Even when one learns by trial and error there is some conscious effort in learning,otherwise there is minimal (if any) learning. 

Learning is not just about aesthetics, but there is certainly a design element to make learning more conducive :)

Sent from my Newton 3000

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[Jonathan Vernon]

This is about learner control, having the learning in your head not at your fingertips ... and no more literal than rolling in the grave. However, it IS about supporting learners with assistive technology - a paraplegic using a straw, head stick or mind control through a headset. A Google headset that tracks the eyes and clicks a kiss? I need also to put this proposal in context - if not for the disabled student then the person who cannot use there hands ... learning support, on your feet, while coaching swimmers poolside for example. It's this or some kind of virtual or actual companion or assistant.

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