A reflection on the changing nature of education and associated roles

1. Traversing the digital landscape: reflecting on
the implications for learning and teaching
Gráinne Conole
CLICKS webinar, 11th February 2018
National
Teaching
Fellow 2012
Ascilite fellow 2012EDEN fellow 2013

2. About me…
• Worked at 6 HE institutions
• Now a visiting professor at DCU and an independent
consultant
• Research interests:
– Learning Design
– OER and MOOCs
– Social medial
– E-pedagogies
– Institutional TEL strategy and policy
• More at e4innovation.co.uk
• Blog e4innovation.com

3. Outline
• Impact of digital technologies
• Wicked problems and future trends in education
• 21st Century competencies and digital literacies
• Key issues in learning and teaching
• Future trends
• Changing roles: teachers and learners
– Teachers
– Learners
• Transforming education
– New approaches to learning design
– Using learning analytics

4. Impact of digital technologies
• Provide a rich variety of ways to interact with
multimedia resource and to communicate and
collaborative
• Key trends
– Mobile devices
– Learning across boundaries
– Learning analytics
– Augmented reality
– Artificial Intelligence

5. Horizon summit: future of education
• Challenges mean:
– Rethink what it means to teach
– Re-image online learning (and face to face)
– Allow productive failure
– Innovate as part of the learning ethic
5

6. Wicked problems in Education
• Technology
– Gap between the promise and the reality
• Digital literacies
– Teachers and learners lack digital literacies
• Teaching strategies
– Learners will be doing jobs that don’t even exist
today
– Shift from knowledge recall to competences
– Develop metacognition and learning to learn

7. 21st Century competences
• Competences
– Critical thinking
– Problem solving
– Team work
– Communication
– Collaboration
– Meta cognition
– Networking
– Creativity
– Reflexivity
– Flexible

8. Digital literacies
• Digital literacies needed to be part of today’s
participatory culture
– Evaluation
– Transmedia navigation
– Multitasking
– Distributed cognition
– Networking
– Visualisation
– Metaphors
– Collective intelligence
– Play
– Digital identity management
Jenkins

9. EDUCAUSE
• Academic transformation: innovative learning
and teaching models
• Accessibility and universal design
• Faculty development
• Privacy and security
• Digital and information literacies
• Integrated planning and advising
• Instructional design

10. EDUCAUSE
• Online and blended learning
• Evaluation of technology-based instructional
innovations
• Open education
• Learning analytics
• Adaptive teaching and learning
• Working with emerging technology
• Learning space design
• Next Generation Digital Learning Environment
and LMS

11. Future trends
• Changing nature of work
• A spectrum of learners
• Transportability of credentials
– Micro-credentials and blockchain technology
• An unbundling of education
– Resources
– Support
– Learning pathway
– Accreditation

12. 21st Century teaching
• Development of higher order skills
– Creativity, critical thinking, communication and
collaboration
• Development of lifelong learning habits
• Learning how to learn with technologies
• Motivate by providing experiential, authentic
and challenging experiences

13. 21st Century learning
• Giving students more choice
• Preparing for having multiple careers
• Development of digital and academic
literacies
• Ownership of their learning
• Curating learning achievements

14. We need teachers who are masters at
developing learners who are adept at
sense making around their own goals.
Teachers who are focused on helping
students develop the dispositions and
literacies required to succeed regardless of
subject or content or curriculum
Will Richardson via Couros’ blog

15. [In the future we need] learners
who master agency [which] lays
the foundation for self-directed
lifelong learning, a critical skill for
thriving in a rapidly changing world
and for our nation to remain
globally competitive.
Office of Ed Tech

16. Changing role of the teacher
• From delivery to facilitation
• Use of digital technologies
• New digital literacy skills
• From knowledge recall to competencies
• Teacher role is even more important

17. Changing role of the learner
• A shift to more flexible and personalised learning
• Digitally savvy
• Development of digital and academic literacies
• Lifelong learners
• Self-determined learners
• Harnessing the power of a global network of peers
• Curating learning and demonstration of
achievement of learning outcomes

18. Lifelong learning: a fb critique
• Is lifelong learning a reality?
– Increasing ‘business-fied’ education landscape
– Learning is also about respective engagement with
society
– A neoliberal market where the poor are excluded
– Need for support from peers and tutors
– More of a focus on critical inquiry?

19. Shifting practice
Teacher-centred
• Learning of facts and declarative
knowledge
• Memorising information
• Teacher is central
• Passing exams
• Drilling of right questions and
routines
• Learning to pass exams
• Focus on information
presentation to passive learning
• Technology as a media channel
• Learning from resources and
technology
Learner-Centred
• Learning of conceptual
knowledge
• Working with information
• Activity is central to learning
• Applying knowledge, theoretical
thinking and demonstrating
generic skills
• Problem-solving, design, project
work and inquiries
• Learning how to learn
• Focus on how learning occurs
within an activity
• Technology as intellectual partner
in learning
• Learning with resources and
technology
Churchill, 2017

20. Student success - Couros
• Student voice – learn from others and share their
learning
• Choice – how and what they learn
• Time for reflection – to reflect on what they have
learnt
• Opportunities for innovation
• Critical thinkers
• Problem solvers
• Self assessment
• Connected learning
https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/3586

21. Transforming education
• New approaches to design that
– Enable pedagogically informed decisions that make
appropriate use of technologies
– Shift from knowledge recall to development of
competencies
– Student centred and activity based
– Help develop meta-cognitive skills
– Assessment process rather than product based
• Harnessing learning analytics
– Teachers: to help those who are struggling
– Learners: to develop learning strategies and benchmark
against their peers

22. Conclusion
• Implement innovative pedagogies that:
–Support self-reliance, resilience, agility,
adaptability
–Encourage meta-cognition and reflection
–Utilize the affordances of digital
technologies
–Enable technology-enhanced learning
spaces
–Develop competencies to deal with an
unknown future

23. Email: g.conole@gmail.com
Website: e4innovation.co.uk
Blog: e4innovation.com
Twitter: @gconole
e