Classroom Of The Future

Malcolm Brown
Director, Educause Learning Initiative
mbrown@educause.edu
October 2009

Original content © Malcolm Brown mbrown@educause.edu
Side designs © Sarah Horton sarah.horton@dartmouth.edu

“The future of higher education lies outside the classroom.”
from Chronicle of Higher Education, 1999
“…the concept of the classroom as the center of learning interaction and engagement is not going away anytime soon.”
Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness, October 2005

Thesis
Our challenge lies much more in design and less in technology

Thesis
Our challenge lies much more in design and less in technology
future

Exploration

Wait!!! What about all the predictions?

Utopian

Digital facelifts

“Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.”

Predictions

Questions?Comments?

Heading
Bearings
a sense of direction
where we are now

Bearings: Students
Desktop down 71% to 44%
Laptops up from 65% to 88%
More than 90% use:
library web site
presentation software
social networking sites
text messaging
Within a year 63% will have a smart phone

Bearings: pace

What’s in a second?
1,157 videos
uploaded
7 computers
sold
2 new blogs
520K links
clicked
2.2M emails
sent
31K txt msgs

Facebook 250,000,000

34,916,000,000
= 10% of all minutes spent online in January 2009
= minutes spent on social networking sites by U.S. users
= 66,430 years

Bearings: the cloud

Bearings: higher education paradigm under pressure

Bearings: higher education paradigm under pressure
“Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering… The business model that sustained private US colleges cannot survive.”
“The typical 2030 faculty will likely be a collection of adjuncts alone in their apartments, using recycled syllabuses and administering multiple-choice tests from afar.”

“The whole setup would run like iTunes and sessions would be recorded for later review.”
“This could happen tomorrow, the pieces are all there ready to be put together.”

“PBS and NPR are now posting taped interviews and videos of lectures by academics, adding to the growing number of free lectures online.”

Learning environments

Classrooms

Scroll ahead 70 years…

Smart classrooms

formal
Learning spaces
virtual
informal

Drivers
Technology
Constructivism
Ubiquitous Internet

New drivers
Mobile technology
Cloud technology
NetGens
read/write Web
(aka Web 2.0)

formal
Learning spaces
virtual
informal

formal
virtual
informal
Learning environments

What is an environment?

What is an environment?
Sense of place and purpose
Anywhere anytime any place
Mix of planned and unplanned
Range of participants, systems, forces
Dynamic flux of roles

Personal goals
Campus culture
Personal learning styles
read/write culture
Personal context
Peer culture
Personal technology
Learning resources
Learning practices
Internet technology
Learning spaces
Campus technology
People
Campus orgs
Support

The classroom is no longer a box

Traditional classroom
Chalk boards
Overhead

read/write
classroom
read/write
class

The classroom today
Dynamic
Connected:
intra-connected
inter-connected
aka: read/write, import/export
Participatory
Unpredictable in part

The classroom today
Dynamic
Connected:
intra-connected
inter-connected
aka: read/write, import/export
Participatory
Unpredictable in part
• Participatory
• Unpredictable

Questions?Comments?

Headings

What’s ahead?
Trends
Human factors
Verbs, not nouns
Community infrastructure
Multipurpose rooms
Participation-enabling design
Tech outfitting
Challenges
Design
Perception
Cost
Support
Distraction
Assessment

Human factors
source: Prof. Scott Pobiner, Parsons New School for Design

Verbs, not nouns
Projector
Chairs
Wires
Podiums
Lights
Computers
etc.
Connect
Build
Discuss
Annotate
Analyze
Design

Multipurpose rooms
Lecture
Critique
Studio
Meeting
Seminar
Workshop

Technology trends
Presentation capture
Video conferencing
Display technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_LED

Challenges
#1 Good design

Whenever the number of possible actions exceeds the number of controls, there is apt to be difficulty.
–Don Norman

Norman’s criteria 1
Visibility
“by looking, the user can tell the state of the device and the alternatives for action”

Good conceptual model
“consistency in the presentation of operations and results and a coherent, consistent system image”

Good mappings
“possible to determine the relationships between actions and results”

Feedback
“full and continuous feedback about the results of actions”

#2 Perceptions
“No kindergarten
classrooms!”
Stanford professor

Support challenges
Gear
Operational
Real time support
Effective pedagogy
Community design, planning etc.
Community of practice

#4 Cost challenge

#5 Distraction challenge

Distraction challenge

#6 Assessment: is it working?

“The future of higher education lies outside the classroom.”
from Chronicle of Higher Education, 1999
“…the concept of the classroom as the center of learning interaction and engagement is not going away anytime soon.”
Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness, October 2005

Thank you!
mbrown@educause.edu

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Classroom Of The Future

by Educause on Oct 12, 2009

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