'Visions of future learning'. A presentation given by Rebecca Ferguson to the Plato Institute at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece on 14 November 2014.
2. The Open University (UK)
Distance education
at scale
More than 240,000
current students
8,700,000 iTune
downloads in 2013
5,100,000 YouTube
views in 2013
Leading partner
in FutureLearn
Part of Rosetta
space mission
Image: European Space Agency
3. Visions of the future
• How are they developed?
• What do we do with them?
• Why keep developing them?
• Visions of education
• Visions of school
• Visions of MOOCs
• Visions of pedagogy
4. How do we produce a
vision of the future of education?
5. Envisaging the future is hard
SHEEHY, K. & BUCKNALL, S. 2008. How is technology seen in young people's
visions of future education systems? Learning, Media and Technology, 33, 101-114.
http://oro.open.ac.uk/8616/
6. Schome
The education system
for the information age
‘…maybe having a ‘lived experience’
of something radically different
might help folk come up with
more creative visions…’
http://www.schome.ac.uk/wiki
7. ‘…hold a mirror up to reality,
helping residents and visitors
to understand what they regard
as normal by observing what it
could be, what it has been and
what it is not.’
‘This prompts us to consider why
learning is necessary, how it takes
place and how it is assessed.
It also sets education in the
context of happiness, play,
fun and delight.’
http://bit.ly/1khcdqM
Virtual worlds…
9. Do we need a building on the island?
Why would we need one?
* Provide a recognisable place for people to find/contact us
* A place where people can get scripts in-world, or submit them to
us (like an inbox/outbox)
* Provide a place to hand out scripts
* Place to hold meetings
Why wouldn't we need one?
* It takes up much-needed prims
* We can host our scripts on the wiki (but this may be less
convenient)
* We need very little space - we could just one of the generic
gorernment buildings
* We could hold meetings anywhere (although, we may get
interrupted in public places)
SchomerU
Discussing visions
19. The TEL Complex
Scanlon, E., Sharples, M., Fenton-O'Creevy, M., Fleck, J., Cooban, C., Ferguson, R., Cross, S. &
Waterhouse, P. 2013. Beyond Prototypes: Enabling Innovation in Technology-Enhanced Learning.
http://oro.open.ac.uk/41119/
20. The TEL Innovation Process
Scanlon, E., Sharples, M., Fenton-O'Creevy, M., Fleck, J., Cooban, C., Ferguson, R., Cross, S. &
Waterhouse, P. 2013. Beyond Prototypes: Enabling Innovation in Technology-Enhanced Learning.
http://oro.open.ac.uk/41119/
24. Dai ‘The Disaster’
Role
Lecturer tasked with creating a MOOC
Motivation
Junior academic, instructed to take this on for
‘career development’
Experience
Has been lecturing for three years, mainly working
on courses developed by other people.
Outcome
Cannot deal with forums full of complaining
students, legal challenges, criticisms of the course
go viral, faces disciplinary action.
25. Elizabeth from Exams
Role
Overseeing qualifications and accreditation on all
the university’s MOOC offerings
Motivation
Elizabeth holds a senior position in the university
exams and accreditation office for many years, so
she was an obvious choice to produce a report on
the options for assessment and for accreditation
• Training
• Activity
• Benefits
• Challenges
26. Moderator Mark
Role
Mark is a MOOC Moderator, employed to work in the
forums each day. There are several moderators on
each MOOC.
Motivation
Mark enjoys moderating. He is interested to find out
whether it can work at such a large scale, and is
slightly intimidated by the prospect.
• Training
• Activity
• Benefits
• Challenges
29. The world is changing
Four stages of mathematics (Conrad Wolfram):
1. Identify real-world problem that mathematics
can help to solve
2. Operationalize problem
3. Perform calculations
4. Check results and apply solution
30. Learning analytics
The measurement, collection, analysis and
reporting of data about learners and their
contexts, for purposes of understanding and
optimizing learning and the environments in
which it occurs.
31. Uses of analytics
• Monitor the learning process
• Explore student data
• Identify problems
• Discover patterns
• Find early indicators for success
• Find early indicators for poor marks or drop-out
• Assess usefulness of learning materials
• Increase awareness, reflect and self reflect
• Increase understanding of learning environments
• Intervene, advise and assist
• Improve teaching, resources and the environment
35. Toast / toaster / toasters / fun
http://www.laurenceanthony.net/antconc_index.html
36. Can an orbiting object the size of
a toaster qualify as a moon?
37. Clearly, the OU have introduced a new unit of measurement
into this course so here are some equivalents*;
• Height of an elephant = approx 103 toasters.
• Length of blue whale = approx 1000 toasters.
• Equatorial radius of Moon = approx 58 million toasters.
• Equatorial radius of Ganymede = approx 87 million toasters.
• Equatorial radius of Jupiter = approx 2.4 billion toasters.
• From my house to the centre of London = approx 8 million
toasters.
I think that, from these dimensions it should be a fairly straightforward
job to work out exactly how big a moon should be.
[Mike Pollard]
27 likes
7 replies
38. Analytics for reflection
http://oro.open.ac.uk/30598/
Ferguson, R., Buckingham Shum, S. & Deakin Crick, R. (2011).
EnquiryBlogger – Using Widgets To Support Awareness and Reflection in a PLE Setting.
43. An individual’s world can be
augmented with information
that is beyond the knowledge
of a single person, and
indeed a single lifetime.
By networking data, the
environment is augmented
by the experiences of
multiple others.
http://amzn.to/1nPgKEm
44. Augmented reality can extend
the sensory range of
information available,
transforming information that is
typically beyond the reach of
human senses (such as X-ray
star charts and infra-red maps)
or transforming environmental
data into forms that
compensate for sensory
impairments.
http://amzn.to/1nPgKEm
45. Educating the transhumans
News story from The Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2012
Is it cheating
to augment
our brains
with tech or
with drugs?