Visions of future learning

Rebecca Ferguson, 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

The Open University (UK)

Image: European Space Agency

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

How do we produce a

vision of the future of education?

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.

Envisaging the future is hard

http://oro.open.ac.uk/8616/

SchomeThe education systemfor 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

‘…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…

Updating the

groves of academe

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

Developing visions

Developing visions

The best school in the world

If this school were

the best school in the world,

what would it be like?

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What do we do with our

visions of the future of education?

Innovation in

technology

enhanced

learning

(TEL)

http://beyondprototypes.com/

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/

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/

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.

Elizabeth from ExamsRole

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

Moderator MarkRole

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

Current iteration

www.futurelearn.com/courses/ecosystems-2014

Why continue to produce

visions of the future of education?

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

The world is changing

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.

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

Analytics & accessibility

Do you consider yourself

to have a disability?

Learning analytics & design

Learning analytics & design

Toast / toaster / toasters / fun

http://www.laurenceanthony.net/antconc_index.html

Can an orbiting object the size of

a toaster qualify as a moon?

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

Ferguson, R., Buckingham Shum, S. & Deakin Crick, R. (2011).

EnquiryBlogger – Using Widgets To Support Awareness and Reflection in a PLE Setting.

Analytics for reflection

http://oro.open.ac.uk/30598/

Current visions of the future

www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovatin

g

http://www.practomime.com/lapis/lapis.php

Image from Flipped Learning Network

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

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

Educating the transhumans

News story from The Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2012

Is it cheating

to augment

our brains

with tech or

with drugs?

http://mindflexgames.com

www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovating