a) An understanding of teaching, learning and/or assessment processes

“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”

A. Einstein

 

There is no doubt that learning technologies can be quite useful in teaching and learning, especially if our institution wants to show  they are pushing forward the new educational paradigm to which the 21st Century Skills tag is attached. ICT literacy has become the “must do’ of education, and I feel many educators feel rather put off by this new trend which many times comes forward as the “latest fashion”.
As a Learning Technologist, and as an educator, I would be lying if I said I disagree with the integration of ICT in and outside the classroom. To be more exact, I believe in embedding it in such a way that technology does not even have to be necessarily referred to as technology [we no longer say we need to use the phone every time we need to talk to someone  who is not physical near us…it just takes time to adapt to change, I guess!!] However, what I have realizsed is that when people are only introduced to the technology itself (shown the technical capability of a tool, for instance) most of them don’t really use it to its full potential, but rather tend to ‘force’ it into the existing teaching situation by using the technology in a rather directive way, especially if that is the way they teach.
The fact is that throughout the times there has always been good and bad teaching, and therefore poorer and richer learning situations, which not all the times are reflected by the current assessment strategy, as it most times resembles a memorization exercise. And that is probably one of the biggest issues we need to address in education. But its change cannot, of course, occur without the changing the teaching and learning practice too.
For many years we have chosen to train/teach people in a rather automated way, that is, by providing them with relevant information and demanding the receptors of that information (students) prove they had been able to acquire it. Most times this information provision was deprived of any context or resemblance with the individual’s reality. If that was the way they learned, that was also the way they would teach. With some outstanding exceptions, that is exactly what most of us have experienced throughout our course of formal educational. We might have been able to get away with that for a long time, but the fact is that such strategy is proving less efficient as the years go by. And that happens for the simple reason that the more we advance in the future of technology, which enables individuals to be more autonomous and in charge of what they do and inevitably of what they want to do, the less relevant the traditional schooling model seems to be. If for nothing else, because it is completely detached from one’s contextual reality.
I share the idea that the context is as important, if not more, as the content. It is the context that helps give personal meaning to the information provided. Acquiring information is easy; making sense of it and transforming it into personal knowledge is the real challenge and should also be the principle of education.

multilit

Schools, Colleges and Universities should not be “information factories”, but rather knowledge-construction centers where people would congregate to develop deeper understanding and make sense of their areas of interest. This learning (knowing) should also be supported by a practical approach (through direct interaction with their learning objects), being the outcomes of that enterprise the best assessment strategy any institution could offer as part of their accreditation.
Nothing this is new, and many authors have devoted time to this issue. As it stands today, learning, teaching and assessment have not yet been totally adjusted to meet the needs and standards of a challenging society, which, more than ever, demands from individuals the ability of multi-tasking and constantly re-adjusting to a reality in progress.
For that to happen we need to prepare our educators to teach to learn (mentoring, guiding…); not preach. I believe teachers have a crucial role in education, but their role will definitely not be that of pouring unquestionable facts in our heads, but rather of helping us formulate questions, and consequently guide us to look for the answers. Learners need experienced people to support their path as much as they need their peers to walk that path with them. A learning environment aiming at on-going debates and sharing of experiences focusing on critical, personal thinking is still not a given in formal education, although this is mostly what happens in reality learning. Once in the workplace we commonly say we learn with/from the ‘School of life’, and the way we assess that learning is by looking at the results of our practice. Curiously enough, many of the formal assessment focuses on theory.
Although theory is important, it becomes more relevant to the individual when combined with practice in a given situation (the context).
Learning is not linear and so cannot what the teaching institutions are offering be so prescriptive and statically structured through handbooks and outdated curricula. Learning happens in conversation. Meaningful dialogs are most likely to occur in spaces populated by people who help turn it in a friendly-atmosphere/ environment. The key for a better education system relies in the way teachers regard their role and teaching practice, the way learners envisage their learning and welcome participatory learning opportunities, and the way the educational systems adjust to certify their ‘customers through a more realistic assessment system, which will definitely call for the re-thinking of the curriculum, the re-structuring of learning spaces, the provision of ongoing development of their teaching and mentoring staff and also closer contact with the real world.

In my humble opinion technology can help bridge the connections and develop a more innovative approach. But above all, we need to understand that technology per se is not the solution. The way it is approached and used to enable meaningful learning relationships is both the added value and the biggest challenge educational institutions face. How many of us who work in this ‘business’  haven’t got a  VLE  installed in their institution? And how many of us have not come to face the grim reality of such expensive technological system is being used as a mere deposit for old documents newly scanned?
Adopting technology is not the hardest (it largely depends on the budget); changing people’s attitudes towards their practices is.

That is what I have been trying to do at Salford by developing some mentoring sessions, which mainly aim at listening to people talk about their practices, help them reflect about how technology can help innovate what they do according to their current goals, and then help them develop coherent strategies, which will also include supporting them in getting familiar with the technology.  Hopefully this will enable them to create more active, exciting and learner-focused projects. The same happens with students who have grown used to receive information and who have developed strategies to show evidence of that ‘teaching’, not of their learning. They too don’t like to change their practice. Being taught is much easier than having to learn. As part of the Salford Postgraduate Research Training (SPoRT) programme I have been offering a series of blended workshops about using ICT to aid research. We have been especially focusing on providing the view of the web as a window to a bigger learning community and a wider diversity of networking opportunities. However, I have noticed that some students still join the sessions in search of a tool that will magically help them write their dissertation. The tools obviously can’t write your papers, but the interactions they can establish with other researchers and experts in their areas might give them ideas to conduct better research. The willing to learn also emerges from our role models and in that sense it is crucial  supervisors also inspire their students to explore their learning path in a connected way.

Above all, I think Learning technologies serve as a good platform to enact learning. However, its use only becomes relevant when it allows all parties involved in the learning process to improve what he/she already does (well) as part of their practice (be it as part of one’s teaching role, the learner’s experience, or in the institution’s mission).

This conversation is also taking place here

Related blog entries:

Projects that I co-moderate: