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Realising the demographic dividend: Why India needs a new paradigm for early years teacher education

25th February 2016

Image: SAIBSA Workshop, 6 February 2016: ‘What is the professional responsibility of an early childhood educator?’

Even those who do not follow the education industry closely will be aware that all is not well in the higher education sector right now. Type the words ‘disruptive innovation in higher education India’ into Google and you get 390,000 results. Type in ‘crisis in higher education India’ and the number of results rises to 22 million.

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Why just ticking over is no longer an option

13th July 2013

A number of metaphors have been used to describe the momentous change foreshadowed for the higher education sector. ‘Paradigm shift’ is quite conventional, but ‘disruptive innovation’has become quite fashionable as Clayton Christensen’s theory has been applied to higher education. ‘Tsunami’ is another firm favourite, but the recent report published by the British think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), has introduced the word ‘avalanche’ which, according to Michael Barber, one of the lead authors of the report, was inspired by an interview with the renowned historian Norman Davies in the FT late last year:

Historical change is like an avalanche. The starting point is a snow-covered mountainside that looks solid. All the changes take place under the surface and are rather invisible. But something is coming. What is impossible is to say when. Norman Davies

The Report (uploaded to Scribd and embedded below) runs to 77 pages, but is easy-to-read and contains some important messages for institutions looking to insulate themselves from the turmoil.

Want to eliminate cheating? Ask better questions

30th June 2013

There was an excellent piece in The Conversation a week or so ago written by Beverley Oliver (@DVCEdDeakin) entitled, Proving knowledge by degrees: MOOCs and the challenge of assessment. The reference to MOOCs in the title is a useful device for attracting attention, but the content of the article focuses on the quality of assessment design, and has broader applicability beyond the context of MOOCs.

The design of assessment tasks is critical to the creation of authentic learning environments. Student engagement and the deep learning that ensues, is far more likely if students can see the point of what they doing (see, for example, Lizzio & Wilson, 2013). As Professor Oliver notes:

Perhaps instead of focusing on how we test students, a more purposeful question might be: presuming we know what outcomes we need students to achieve, and at what standard, what evidence will enable us to judge that this student is ready to graduate? In other words, assessment tasks are opportunities for students to create evidence of learning achievements in an array of formats.

In other words, if we look upon assessment as learning, rather than of learning, the approach taken by the learner (and faculty) takes on a completely different complexion, as Dr Adele Flood describes in this video clip.

Why standardised testing should not be the dominant culture in education

21st May 2013

Ken Robinson outlines three important principles to be adhered to if learning is to flourish in educational institutions — cater for diversity, nurture curiosity, and encourage creativity. Unfortunately, many education systems are characterised by conformity, standardisation, and compliance.

Testing has a lot do with this, or rather the design of tests. A focus on assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning, with greater attention to the authenticity of the assessment task will engage the learner because there is more scope to explore their curiosity and demonstrate their creative prowess.

Robinson contends that while standardised tests have a place, they should not be the dominant culture of education. They should be diagnostic.

Unfortunately, in many instances it’s about teaching to the test, and deep learning — if it happens — is incidental.

As always, Ken Robinson puts in an inspiring and entertaining performance. My favourite quote during this presentation (borrowed from Benjamin Franklin) is:

There are three sorts of people in the world: Those who are immovable, people who don’t get, they don’t want to get it, they’re not going to do anything about it. There are people who are movable, people who see the need for change and are prepared to listen to it. And there are people who move, people who make things happen. And if we can encourage more people, that will be a movement.

How to promote digital literacies among faculty

7th May 2013

In the recently published NMC Horizon Project Regional Analysis, Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education 2013-18, it stated (p.3) that (shock, horror) there is a need for more faculty training to improve digital media literacy ‘before being asked to teach, and for more professional development opportunities once in the profession’. More significantly, though, the report points out that:

While a lack of adequate training opportunities is a part of the challenge, ultimately a change in the mind sets of disciplines and individual faculty will be required, along with cultural shifts within institutions, before emerging tools and technologies are routinely adopted and implemented as a matter of course.

Mainstreaming the disruption

20th February 2013

This slide deck I presented at a senior leadership conference at Griffith University last week.

The essence of my argument is that the higher education sector is entering a perfect storm with the problems of student indebtedness, budget deficits and graduate unemployment looming large, combining with the disruptive innovation from the non-university private sector providing what appear to be viable alternatives to a traditional university education.

The solution, I believe, is to ‘mainstream the disruption’. To sit back and continue with business as usual would be a courageous decision (to borrow from Sir Humphrey Appleby).

RevolutiOnline.edu

31st January 2013

There was a star-studded round table session at the World Economic Forum at Davos last week entitled ‘RevolutiOnline.edu: Online Education Changing the World’. The session was moderated by Thomas Friedman, and the speakers included Larry Summers (former Harvard President), Bill Gates, Peter Theil (Founder’s Fund), Rafael Reif (MIT President), Sebastian Thrun (Udacity), Daphne Koller (Coursera), and a 12-year-old Pakistani girl who has been taking MOOCs.

The video recording runs for 68 minutes which is longer than the average attention span these days, but it is pretty compelling viewing.

The embedded biases within the LMS and the impact on learning

26th January 2013

After almost a decade away in the corporate world, I don’t think I could have picked a better time to return to mainstream academia. Universities are changing — largely because of external pressures it must be said — and I can sense an openness to new thinking about pedagogy that wasn’t in evidence before. A key driver, I think, is the ubiquity of technology.

Whether we are talking about desktops, laptops, tablets or hand-helds, access to ICTs is no longer strictly the realm of the geek. Walk into any classroom in a university these days and its like a technology park. The big question, of course, is the extent to which all this hardware is actually serving to enhance learning.

The US higher education bubble and the prospects of transformational change

14th May 2012

My friend Larry Medina sent me a link today to Mark Cuban’s latest blog post entitled The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon. This is the latest in growing list of commentaries on the subject going back a couple of years now. There are cool infographics on the issue (see here, for example), and even a wikipedia entry, testimony, perhaps, to the seriousness with which this matter is being treated. Cuban — for his part — certainly doesn’t pull any punches. Take this segment for example:

At some point potential students will realize that they can’t flip their student loans for a job in 4 years. In fact they will realize that college may be the option for fun and entertainment, but not for education. Prices for traditional higher education will skyrocket so high over the next several years that potential students will start to make their way to non accredited institutions.

While colleges and universities are building new buildings for the english , social sciences and business schools, new high end, un-accredited, BRANDED schools are popping up that will offer better educations for far, far less and create better job opportunities.

As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could[n’t] care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper.

The competition from new forms of education is starting to appear. Particularly in the tech world. Online and physical classrooms are popping up everywhere. They respond to needs in the market. They work with local businesses to tailor the education to corporate needs. In essence assuring those who excel that they will get a job. All for far far less money than traditional schools.

The Star Alliance model of higher education

10th May 2012

I read a great piece, Jailbreaking the Degree, in TechCrunch the other day (courtesy of Meetali Mukherjee).

In essence the author — @davidblake, founder of Degreed — makes the point that a university degree continues to be the most meaningful ‘unit’ of education in the eyes of employers, notwithstanding its inherent inefficiencies (e.g. compulsion to study courses irrelevant to one’s interests or, indeed, those of a prospective employer), yet it need not be so, or at least not in its present form. Sadly, online education providers have yet to make any serious inroads into the higher education monopoly controlled by universities because, as @kevincarey points out, while the business models of these institutions may be different, ‘their product — traditional credentials in the form of a degree — is not’.

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Tag: student engagement