Note
• Geography21(gY) > 3C+c >6C?
Brian Whalley
Presented at The HERODOT meetingLiverpool Hope University
5th September 2008
The PowerPoint in Screen mode has a number of images in some places
NOTEs, including references, are included in the Notes section of the slides
Geography21(gY) > 3C+c >6C?
(Towards Bologna and Lisbon; perhaps with some help from the Elephant's Child)
Brian WhalleySchool of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology
Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN
or, ‘You’ll never walk alone’
Education 21C is a function of:• Over-arching policy
– Governments and Institutions (Bologna)– Employers and employability
• Educational means– Deep learning etc developed pedagogy for 21C
• Educational aspirations– Curriculum aims, syllabus achievements
• Students (Generation Y)– The 6Cs to graduateness
• Student-centred education– The 3Cs for tutor involvement
• Support mechanisms– PDP, charting, 'conference-system classroom'
Consider….
How do we deliver a geography degree for the 21st Century?
For ‘Generation Y’Taking into account:
– Bologna– National preferences (mass education in UK)– Institutional preferences– Personal idiosyncrasies– Idiosyncrasies of tutors?
And, inevitably:Skills (and employability)
What skills? Traditional typology'Professor Snape's' perspective, 'in today's competitive job market, the pressure is on students to obtain a ‘good degree’ '.
(Higgins, Hartley, and Skelton, 2001)This begs the question:
‘what makes a good degree?’
and thus, how might it be (best) delivered?What is a graduate in Geography?
What should the institutions be like?
• To research or not to research?– Charles Clarke 2003
• Funding of HEIs?• Students’ funding?• Should students attend their home
university (UK)?• What lessons can we share across
Europe - and beyond?Whatever happens - we need a good adaptive system for students
Some things that Bologna/Lisbon suggests or requires:
One academic year corresponds to 60 ECTS-credits, equivalent to 1 500 - 1 800 hours of study
i.e. 10 ECTS credits 150 hours of ‘involvement’ per module - what do we do in this time, but Lisbon statements say the process:
‘gives greater weight to practical training, and the way credits are measured reflects how hard a student has worked. The new grade will reflect not only a student’s performance on exams, but also his or her lab experiments, presentations, hours spent on study, and so forth’
I’ll use this as an underlying issue to see how we might lookAt student education in the (mainly) First Cycle.
Learning experiencesNOT: ‘pile ‘em high and lecture ‘em
long’– And then examine them!Sage on the stage from this;
the lecture?
Traveling scholar and student
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (The Sage of Bologna?)
(The Sage on the Page?)
Could Bologna/Lisbon bring:
• Master-apprentice• Centres of excellence (Masters as well as PhD)
• Sharing resources– Distance learning etc
• Sharing Experiences• Focus on
Educational Aims:
TP1 Citizenship etcTP2 21st Century geographyTP3 Innovative TeachingTP4 Lifelong Learning
Back to medieval learning via personalised learning
• The mediaeval university• '[she] argued that we should get back to a
medieval concept of the university as a community of scholars unfettered by difficulties of the wider society.’
• Traveling masters and their apprentices– Was this medieval situation as elitist as has
been made out?• We now have the chance to broaden the scope,
access and allow 'elitism for all'.• ‘Stuff on the web’ - well rather more than this
– Using e-learning in a wider context
Trial and error - how can we provide good learning experiences?
'You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.’
(Douglas N Adams, 1992)
Photo: Chris Ogle
How to avoid the panic?
Or Tom vs Captain Najork as a metaphor
for student learning?
You win by ‘messing around’ rather than learning the Nautical Almanack
Five conceptions of learning (Säljö 1982)
1. as passive receipt of information2. as active memorisation of information3. as active memorisation of information or
procedures, to be used at some time in the future
4. as understanding5. as a change in personal reality; seeing the
world differently.
Are there ways in which e-communication could help?
How can we best bring in good assessment practices?
How might we get there?
It will not be easy - to get from a 21C lecture theatre toa revitalised medieval mass apprenticeship scheme
The Elephant’s Child
Acacia xanthophloeaAcacia xanthophloeaKeen SageKeen Sage
Limpopo - in MozambiqueLimpopo - in Mozambique
Experiential learning:
FieldworkLabworkProjectsE-learning etc‘Exploration’
Subject matter (syllabus) is really no problem
Howard Gardner
• The Disciplinary Mind• The Synthesizing Mind• The Creating Mind• The Respectful Mind• The Ethical Mind
Gardner, H. 2007, Five Minds for the Future
At de Lange (2001)
Humankind characteristics:
•Thought-exchanging (dialogue)•Game-playing•Exemplar-exploring•Art-expressing
•Problem-solving
6 Competenciesstudents need to gain
Competence – encouragement by challenge and remarks to achieve skills levels
Confidence – promoting remarks to show themselves, and others, their achievements
Critical thinking – which is what we have been wanting all along in 'Thinking skills’, used in problem solving
Creativity – in what students do and how they do it
Collaboration – bringing in team-working and ethics
Commonality – of purpose, to achieve specified (and unspecified) objectives
Curtiosity – which is more than curiosity.
Marcia Mentkowski
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Itiel Dror
Control – handing appropriate responsibilities to students
Challenge – student abilitiesCommitment – student commitment
to learning opportunities
What might be the best ways (note plural) todevelop these?
Using cognitive psychology
What actually is ‘deep learning’
• Something that is assessed in ways other than unseen examinations?
• Experiential?•Thought-exchanging (dialogue)•Game-playing•Exemplar-exploring•Art-expressing
•Problem-solving(Using the ‘150 hours’ effectively)
Quick break!
• What questions do you want to ask?
• Does your neighbour agree?• Make a note - and if I can’t answer
them at the end then question yourself (or colleagues)
Structures to helpScaffolding* so things don’t quite hit the ground! - better have a safety net
Trial and error
Where does the feedback come in? Remarks?This should be a continuous (or stepwise) process
Can we build all these components together?To emulate what?Perhaps a student learning system
within a medieval mass apprenticeship scheme
*Scaffolding relates to PBL via Vygotsky but some have queried its value
Learning activity
Specific interaction of learners with otherpeople, using specific tools and resources,oriented towards specific outcomes
LearningOutcomesNew Knowledge, skillsand abilities. Evidence of This and/or artefacts of the learning process
LearningEnvironmentTools, resources, artefacts affordances of the physical and virtual environment for learning
OthersOther people involved and the specific role they play in the interactions, e.g. support,
mediate, change, guide
Identities: preferences, needs motivations. Competencies: skills knowledge, abilities
Roles; Approaches and modes of participating
Learners
An outline for a learning activity, HelenBeetham 2007
Charting
• DIDET project
• Allison Littlejohn– Flexible learning
Undergraduate-postgraduate-PhD and the wider community
charting Supporting employers andemployment using another 3Cs
Slides from:Littlejohn, JISCPresentation, 2008
Hamilton HoltConference-systemclassroom
Problemspecified
Manipulation of
system
Problemsolution
CluesGuidance
Help
Provision ofFeedback on
solutions
RulesSystem
ExamplesProcedures
Task Task Task
ResourcesSupport Support
Assessment
T Tacit knowledge required
S Sticking point(s) likely
TS
A temporal sequence describing a rule-based learning design, In Oliver et al. 2007. Describing ICT-based learning designs that promote quality learning outcomes
R R
Back to our 21st century, ‘Medieval university’ structure?
Can we build, via ‘Bologna’, a system which provides the best of the old with the new?
Which allows all of our students to:
Undertake the ‘best’ educationA best fitted curriculum and syllabus
for the 21C
Communities of learningWe need to develop these
– At a variety of scales of operation - HERODOT– In particular, at our own institutions -– Student centred but bringing in– Tutors, pedagogy*, employers, internet,
web 2.0, digital repositories,etcWisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki) etc
* Using cognitive psychologyCollective Learning: Consuming knowledge Connecting knowledge Contributing knowledge Charting knowledge
Ways forward (rather than conclusions)
• Develop a broad skills base• Include employability skills• Use Problem-based learning• Aim for the 6Cs• Use the 3Cs• And charting (etc)
Confidence Critical thinking CreativityCollaborationCommonalityCurtiosity
Control ChallengeCommitment
Geography21(gY) > 3C+c >6C?
Thank you
And from the Elephant’s child -who, after all his struggles and‘satiable curtiosity, had a very fine,and very useful, new nose.
Hamilton Holt (born August 18, 1872, Brooklyn, New York, died April 26, 1951, Woodstock, Connecticut) was an American educator, editor, author and politician.
[edit] Editor
After graduating from Yale University, Holt became the editor and published of the liberal weekly the Independent in 1897 and remained so until 1921. He was an outspoken advocate for reform, temperance, immigrant rights and international peace. In 1906 he published a collection of immigrants' life stories entitled The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves. In 1909 Holt was a founding member of the NAACP. In 1924 he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut as a Democrat. He was soundly defeated by Hiram Bingham III, 60.4% to 38.6%.