Higher Education Technology Conference (HETC) 2015

Incorporating Technology-Enhanced Pedagogies

Leading in the Digital Age | Feb 28, 2015

Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so

that the other half may reach you…

Most of us have spent a significant part of our lives

in classrooms

Sage on the stage

Confined space

Fixed curriculum

Standard assessments

Small cohorts

Low or zero tech

Expensive experts

This approach has had significant critics worldwide

Not learner centric

Unable to scale

Industrial age approach

Tyranny of design

Not situated

Low employability

Who wanted a Guide by the side approach instead

More learner centric

Scalable

Emergent and intelligent ecosystems

More situated

Community based

Teachers as expert learners

Meanwhile, elearning aped the traditional models and

failed miserably

Learning Objectives

Blooms Taxonomy

ARCS, ADDIE Development models

Solo learning experiences

No real way to estimate RoI

Boilerplate low cost templates

BPO production offshore

Death by Multiple choice questions

Instructional Design

eLearning was designed to solve problems of access,

standardization, cost and efficiency for large Western organizations

…not really the problems of learners and teachers

However, eLearning 2.0 proponents recognized the power

of technology and new participatory pedagogies to

transform learning

cMOOCs were born in 2008 as a confluence of extensive work and

research on Informal Learning, Communities of Practice, network science, Chaos, complex adaptive

systems, social media and neuroscience

A great deal of work has been done around learning networks, personal learning environments, open-ness,

gamification, heutagogy and learning analytics

One would have expected that we would have learnt from this. But

that is not what happened.

In 2011, some folks literally put brand + money together to

position MOOCs as something new and revolutionary…the xMOOCs

They understood M.O.O.C as acronym that merely extended the

existing system to scale at low or zero cost…

Massive – not just numbers

Open – not just free for all

Online – not just for access anywhere, anytime

Courses – bit of a misnomer, really

…and now MOOC has unfortunately become a

buzzword to promote methods that have been found inadequate

Which is why the xMOOCs have performed miserably equally quickly…and at a large

scale

High dropout ratesSage on the Stage approach

Video fixation

Brand-led, not substantiated by theory

Dearth of positive evidence on outcomes

Our problems will start if we accept these xMOOCs blindly as a

format and standard….

….and ignore new ways of teaching-learning, new heutagogy

and technology that are being actively researched since the turn

of the century

…and we need to refocus ourselves on the key challenges in any form of

online learning

Access

Language

Retention

Engagement

Low usage of analytics Digital learning competencies for students, teachers and administrators

Effectiveness

Local context

Lack of learning networks

….which is why we need a call for urgent change

Research

Awareness generation

Design

Development

MeasurementsStandards

Data

….a change that starts with each one of us, as educators and administrators and experts

Sharing

ConnectingBeing Open

Experimenting

Cultural Academic

Operational

Using data

Know. Do. Be!

…a change which really marks a shift in paradigm

…the capability to learn by making connections transcends the capability

to know and to do

Start with YOU

Create an Identity

Harness & extend your networks

Advocate, Participate, Share and Extend

Navigate the choices to suit your needs

Get your network engaged and integrated

Embrace a new way of “be”-ing

The MOOC Cheat Sheet

• Understand what the MOOCs stands for

• Start playing with the principles & learn what works in your context

• Build a plan and put a team in place; get help where necessary

• Look at results and find the right balance

• All the while, keep sharing and extending – there is no one right answer

“The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse:

educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one

of learning, sharing, and caring.”

Ivan Illich, forty years ago, stated

…let us make that change happen