Research Centre for Digital Education

A proposal for research on the future of digital learning environments

Charly Rozenberg

295682

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Class: Trends and Strategies of the Creative Industries 2009-2010

Lecture: Matthijs Leendertse

Hand in: January 15th, 2010

On paper and via blog

http://joindigitallearning.blogspot.com

Index

Abstract page 3

Introduction page 3

New media page 3

Media wisdom page 4

Technical options page 4

Wisdom of crowds page 5

Costs page 5

Theoretical perspective page 6

Methodology page 6

Conclusion page 6

Financial proposal page 7

Literature page 8

Extra

Reflection page 9

Abstract

The world of education is changing. There is free use of information from the internet, fast

emerging of new technologies and increased use of digital tools in the classroom. But how

can the quality and consistency of education be guarded for the future, with the evolving new

ways of teaching. This paper shows several developments that need to be kept in mind when

researching the future of education. From open source software to peer production, it leads to

a methodology called backcasting that can be used to research the possibilities for the future.

Introduction

The world is full of new media. We have pc’s, laptops, smartphones, wireless internet, digital

television channels. You name it and there is a possible way of retrieving all sorts of

information. All these new and technological advanced options make us capable of reading

and learning much more information nowadays then we ever imagined.

This pitch is looking what can be done in the future to incorporate the new media into

the educational system. What is new media? What needs to be thought of when considering

new media in education? This pitch revolves around the question:

What are possibilities for the future of digital learning environments?

This means that we first look at what is new media? When we know what is new, we

can research possibilities for the future. After describing some possible things that can be used

in the future, we will discuss the methodology for future research.

New media

New media is about refashioning old media and creating a new experience of retrieving the

same message (Lister, 2009:47). Adding new abilities to old media and converging old media

together creates a new way of delivering a message. A word for this creation of new media is

remediation (Lister, 2009:47).

The internet is the best example of the convergence of old media. On the internet, one

can read newspaper articles, watch television, listen to radio and that all at the same moment.

You can even create your own world have your own input out there for everybody to be read.

This creates a lot of possibilities for education.

Information that is to be reached by everybody is a very interesting idea for education.

You can think of new ways for teaching, learning, education and the creation of new sources

for education. With new media, a student now can create its own world of education, where

the student can learn what he or she wants and learn it on their own pace.

A critical note here comes from a research by Ophir et al (Ophir, Nass, Wagner, 2009).

From their research into the use of new media and the convergence of media, they found that

people that are doing a lot of things together at the same time, cannot concentrate well when

doing one task. It means, that when people are multitasking, they forget how to concentrate on

one thing. Thus, when bringing new media into the classroom, we have to think of the fact

that multitasking might not bring the preferred effect of learning to students.

Technical options

With the emergence of new media, new technologies arise that carry or connect to these new

media. In the business of education, this means that there are new ways for education. As we

already have seen, there is the internet. A computer for everybody in the classroom is another

option. These are all new tool for teachers and students. With these new tools, education can

be improved.

A problem with new technologies is that people have the tendency to lag behind. New

technologies need to be implemented in a way that everybody can work with it, especially in

education. If a teacher does not know how to work a computer, the lessons fall short of

educational value. Students have to keep up with new technologies, or they will not learn

what is required. For a future with new education, there needs to be education on how to use

new media.

Media wisdom

The Dutch government understood that new media is the future, but that people have

to keep up with it in order to keep up with education. The government recognized that the

internet (as example of new media) is a powerful tool that can be used for education, but that

people have to learn how to use it. Users on the internet can put everything they like online

and not everything is good. The users are “important actors in virtually all elements of on line

services.” (Slot & Frissen, 2007). So to educate the users, especially the people in the world

of education, from children to teachers, the government has put up a program, Media

Wisdom, to educate on how to use new media (Plasterk & Rouvoet, 2008).

Wisdom of crowds, peer production

Educating on what is the right information is a good and important step in learning

what is good and what not, because of the fact that everybody can put information online. But

that is also a powerful instrument that can be interesting for education. Wikipedia is such an

example where everybody can put information online and where people can learn from. Lister

argues that ‘the wiki process offers knowledge that is part of an ongoing conversation’ (Lister

et al, 2009: 207). Why not use it then for education? Or at least create a world that the

educational field accepts as “true”. Wheeler points out the idea of Illich, ‘to establish learning

webs where everyone could share their expertise with their communities and learn from each

other as the need arose’ (Wheeler, 2009).

Another point that comes with the wisdom of crowds is peer production. Teachers now

can use a vast space of information that is created by experts and use it in their lessons.

Teachers can help each other out on new education methods or give each other tips on how to

present a new subject in class.

Costs

Unfortunately, with new inventions and creations, new and maybe higher costs are there to

deal with also. First, there are some logical things. There are high costs of new tools for

classrooms. Computers that are needed to connect to the new information can be very

expensive and the education on how to use all these new things take also a lot of time (and

money). Ots shows that ccompanies that were once founded as an altruistic collaboration to

launch new creativeness, are now faced with huge money investments and branding to keep

up to technological standard (Ots, M: 2008). One can see that schools and other public spaces

in the world of education will have a lot of costs to.

Open source media is a solution in cutting costs. Open source means that everybody

can use the media for free or for far less then in a commercial setting. Benkler shows that

open-source media is a solution for cutting cost (Benkler, p: 5). It is now also possible to cut

costs on books, distribute free information over the internet. In the end the educational

information will become cheaper, easier available and probably qualitatively better because it

is perfectly adapted to what a student needs or want to learn. It also like ‘Minksy's dream

come to a reality, where you can imagine all the books in a library actually starting to talk to

each other. It's the interconnections between ideas that teaching is really all about’ (Baraniuk,

2009).

Theoretical perspective

The perspective from what we have seen so far, is one of remediation. There is

actually nothing new in education. Children need to learn what is set as required, teachers

have to teach it. But the way it is tough has changed. As Listers says, from the old comes the

new (Lister, 2009; p. 58). It is not a linear way of learning from the past and creating new

things, but a genealogical way (Lister, 2009; p. 58). It means that, in the case of education, the

way we teach things evolves with the time and the technologies that are at our hands.

Media use in education is not something new, but through remediation and the

digitalization of media creates for education a new learning environment.

Methodology

To research the possibilities for the future, I would like to advise to use a backcasting

methodology. Leendertse et al (2009) describes this method in his paper on education for the

future. Backcasting aims to outline a future situation and evaluate the preferences of people

for that future to test the feasibility of this desired future (Leendertse 2009; p. 5). Thus, by

researching different scenarios for the future, the best possible way can be choosen.

Via backcasting, you first specify milestones that need to be conquered to change the

future. Putting them on a timeline, you create a roadmap of what to achieve in the future.

(Leendertse, 2009; p. 6).

Via interviews, literature research and expert advices, you can create the possible

future that you want. In the case of education, specify what you would like to see in the future

of education and see if these specifications can be reached.

Conclusion

The future is wide open for education and it’s challenging to change the future for the better,

for better education. Creating new and challenging education is a lengthy process and all the

options and possibilities need to be researched carefully. New and digital education bring also

about policy changes. What is to be taught, is it open for everybody and it is a reflection of

what people need to know (Cuilenborg, 2007). In the end, this research is about the future of

the delegation of knowledge in a new era.

Financial proposal

The cost of the research is based on the time it might take and the cost of the researcher. The

estimated time of the research is two months. This includes setting up the research, making all

the contacts, taking the interview, making evaluations and of course making the conclusion

and advice for the future of education.

A researcher costs €80 an hour. This is a junior consultant within the Research Centre

for Digital Education under supervision of a senior consultant who leads multiple researches.

Costs:

€80 per hour for 1 consultant

Time: 2 months (based on full time work, 40 hours a week)

Total costs: €25.600

Literature

Lister, M., J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant & K. Kelly (2009) New Media. A critical

Introduction. Second Edition. London: Routledge (ISBN: 0-415-43160-3)

Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks 2006

Slot, M. & V. Frissen (2007). Users in the Golden Age of the Information Society. In:

Observatorio Journal. 3 (2007), pp. 201+224

Ots, M. (2008). Media and Brands: New Ground to Explore. In: Ots M. (ed.) (2008) Media

Brands and Branding. Jönköping, Sweden: JIBS. Pp. 1-7.

Van Cuilenburg, J. (1999) ‘On competition, access and diversity in media, old and new: some

remarks for communications policy in the information age. In: New Media & Society vol. 1,

issue 2, p. 183-207

Leendertse, M., M. Manschot & A. de Korte (2009). Creating the ideal ICTenabled learning

space. Paper presented at the International Conference of Education, Research & Innovation

in Madrid, November 16-18 2009.

Ophir, Nass, Wagner. September 15, 2009. Cognitive control in media multitaskers. PNAS

106 (37).

Richard Baraniuk’s presentation for TED on open-source learning.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html.

Wheeler, S. 2009. Blog about learning technology. http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com /

Reflection

The main thing that had to have gone better was my own planning. There was enough time

but, as it is a student’s habit, planning fell short. The concepts of the literature was something

I understood quit well and also the search for literature was not hard. I had a great resource

through the blog that we created (http://joindigitallearning.blogspot.com) as a group for the

Trend and Strategies class. My main focus was to show that there are a lot of options for

digital learning, but that when researching the field, one has to specify what is important and

to focus on that.

In the end, I thought it went quit well, but I always make so hard on myself when I’m not

working by the planning and thus creating personal stress.