DIY U Agile learning: How ‘making do’ can evolve into ‘making good’ | ALT Online Newsletter By David Jennings Behaviour changes in a colder climate. We are forced to become more resourceful, to find new ways to do things. Older patterns do not always reassert themselves automatically when things get warmer again. Bucking the trend, open resources and tools are continuing to grow even in colder climes, and already we are seeing some cash-strapped pioneers using these to hack together their own education outside institutional boundaries. With that premise, those coming ten years will be a period rife with creative and destructive potential. Over the last year, I have interviewed a sample of people who I thought might give me some useful pointers: from a home educator to a university professor; and from a social software entrepreneur to a photographer who is committed to helping people learn yet refuses to see this as teaching. Changes bred of necessity and opportunity Is self-organised learning just for people with degrees? The high-water mark of structured formal education
DIY, says 'edupunk' star. Distortion and sell-out, say critics In 2008, a diverse group of people working in and around higher education decided they were - in the words of the film Network - "mad as hell, and not going to take it any more". The cause: the omnipresence of "cookie-cutter" content management systems for teaching such as Blackboard and the focus on new technology as a force for change, rather than on the potential of the community around that technology. The result: edupunk. The term was coined by Jim Groom, instructional technology specialist in the arts and humanities at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, and it was quickly adopted by a group of academics, mainly in the US and Canada, who wanted students to create their education rather than merely consume it. On his blog, Groom has described the importance of the work of edupunks, who he says are working in opposition to "the decline of higher ed into a series of feeding lots for the private sector job market". That's not punk, that's ridiculous What about the revolution?
The Saylor Foundation: Connecting the Dots How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education 7 compelling arguments for peer learning Learning lurches between extremes: the formal v informal, didactic v discover , self-paced v social, teaching v learning. But is there a bridge between these extremes, something that cleverly combines teaching and learning? Over the years, starting with Judith Harris’s brilliant (and shocking) work on peer pressure, then Eric Mazur’s work at Harvard but also through several presentations at a recent JISC E-assessment conference, I’ve been smitten by peer learning. 1. The bible for ‘peer’ pressure, and why parents and teachers should know about this stuff, is Judith Harris’s wonderful The Nurture Assumption, the work for which she received the George Miller Medal in psychology. 2. Given the massification of education, here’s an interesting argument. 3. Unsurprisingly, to teach is to learn, as peer learning involves high-order, deep-processing activity. 4. You can easily see how peer learning produces diversity of judgement. 5. 6. 7. Problems? Do students muck about? Peer tools Conclusion
Reinventing School. You co-design it, We make it possible - Re-imagine, Reinvent, Rethink, Empathy, Education 3.0, Transform, Revolution, Collaboration, Design Thinking Challenge, 21st Century Skills, Project Mobile learning Jisc Infokit John Dewey, writing in the early years of the twentieth century, may not have foreseen the proliferation of 21st century ‘mobile devices’ but, in the quotation to the right, he does point out something that remains relevant: that mobile learning involves change, initiative and adaptability. Mobile learning involves change in the sense that the ability to communicate with tutors and peers, as well as access learning resources, changes what is possible in education. It takes initiative for leaders to create a vision to sustain that change and, finally, mobile learning requires adaptability by members of staff to carry out the change. This infoKit is a practical guide to thinking through the issues relating to institutional adoption of mobile learning. It follows a JISC Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review which delves deeper into the theory behind mobile learning and the wider context. Emerging Practice in a Digital Age Bee motif
Edupunk Edupunk is a do it yourself (DIY) attitude to teaching and learning practices.[1][2] Tom Kuntz described edupunk as "an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like PowerPoint and Blackboard, and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of ’70s bands like The Clash to the classroom."[3] Many instructional applications can be described as DIY education or Edupunk. Jim Groom as "poster boy" for edupunk The term was first used on May 25, 2008 by Jim Groom in his blog,[4] and covered less than a week later in the Chronicle of Higher Education.[1] Stephen Downes, an online education theorist and an editor for the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, noted that "the concept of Edupunk has totally caught wind, spreading through the blogosphere like wildfire".[5] Aspects of edupunk[edit] The reaction to corporate influence on education is only one part of edupunk, though. Examples of edupunk[edit] See also[edit] Notes[edit]
Building the E-University: Transforming Athabasca University At Athabasca University Dietmar Kennepohl is Associate Vice President Academic and Professor of Chemistry, Cindy Ives is Director of the Centre for Learning Design and Development, Brian Stewart is Vice President Information Technology and CIO, and Rory McGreal is Professor, Centre for Distance Education and UNESCO/COL Chair in Open Educational Resources. Key Takeaways Reinventing itself as an online university required that Athabasca University go beyond technological integration to make sweeping changes to its culture, skill sets, and processes. Athabasca University (AU) is reinventing itself as a 21st century e-university. The sheer size, complexity, and deep institutional implications of this undertaking — coupled with the short time frame (24 months) — represented an unprecedented challenge for AU. Background: Preparing for Change As an open and distance learning university, AU has no prerequisites for most entry-level courses. AU Special Projects EduSource Digital Reading Room Endnotes
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