JISC/CNI 08: Students and the Transformation of Higher Education - Diana G. Oblinger

Diane is trying to put the students experience in context

Students – multitasking
Connected
Experiential
Where they spend their time – not in class (US studies indicate only 7.7% of time)
Social networks – their choice for email/exchanging information
Gaming (70+% of Americans – is this same in UK?)
Media creation – not just looking at immediate local feedback; audiences are on the web
Participatory culture – not necessarily about the product but the process
Everyone has something to contribute – do they really? Is everyone’s input equally valid?
Social connections create a set of social skills which we value.
Knowledge needs have changed from know how to know what to know where

Definitions of learning are changing
Experiences – learning by doing rather than assimilation
Knowledge distributed across communities/networks
Assessment through reputation

Contextual constructivism
Not possible to separate learning from context e.g what you learn changes
Learning interfaces are part of this context
Familiar with desktop > cf gaming multi user virtual environments

Infrastructure based on learning
Complex, multidisciplinary data
Multiple systems

Real world problems
Remote instruments but employers complain that students know theory but can’t handle the equipment in practice

Science gateways e.g Earthquake Collaboratory, nanoHUB, Galaxy Zoo which include researchers students and citizen environments

Sensory rich
2nd life, haptics (learning by touch) e.g. for medical education
Reinforces memory and learning

Create & collaborate
Digital storytelling
Virtual worlds
Open University free learning resources

Space establishes context
The way we set them up implies how we expect people to learn
e.g.
rotating seats in lecture theatres
Joint problem solving – improves dropout rate for low achieving students
Metacognition improves learning
Thinking about learning processes
‘wrappers’ – students asked about how they expect to do, then after exercise/exam asked again to reflect on these wrt to how they actually performed

Collaboration

Open educational resources
-Challenges assumptions about knowledge, originality and ownership
Self-publishing

Need for enabling infrastructure
Infrastructure for discovery
Data as an infrastructure
Distributed infrastructure – grid computing
Virtual organisations

Q&A


Who or what they can trust?
Have shown themselves to be much more savvy, information literacy/fluency programmes. Different attitude to trust, maybe just because they’re younger?

How are universities responding to shallow learners?
Courses are more interest driven & distributed – students who are not interested continue with a shallow approach
Deep problem solving produces more transferable skills