Really interesting article in the recent EDUCAUSE Review by Tapscott and Williams on Innovating the 21-st Century University. Essentially, they argue that the Industrial Age model of education needs to change to more collaborative models of teaching and learning. Nothing new in that, of course. But they seem to have a vision (it honestly isn’t very clear to me) of a Global Network of Higher Learning built around a network of inter-institutional collaborations (of knowledge creation, market, and, presumably, revenue).
In terms of the pedagogy, what they argue is nothing new, of course. Moving from “broadcast” delivery models of instruction to more collaborative, constructivist, discovery based learning models has been so long in the conversation, it has almost become cliché.
Certainly in our graduate online programs here at McDaniel, it’s what we teach, what we design, and what we do.
So I have no argument with that. But I think Tapscott and Williams may be getting a couple things wrong here as they present their arguments.
One. This self-paced business. That was tried in the late 90s with online classes. It failed miserably. Self-pacing tends to remove one from the learning community and tends to minimize teaching presence.
Two. Their model probably puts too much emphasis on content (and/or on technology mediation) and not enough on teaching/social presence. Thing is, “content” really isn’t a problem. We don’t need community to produce content. Or at least we don’t need any more community to produce any more content. That’s going on just fine without any new models of Higher Ed institutional collaborations. (Plus, we have these things called texbooks.)
We do need community to co-create knowledge, however. And I agree with Garrison, Anderson, & Archer who have long argued that learning is most effective when it occurs in a community that has social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.
Should we adopt collaborative learning as the core model of pedagogy? Sure! Should Higher Ed institutions collaborate more? Definitely! Should we invest more in technical infrastructure? Absolutely!
But I’m not convinced that the University of the Future will be structured around interinstitutional collaborations. Maybe it will. But if effective teaching and learning is going on, I suspect it will be occurring in (relatively) small collaborative learning communities that fully enable social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.
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Really interesting article in the recent EDUCAUSE Review by Tapscott and Williams on Innovating the 21-st Century University. Essentially, they argue that the Industrial Age model of education needs to change to more collaborative models of teaching and learning. Nothing new in that, of course. But they seem to have a vision (it honestly isn’t very clear to me) of a Global Network of Higher Learning built around a network of inter-institutional collaborations (of knowledge creation, market, and, presumably, revenue).
In terms of the pedagogy, what they argue is nothing new, of course. Moving from “broadcast” delivery models of instruction to more collaborative, constructivist, discovery based learning models has been so long in the conversation, it has almost become cliché.
Certainly in our graduate online programs here at McDaniel, it’s what we teach, what we design, and what we do.
So I have no argument with that. But I think Tapscott and Williams may be getting a couple things wrong here as they present their arguments.
One. This self-paced business. That was tried in the late 90s with online classes. It failed miserably. Self-pacing tends to remove one from the learning community and tends to minimize teaching presence.
Two. Their model probably puts too much emphasis on content (and/or on technology mediation) and not enough on teaching/social presence. Thing is, “content” really isn’t a problem. We don’t need community to produce content. Or at least we don’t need any more community to produce any more content. That’s going on just fine without any new models of Higher Ed institutional collaborations. (Plus, we have these things called texbooks.)
We do need community to co-create knowledge, however. And I agree with Garrison, Anderson, & Archer who have long argued that learning is most effective when it occurs in a community that has social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.
Should we adopt collaborative learning as the core model of pedagogy? Sure! Should Higher Ed institutions collaborate more? Definitely! Should we invest more in technical infrastructure? Absolutely!
But I’m not convinced that the University of the Future will be structured around interinstitutional collaborations. Maybe it will. But if effective teaching and learning is going on, I suspect it will be occurring in (relatively) small collaborative learning communities that fully enable social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.
Like this:
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