Strong correlation between school performance and geographical distance from Delhi, the capital: the longer the distance, the lower the performance. Teachers from rural areas, indeed, do want to move to Delhi or closer to the capital, to an urban centre. Remoteness reduces the quality of education.
But remoteness not necessarily has to be geographic: there is some sort of “quality remoteness”, where some teachers want to get closer to “good” schools, and feel remote by staying in a low quality school. Remoteness, thus, has many shapes and depends on the cultural, economic, social, geographical, etc. contexts.
Alternative primary education is needed where there are no schools, or schools are not good enough, or where there are no teachers, or where teachers are not good enough.
Educational technology should be designed for and reach the underprivileged first. Indeed, educational technology is perceived to be over-hyped and under-performing in schools that have good students and teachers. And educational technology should be designed by educators, not corporations, politicians, lobbies, mass media…
Values are acquired: doctrine and dogma are imposed.
Self organizing system
Self organizing systems structure themselves without any intervention from outside the system (e.g. John Conway’s Game of Life). Is it possible to set some kind of self-organizing system whose output is an educational system? The Kalkaji experiment: a computer fixed on a wall, and, without instructions, children learnt how to browse (by essay an error) and did browse and teach each other how to.
The Madantusi experiment: will English stop them from using the computer? with enough time, the kids learnt how to play games with the computer and asked for more power and better pointing devices… and saw English not as a barrier but as a challenge: “if I learn English, I’ll be able to use the computer better”. Assertiveness, not negative statements.
Evolution of the experiments
But, are these projects replicable? sustainable? adaptable to different contexts? Can really emerge educational systems from such experiences?
The pattern was: discover the use of the computer, discover browsing… and, systematically, discover Google and see the whole experience shifting towards a higher level.
Next step: install a software to learn English, based on voice recognition. No instructions provided. Again, with few time children were using all the features of the system.
But more than computer literacy, other things were happening.
SOLE: Self Organised Learning Environments
Groups of children interacting with groups of computers. No timetables, no instructions. They are able to find solutions to problems given. Questions being: is this learning? How far can this go (e.g. learn Quantum Mechanics)?
What about the teacher? Is the teacher just presence? Is the teacher guidance? Experiment: put the teacher in a screen (videoconference) with webcams communicating in both directions (teacher-classroom). It’s interactive, and somehow present.
Some conclusions: Education for development
Development is about reducing inequalities. And engagement, and effort, is worth it if the reward (reducing the personal distance with the rest) is big. If there is no reward (inequalities are relatively small), effort does not pay off, and thus engaging in learning is a tough thing to do. How to fight this lack of commitment, or vision, toward one’s own education?
Some conclusions
Groups of children can learn to use computers, irrespective of who or where they are.
Children share a computer and get literate in 3 months: learn by doing, but also learn by watching.
$0.03 per child and day
Computers improve maths and English (even biotechnology)
Improve school attendance
Anwer school leaving examination questions
Reduce petty crime
Generate local goodwill
Change social values
Children in unsupervised groups can self organise to do all these things, and teach themselves English (speaking and pronunciation too) or improve algebra
Can they change their own aspirations? Can they achieve their own schooling?
Q & A
Paul West: Can such a method be mainstreamed in any way? A: It can be done. Examples and evidence are more convincing than good words.
Q: Can it be applied with adults? A: Adult ego is a strong inhibitor and it might probably not work.
Emma Kiselyova: Can we use second hand hardware to replicate this kind of experiences at a broad scale? A: Children are enraged if they do not get the appropriate (cutting edge) technology. So, the answer is: let’s keep the old computers for us, as we are less power demanding, and send the new ones, as the kids do need more powerful features.
Q: Would this work with retarded or autistic children? A: Autistic children are brilliant, but lack the social skills, a clue of success of these experiences. And brilliant as they are, they might end up going on their own.
Ismael Peña-López: if kids are now so exposed to abundance of information, and learn to collaborate and learn together with other students, are they going to become different adults? A: Definitely. Some youngsters are already collaborating in most intensive ways and even challenging their workspaces and ways their jobs are managed or structured. Surely the nature itself of Education has to change because the reality has dramatically changed. Because full generations are chaning.
Francisco Lupiáñez: Besides remoteness, GDP per capita, or health conditions, do they affect too? Beyond a threshold (i.e. 200miles from the urban center), all these variables are homogeneous in rural India, while remoteness still suffers a gradient in relationship to performance.
Larry Nelson: What’s next after getting the skills? What’s the teacher role? A: After skills, games come. Then, Google opened a large gate of knowledge, really useful for homework. And it was on an imitation basis: the one that takes advantage of using Google to do schoolwork, is imitated by the others not to lag behind. Teachers end up encouraging this kind of behaviour: forbidding gaming is breaking the whole emerging learning process. And there are astonishing stories about kids leaving schools, having smashing success at high school, and attributing it to the computer experience.
Q: Are there any filters in the Internet access? A: Not even there are no filters at all, but even the default set links by the users were overridden from start. And public exposure avoids vandalism, criminal or socially unaccepted browsing. And as the computer is so needed by the students, they will not risk losing access to it.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fifth International Seminar. Fighting the Digital Divide through Education (2008)
Visual Literacy in the Age of the Big Picture Susan E. Metros, University of Southern California
What does it mean to be literate?
Just reading and writing? The say that one image is more worth than a thousand words stands even more than ever. But there are many and many literacies: depending on the context, on the emitter, etc. the message does change.
Even many disciplines heavily rely on visual literacy: Maths (symbols), Art, Psychology (perception), Economics (chars and graphs), Geography (Cartography), Medicine, Communication (Semiotics)… Disciplines that have created whole theories around these visual literacies.
Visual literacy:
Decode and interpret visuals
Encode and compose meaningful visuals: making pictures is getting as important as looking at and understand pictures
Informed critic of visual information: understand what’s good or bad
Able to judge accuracy, validity, and worth: know what’s real and what’s not
Judging validity is one of the challenges we’re facing and which is posing many problems as is getting more complex, sensible, a matter of debate along time.
The big difference between being visually stimulated and being visually literate [an interesting statement regarding the digital natives issue]. The visual information overload plays with our perceptions (and specially with those of the younger ones)… but what about understanding, assimilating them? Is there a cognitive process or just sheer exposure?
Failure to communicate is not inherent in the piece of information to be transmitted, but in the design of the communication device. So, where’s the balance between amateur and authentic? Is there a trade-off between “freedom of expression” and appropriate, authentic, sense-making visual communication?
And besides understanding the vocabulary of visual communication, fluency is also required: not only to be able to understand, create, create with sense, but create and communicate with ease.
Becoming visually literate
It depends on your learning style: a behavioural preference (visual), a matter of a better processing of things (auditory), a way of concentrating better (kinesthetic)… Statistically, 65% of the population is visual. Which means that not only visual communication is pervasive, but that it is preferred by the majority of the population as a learning style.
But visual literacy is also bound to the social and cultural context, sometimes making it local some visual signs, sometimes making other signs universal, and more immediate than words.
There is a lot of code to be learnt — plain different from other codes like written text — that needs serious addressing and specific training.
The role of the visual
To document, e.g. The War Tapes, and document it in many ways, from different perspectives, to send different messages based on the “same” reality.
To validate
To communicate, in a very quick, straightforward, universal way
To inform
To engage, e.g. in gaming.
To expose, to bring to light and spread information that, otherwise, would be difficult or impossible to transmit
To politicize
To provoke
Affecting change
How to make people more visually literate? How to fight the visual literacy divide?
“Come to us”: build spaces for this purpose. The problem being that people want their own spaces, their own tools. OSU Digital Union just does thus: create a space people feel as theirs.
Woven into the curriculum: try and make visual literacy an embedded part of a bigger whole (e.g. USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy). Research and teaching on how to do things an do it a must.
Mara Hancock: how do we face the white space, how do we leave room for the sight to rest? A: It’s really important to teach students about white space, how not to exhaust the available space and let one’s sight breathe, and avoid vision overload. There is indeed white space in many other literacies.
Q: Images can lies. Sometimes the image does not correspond to an object, but to what this object represents. This has to be taught too.
Brian Lamb: How to be rigorous, how to contextualize? A: It’s all about being literate, but not only the emitter, but also the receiver so they can enforce the appropriate use of visual communication.
Q: How to fight the visual illiteracy of students? A: Is there such a thing as visual illiteracy? To be able to read you have to be literate; to be able to listen to music or see images, even if understanding can be rough, you still have the ability to hear and see. Which means that addressing this (partial) illiteracy might not be that hard.
Teemu Leinonen: Can design-thinking help to improve visual (and all other) literacies? Should design-thinking be a part of the visual literacy programme? A: Design competences might help to enhance digital literacy, but are not inherent to visual literacy. About design-thinking, don’t believe there is such a thing as design-thinking, but going back to humans or humanities, and ask ourselves why are we doing some things, etc. E.g. Ethics should not be an attribute of design-thinking, but of being human in general.
Q: ICT literacy is very difficult to integrate in primary school. Can visual literacy can make its way in elementary and secondary education? How can it be integrated into the curriculum? Or will it stay on its own? How does it relate with digital and ICT literacy? A: Kids already are making use of their visual and digital skills… outside the school. It is “just” a matter to bring these competences — and experiences — inside the curriculum, bring them inside the classes and guess how to do it. But it is already happening.
Javier Nó: In art, image is imposed; in design, image should be negotiated. It is not a matter of literacy, but of meaning. Designers often forget that design is not art and that there is an audience to be reached, so image should be negotiated with the users, engaging them in the debate of image use. A: Art, and design, is important to learn it in context. And lateral thinking plays an important role in this context learning. Decoding and encoding go hand in hand, and we have to be able to do both.
Ismael Peña-López: Are digital natives wired different? Have we to realize this and adapt? Or are they just over-stimulate and just need to “calm them down” in a visual, digital way? A: Even if everyone is using the same tools, the thing is that students are using them in other ways and they do have different skills or capabilities. Cut them wings would be a step backwards. Sometimes they are more engaged than we think of and, more important, the boundary between formal and informal environments are blurring. We should take advantage of this.
twin towers falling
a mother with a child
capa and abatted partisan
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fifth International Seminar. Fighting the Digital Divide through Education (2008)
Is it learning with technology or learning from technology?
The best way to predict the future is to invent it, Alan Kay, 1971.
An evolution of instructional technology:
The media center as a separate artifact, segregated from the gallery, meeting room and seminar room.
The web becomes more and more the desktop, the meeting and collaborating place.
Pervasiveness of mobile phones brings on the possibility of mobile learning, that has to cohabit with e-learning as we knew it.
Affordability of multimedia devices that can record, create or edit sound, audio, etc. enrich e-learning experiences with rich media created by the user. This leads us to projects as the mobile audio encyclopaedia.
Then to augmented reality with mobile phones like Shedlight.
Course: Composing free and open online educational resources: a course planned (and paid by) Finnish students, but followed by +60 more people around the world. And now it can be (and it actually is) replicated elsewhere, at any time.
The syllabus, the assignments… everything took place on the Wikiversity page of the course.
Wiki platforms allow the collaborative creation of very simple — though effective — learning objects.
Three metaphors of learning
Knowledge acquisition: you read a book, you learn. But access to courseware is not an issue when it is abundant. Learning is an individual cognitive process. Memorizing.
Participation: learning is a socio-cultural process. Acting.
Knowledge creation: learning is a socio-cultural process with an intention to produce artefacts. Cultivating.
In Wikipedia all three metaphors take place. But where’s the place for educators? What and how are they doing?
Grundtvig’s Folkenhøjskole: the university is more than four walls, it is a social dialogue. Freire: non-institutional education. Ollman: the University as an institution that is educating and nurturing acting people, but that has built a chasm between it and the society. Hakkarainen: Progressive Inquiry [reminds me of Participatory Action Research].
Q & A
Paul West: how to maintain, validate wikis? Does it leave room for the teacher? How digitally literate do they have to be? A: Le Mill makes it easier for the teacher to create content.
Q: is it really possible to have cultural diversity in wikis/wikipedias? A: Actually, the different structures themselves of the several wikipedias do demonstrate that even at the core, cultural differences shape the container itself, not only the content.
Tim Unwin: Are artefacts content? are we focussing too much on artefacts rather than content? A: Of course the artefact is but a tool. But the process of creating, even creating the artefact, does provide too some valuable knowledge, as it forces reflecting about the process itself.
Susan Metros: How can teachers assess the materials that students are creating, specially in collaborative ways? A: It is important to keep groups really small so that tracking can be easily done.
Julià Minguillón: the pervasiveness of English as lingua franca, won’t crowd out other smaller languages? Should this small languages speakers be encouraged to create content? A: ICTs enable small languages to survive, but translating content in other languages is not the strategy: it has to be genuine created content.
Sugata Mitra: what is learning? when students “play” with computers, is that learning? A: It might be learning, but after the n repetition, is just repetition. Besides, learning and education might not be the same thing,
Ismael Peña-López: If the whole process is available, and everyone can join, how can we assess the learning of the student? how can we help them find whether they learned or not? A: Some of them might not be interested in a “formal” assessment, but just find the process was interesting. We could be talking about evaluation and feedback instead of assessment. Tim Unwin: peer assessment is a very effective — and even efficient — assessment method.
Linda Roberts: What’s next? A: Free Open Content should gain power. And a community will gather around the creation, sharing and use of these materials, enhanced by collaborative tools to engage one with each other.
Brian Lamb: How to evaluate collaborative work? A: The evaluation should also be like a dynamic dialogue. Of course, it requires time (and money).
Enric Senabre: How to create a local Wikiversity? A: Content has to be created, prove that “people will come”, and then the Foundation will create the local Wikiversity site.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fifth International Seminar. Fighting the Digital Divide through Education (2008)
The importance of Education in all stages of development.
The increasing changes that the Information Society and Globalization are bringing impact all aspects of life. Life long learning is one of the paradigmatic effects of the recent changes the World’s been in.
Beyond digital literacy, and digital exclusion because of lack of physical access, there’s a huge knowledge divide that needs to be fought: access to useful, culturally relevant knowledge.
ICT4D as a tool to fight the digital divide Tim Unwin, Royal Holloway University of London and World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education programme with UNESCO.
Fight the digital divide or build on individual strengths? Begin with information and communication needs, being the fundamental part “for Development”.
Partnerships
ICT4D partnerships have been very successful: they have been fostered per se, but also the private sector has had a leading role in ICT4D, in contrast with a lack of understanding among donor agencies. On the other hand, partnerships have worked well because ICT4D is still a complex an unknown area where collaboration is strongly needed.
But partnerships have also failed: partnerships with no clear goals or even meaning; focus on public-private partnerships, forgetting other kinds of organization; emphasis on the supply side; insufficient attention paid to partnership processes.
Sustainability is not something that can be thought of once the project is started — or near its “completion” — but should be included in the plan from the sheer beginning. Same with scale, trying to avoid pilot-project fever that think short run and narrow scope.
e-Learning for development?
The pros are many and quite well known. What are the cons?
Costs of ICT are high, and infrastructures scarce.
Tutorial support is required and more important than just content — though important too and needs to be localized indeed.
The focus should not be put in ICT training, or “office” software, but in Education. Education vs. training.
Main reasons of failure in ICT-led education projects in Africa
Understand context of delivery
Appreciate African interests
Overcome infrastructure issues
Provide relevant content
Top down
Suypply driven
Photo-opportunity “development”
Constructivism and 21st century skills
Learners involved, democratic environment, student centred learning, etc.
Critiques to constructivism:
learning might be behaviourally active, but is not necessarily cognitively active.
may not be delivered in teaching practices. Teaching practice mayh not deliver the theoretical realities
Ignores the reality of the African classroom
Emphasis on replicating “truths”
Modular thinking
Going for the easy option, e.g. go to the Wikipedia
Tendency towards plagiarism
Inability to think critically
Lowest common denominator attitude
Pandering to student “demand”
Most of ICT in education focusses on content and collaborative networking, but not in problem solving or critical thinking.
What kind of education for what kind of development?
Private sector and education. Engaged in setting a global agenda, and with strong interest in the knowledge economy.
Hegemonic model — economic growth and liberal democracy — need for focus on relative poverty — inequalities, access.
Emphasis on training for a knowledge economy while forgetting about critical ability and reflection.
Education is not a driver for economic growth. Key skills to be human, fighting the digital tyranny that constrains us rather than liberate us. Some ICTs (e.g. e-mail) do not let time enough to think creatively and take action.
Take control of technologies — and take control of those who control the technologies — to take control of our learning process. Re-define the role of the teacher and re-assert shared and communal educational agendas, while assuring equitable access.
Questions or opportunities for the future
Post-constructivism and the role of the teacher?
Processes of learning communities?
Enabling innovative problem solving and critical thinking?
How to provide appropriate infrastructure?
The tyranny of digital environments?
Q & A
Linda Roberts: is there any good practice in ICT4D and Education? A: Sadly enough, there are very few of them, e.g. some of them mobile-phone centred that enable the student to access some content without displacing the teacher.
Eduardo Toulouse: is it the clue teachers and the quality of teachers? what happens when infrastructure is a barrier for even the teachers? A: Yes, the clue is teacher quality. And to achieve this teachers have to be able to live on their own work. And, in some environments, thinking that they are going to engage in the production of materials and share them (at the connectivity cost) for nothing is ludicrous.
[…] from University of South Africa: is there any option left but believe in ICTs, despite all the drawbacks, “buts”, failures and so? A: Top-down approaches do not work, so this “hope” in ICTs has to be indeed grassroots founded.
Ismael Peña-López: what if we do not have teachers? can ICTs help to bring them on our community? can open educational resources help attract teachers? can OER help to create teachers out of the blue? A: OER can leverage already existing social structures to create learning communities. Peer learning, by leveraging peers and turning them into teachers can be a thrilling option. Communal education is the one to be put under the spotlight, and even a local facilitator can even be a bridge between a remote teacher and the community if the tools and the human network are well thread one with the other.
Q: What’s after post-constructivism? What about critical pedagogy? A: Isn’t this a Western approach as well? Even if Paolo Freire is brazilian, his ideas are well rooted in the West.
Paul West: ICTs can help the teacher to lighten his burden by making him more efficient, e.g. when correcting and marking exams. A: Agree. The debate is in whether doing old things in a new way vs. or new things the old way.
Sugata Mitra: is there a possibility for real change? for a shift of paradigm? A: We have to find the gaps and expand them.
Ismael Peña-López: is there a room for co-operation that avoids cultural imperialism, fosters endogenous development, relies on content while not forgetting the teacher, etc.? A: The critique is not in collaboration or in technology, but on pre-established mindsets, one-size-fits-all or magic solutions, etc. Of course collaboration can take place, but to define a solution, not just implement the solution.
Linda Roberts: how to engage the youngest? A: Mass media might be a first approach to get to them easily.
Teemu Leinonen: what’s the role of languages related to education, ICTs and development? A: There are several initiatives where ICTs are being used to support languages that are dying out. On the other hand, localization is not (just) translation into the local language.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fifth International Seminar. Fighting the Digital Divide through Education (2008)
Fourth and last session at the Open EdTech Summit. Conclusions, in the shape of “plus” and “idealistic” ideas, are presented.
Personalization of the Learning Process
Two kinds of personalization: what is taught, and how is it taught.
Concerns about converging processes (e.g. Bologna), acreditation and control frameworks, etc.
Build new models instead of change current ones, by trying to make obsolete the latter. Find spaces of subversion.
One space for subversion is assessment, trying to make ends meet with freedom of choice.
Extreme importance of capacity building, letting the student to localize their own decisions.
Automated personalization as suggestions, not as compulsory roads to follow, and led by the teacher, not by the technology.
Microcredits as the smallest unbundled parts of a larger course, so they can be “rebundled” into other courses according to needs and competences to be acquired.
Opennes a requisite for tailoring and personalization, enabling cost reduction, remixing itself, etc.
Collaboration is enhanced (if not just enabled) by openness, but personalization can play havoc on social activities: beware.
Learning Content Development and Delivery
Content as infrastructure, thus OER has to go beyond content and enter into meaning creation.
Content is not static: it has a source but evolves multi-directionally.
New roles shaped by the new landscape: teachers and institutions become guides, enablers, capacity builders.
Cultural shift: from the notion of controlling knowledge towards an open environment.
Superiority of open content for reuse and reproduction, but as it is not static, the concept of preservation is at stake and needs redefinition.
OERs should provide context-sensitive output formats: open distribution.
Open quality assurance: not only open content creators, but also curators.
Rethink copyright and fair use.
Future Technologies at the Service of Learning
We need open, interoperable tools and services, no more corporate driven, pre-packaged, specific tools.
The World is an LMS: knowledge is anywhere and we have to know how to find and retrieve it.
Access is a right: free broadband (or really affordable), free content.
Technology has to enhance the joy of learning (not make it a nightmare).
The success of FLOSS communities should be replicated in OER.
New assessment models that capture the personalization of learning. The community might be able to accredit the learner.
Content will come to the learner in a personalized way.
Usability: make the interface invisible.
Help (and give credit to) the process of the teachers’ using technology and acquiring digital capabilities.
Education has to radically change according to the disruption that the Internet represents.
Learning: Everyone, Everywhere and Anytime
uLearning: ubiquitous learning as the new model.
Long life learning requires adaptability of the system.
Knowledge does not go out of date, just becomes more complex.
Connections more important than the nodes.
Self organized learning, through mash-up curricula, user generated content, communities of practice and learners, within personal learning environments.
Ubiquitous and persistent classrooms for continuous (and informal) learning.
Universal recognition of levels and certificates.
Accrediting institutions internationally.
Context and progress aware of digital scaffolding.
Recognition of prior and experiential learning.
Limit the cultural imperialism of technology and learning design: one size does not fit all
Free access for all
Encourage respect and understanding through learning.
Teamwork at the Open EdTech Summit. First part is a brainwriting exercise where a personal reflection time should produce a list of ideas. Then, a brainstorming exercise with the rest of the group where ideas are put in common. This group is about Personalization of the Learning Process. Other groups are Learning Content Development and Delivery, Future Technologies at the Service of Learning, Learning: Everyone, Everywhere and Anytime.
Team 1 – PLP (Personalization of the Learning Process). Contents of this area: individual methods of learning, personal learning speed. student personal learning experience, interaction between learning processes and technology.
Brainwriting
How far can we go with personalization in a credential-driven education system?
As far as we push the learning process away from teaching, shifting responsibility to the student, the process can be as personalized as at the individual level.
Goal setting and assessment has to be homogeneous in a higher degree (with slight changes according to personal needs), education has not.
ICTs lower the transaction costs of individual/personal mentorship
ICTs lower the costs of content diffusion (open educational resources in digital format)
How far can we go in automatically adapting the student’s personal learning experience, based on the system’s assessment of their knowledge/understanding?
Syllabuses can be highly dynamic, though they require some human and technological effort
Again, assessment should take place at the final stage, evaluating the “output” of the educational process. The process itself… should it be assessed (per se, not in terms of evaluating its performance to achieve educational goals)?
Will it be possible in the very next future that each student rules completely her/his learning process?
The student should be able to rule their learning process
More effort — and resources — should be put on the how and the what for, not the what
The focus should be goal setting, designing “default” paths according to more common profiles, and guidance
How far technologies will help us in adapting the personal rhythm of learning to the academic demands of the universities?
Should universities have academic demands at all? Shouldn’t universities be the ones to adapt their rhythms to personal learning demands?
If focus is not put in the process but in goal setting, guidance and assessment — not in teaching — then technology could help to bind people together while keeping the ends quite loose.
Is it possible to offer university contents completely adapted to a specific (individual) learning process?
It absolutely is: we don’t have to make scarce something abundant (e.g. tight syllabuses)
The goal is not filtering, but capaciting people to filter
Brainstorming
Larry Johnson: how do you guide someone through their random process so that they become an e.g. “engineer”?
Jutta Treviranus: Personalization can be understood as personalization of access, not necessarily (or not only) personalization of the content. It’s critical to identify what constitutes an “engineer”.
David Wiley: a credential is shortcut for the employer to identify competences, a bundle of competences. Can be unbundle these competences? Course selection, sequencing, etc. can be hence adapted.
Llorenç Valverde: still a tight curriculum in Spain even after the Bolonia process. Is there room for a freedom of choice?
Lev Gonick: how to create space for subversion? how to bring the student autonomy? not big changes: where are the cracks of the system?
Jutta Treviranus: optimising learning, making it challenging to the student.
Vijay Kukmar: we can go very far in personalization. Microcredits, e-portfolios… are already existing tools that can be drivers of change. Not thinking about disciplines, but transferable skills and learning how to learn.
Jutta Treviranus: how you best learn? personalization is not about the system itself, but the engagement.
Ismael Peña-López: now what’s scarce is not knowledge (that’s why we had to produce and put together the scarce knowledge in classrooms and universities), but mentoning: no more focus on knowledge, but on mentoring.
Claudio Dondi: It’s easy to identify what the core competences are in a specific discipline/degree/etc. Thus, competences should be certified competences, more than learnings. Move the assessment from knowledge only to know-how.
Llorenç Valverde: how to certify competences without assessing content?
David Wiley: what happens with social interaction (amongst students) if personalization goes to the limit of individualization? Personalization should not let aside social activities. How to find the balance between helping in the decision-taking and taking the decision for the students.
Elena Barberà: personalization of what? goals? processes? technologies? We have to identify where are we learning, where are the connections between the person and knowledge, and adapt the use of the tools to this: learning needs evidence, documentation.
Francesc Santanach: personalization will be crucial in the future where heterogeneous students will meet in the same classroom. Globalization and digital technologies foster this heterogeneity. It is more important to recommend, not force anyone into any path.
Larry Johnson: there is a deep lack of definition about what is personalization, how to… There is not such a defined niche for personalization, and technology will not make it out of the blue.
Jutta Treviranus: personalization and technology not only from a pedagogical approach, but also in other aspects just like (physical) access.
Vijay Kumar: the difference between information and education; and between education and formal education (certification, etc.); and between education and learning. Should we focus in how learners customize their learning experience and forget about education?
Lev Gonick: how do institutions avoid the irrelevance of “bad” learning practices?
Llorenç Valverde: personalization has not to be contaminated by the commoditization that came with the industrial revolution. But we can avoid the pret-à-porter one-size-fits-all of education and go into personalized tailoring.
Lev Gonick: we have to set up theories that create new frameworks that e.g. allow the human genome project to emerge.Without that theory, educational institutions will be marginalized from their own system.
David Wiley: theory has to be backed up with real data.
Jutta Treviranus: and we need a framework to gather all theories.
Claudio Dondi: there is a problem when trying to put under the same system training (professional training) and education. The higher education system is not actually coherent with the rest of the socio-economic system. Thus, something should be done at the system level: the problem might not (only) be at the praxis level, but at a more systemic one.
Vijay Kumar: what is the atomic unit of personalization: is adaptation or is it individualization? The currency between the academic system and the socioeconomic system is the degree. Is the problem this currency? the different interests at either side of the currency exchange?
Larry Johnson: the very most importance of competences as the real currency, not certification.
David Wiley: competences permit tying the content, to experience, to certification…
Lev Gonick: we created a personalization at the technological level, but not at the educational process level.
Claudio Dondi: Difference of personalization between how and what.
Larry Johnson: there has to be a mentor-like connection in personalization. The system is educational, not technological.
David Wiley: personalization of the mediation, personalization of the feedback you give, personalization of the hint, etc.
Lev Gonick: how to use the technology to personalize to achieve higher success, to prepare the student for success?
Vijay Kumar: metacognition, where I know how to access problems and where to look for help or solutions. Seeking information, validating information, etc.
David Wiley: prior knowledge is a basic, stable difference between students.
Ismael Peña-López: not only identifying how to access problems, not only assessing one’s assets or prior knowledge, but be able to identify and assess your own context, culture, environment… your localization. These three issues — the cognitive process, prior knowledge and context — might be three main drivers of personalization.
Claudio Dondi: the difference between prior knowledge and the capacity of learning.
Vijay Kukmar: how to shift from content-centered processes towards learning-to-learn processes?
Elena Barberà: we are looking forward more autonomous learners, to enable them to take responsible and adequate decisions at the correct time. Autonomous thinking might be one of the big answers to the whole debate.
David Wiley: personalization as Amazon. Amazon only asks you to buy books, no conscientious or rational or meditated choice required: just buy. And the system can tell the tastes and needs and suggestions.
Jutta Treviranus: what are the limits of personalization? don’t we have to let the system open? We cannot allow ourselves to reinforce individual biases.
Person is all alone, big distance to cover, all learning is contextual, take the route to the future… by walking, the first step is down, it’s lonely on the mountain top, breathing is learning, room for serendipity.
