This week’s topic and presentation on Managing Technology by Tony Bates sounds interesting to me.
Slides of Managing Technology to Transform Teaching by Tony Bates.
Recording of the Managing Technology To Transform Teaching Blackboard
Jenny responded with her post in Is our education system in crisis? Others who have responded to Tony’s topic included:
I think universities or colleges can change from within, and would also benefit much from the changes from within.
Reasons:
As shared in my previous post, change usually involves three aspects; people, processes and culture.
People: Who are the people initiating changes? Would the changes be initiated from the top or would they be initiated from the bottom (grass roots – staff and learners) level? From a historical perspective, we witnessed most successful changes were initiated from the top, though there had been some “emerging” cases where changes were initiated by the grass roots, or those not based on the “formal institutions”
Culture: Has there been much changes in the education culture? We seemed to have accustomed to the teaching as the main way of educating the learners, especially in a school setting. In an online environment, we may be having a very different culture, where education is taking up a totally new form – with peer-to-peer learning, facilitated by volunteer scholars and educators – like that with University of the People, Wikiversity, or the provision of resources in the form of Free Online Courses and MIT Open Courseware.
What sort of cultural changes is required in Universities and Colleges?
This requires a change in the way how people view Openness, Open Education, Open Educational Resources, and Digital Scholarship.
How to create and facilitate such changes? Leadership from within and without.
How about a change towards Servant Leadership based on serving other people as the fundamental principles when practicing leadership?
Process: Nothing will change unless the process of education is changed. However, this is easier said than done. Why is changing the process of education necessary? Currently there are Standards stipulated for Online Teaching and Programs: Standards for Quality Online Teaching and Programs:
National Standards for Quality Online Teaching
National Standards for Quality Online Programs
Others skills frameworks include 21st century skills and Framework definition: Partnership for 21st century skills.
Aren’t these standards and frameworks good enough? These standards are wonderful for school and online education, but would they be able to cater for the technology enhanced education and learning in social media? I am not that sure on this.
In my previous post:
The education system that we once cherished has been founded on an economic funding model, based on mass education, cost effectiveness and education efficiency for the particular nation, where a centralized education system is valued and mandated, and accreditation of education would only be granted if the course and curriculum are quality assured. The current paper on Quality Assurance in Asian Distance Education: Diverse Approaches and Common Culture well illustrates the importance of quality assurance relating to distance education in those countries.
Now these paradoxes surfaced out of the education system posted new questions and challenges relating to (a) the values of traditional testing of knowledge based on rote learning, (b) the adequacy of grouping students, subjects against fixed curriculum, (c) the impact of new technology and social media on the nature and structure of formal education – in particular Higher Education, (d) the authenticity of learning at school with a curriculum based on content knowledge, with subject structure of – language and literacy, numeracy and mathematics, science, and information technology, arts and religion etc. (e) the need for new media literacies and their application in our daily life, or that in study or at work, in response to the changing needs and expectations from all those concerned – including employers, colleagues, customers, educators and peers, (f) the development of metacognitve, critical thinking and sensemaking skills that are often required to solve complicated and complex problems, individually and collectively, with technology as an affordance.
Postscript:
Thought Leadership would also be required to facilitate those changes and tackle the challenges due to the changes.
See this wonderful presentation by Stephen Downes. A great summary on MOOC, Connectivism and PLE.
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A useful summary on Tony’s presentation by Ailsa http://amusingspace.blogspot.com/2011/10/managed-change-oxymoron-managing-change.html
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Excellent post! This shows the different perspectives on change within higher ed. Really liked Stephen Downes slideshare. Thanks for this!