I was struck by the following quote from the annual Draper Lecture at Queen Mary’s by Nick Hillman on the future of higher education on artificial intelligence in education. The quote highlights key questions on the purpose of the educational endeavour in relation to the individual. Education is not only concerned with learning what or learning how, but also about…
Weller’s notion of resilience is proposed as an alternative perspective on change in education systems and institutions that provides a generative alternative to the ‘education is broken’ narrative. For this, he draws on resilience in terms of the stability of ecological systems and the ability of systems to absorb change. Resilience is, therefore, not simply resistance to change but is…
Returning to the topic of unbundling universities, this sketchnote is based on some of my notes from the Unbundling Higher Education Coursera course that I discussed here. The analytic approaches undertaken by the research project that underpins this MOOC gives a really useful starting point for studying the unbundling of universities. The study focused on the unbundling of education as…
Ben Williamson has written a great post here on the concept and realities of a smart, quantified and data driven university. The post outlines the increasingly overt positioning of universities as conduits for data collection, analysis and exploitation. The datafication of universities as the ‘smart university’ or ‘intelligent campus’ provides a clear pathway for the encroachment of commercial companies and…
This is a great talk from Tressie McMillan Cottom at the 26th International Council for Open & Distance Education (2015) on the relationship between increasing access to education and the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalites. Her talk looks beyone simple physical access to examine questions of equity, equality and social justice. While she acknowledges the physical barriers to accessing education such as the…
This is a fascinating article on the impacted of the LinkedIn platform on universities by Janja Komljenovic. The paper: focuses on LinkedIn to start tackling the question of the effects on higher education as a sector, its actors and the established social practices. It argues that LinkedIn moves beyond the passivity of advertising to its users towards actively structuring digital…
I am currently reading a study on academic micro-cultures from Lunds University that describes an excellent learning environment as including: … a positive departmental climate, a good sense of a collegial “we”, continuous and deliberate discussions about educational issues, strong research achievements and active collaboration with other parts of the university and with the society. This reminded me of a situated version…
Professor Joel Smith is Distinguished Career Teaching Professor in philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University and is currently the co-principal investigator of a research project on barriers and affordances to implementation of instructional innovations titled is currently the co-principal investigator of a research project on barriers and affordances to implementation of instructional innovations titled “Understanding and Overcoming Institutional Roadblocks to the Adoption and Use…
These are my notes from a Digital Education Seminar at the University of Edinburgh by Professor Keri Facer on the Connected Communities research programme. As ever with these posts, my record is partial and bias and possibly includes some inaccuracies (but not on purpose). The seminar was opened by Prof Sian Bayne to introduce Keri as Professor of Educational and Social Futures at Bristol University and…
These are my notes taken during the presentation and then tidied up a bit in terms of spelling and sense – so they may well be limit, partial and mistaken! Welcome from Sian Bayne with the drama of the day “fire! Toilets!” and confirmed that the event is being livestreamed and the video is available here. Lesley Gourlay as chair for…