The future of classrooms

This is Part 4 in my series on the future of learning and technology. What will be the future of school classrooms? It is unlikely that we will see the demise of the classroom in the next decade. Those who study the future of education often suggest that the demise of traditional classrooms is not only inevitable, but imminent. This is due to the rapid proliferation of mobile technology, the disintermediation of traditional teacher and student roles, new trends such as MOOCs and the upsurge of user generated content on social media sites -  all of which take learning away from previously familiar territory. The argument that these tools and trends are removing the need for classrooms and 'schools' in specific geographical locations is a strong one, but also has some flaws.

In a recent article, Larry Cuban attempts to gaze 10 years into the future, and makes the case that classrooms will stay very much the same during this period. Firstly, he argues, teachers tend to use new technology in much the same way they used old technology, and that as a result very little has changed in terms of pedagogy. Secondly, he suggests that technology is overhyped and is not future-proofed, especially against 'major unplanned events', although what these might be, he fails to elaborate. Anyone who is familiar with Cuban's work will think 'well he would say that, wouldn't he?', but is he right?

One of the future developments he is optimistic about, however, is the lightening of students' backpacks. Cuban believes that the digitisation of texts (books, encyclopedias and other paper based knowledge) will take hold and become an important trend. He predicts the obsolescence of the hard bound book, at least in the hands of school children. Automated assessment of learning through computer adaptive testing is another trend he predicts, where students are given grades based on their performance on multiple choice questions. Implicit within this scenario is learner analytics, where the data mining of all student scores, attendance levels, social media postings and discussion group contributions can be analysed to provide teachers with an overview of where the student is, and whether any intervention is required. Also implicit within this prediction is the need for teachers to adopt new roles, change their professional practice, and move from instructors to facilitators and moderators.  It also means that teachers would need to revisit their concepts of knowledge and learning, and begin to accept that often learning occurs without their direct input, both inside and outside the classroom. Many teachers would welcome such a shift in practice, whilst many others might feel very threatened by such a seismic shift in the profession.

Cuban is very sceptical of online courses, and presumably his sceptiscism also embraces MOOCs. He believes that online learning has repeatedly failed to deliver its promise. His argument here stems from the human need to socialise, to gather together face to face, and learn firsthand the cultural, moral and civic values we hold so important in today's society. Online course, he argues, fall very short of delivering this richness.

Cuban sees a place for technology in schools, but does not see it radically changing the face of the 'place for education', and says:

'...by 2023, uses of technologies will change some aspects of teaching and learning but schools and classrooms will be clearly recognizable to students’ parents and grandparents.'

Is he right? Will we see no radical change in schools in the next 10 years? Will it take longer for us to witness transformational changes in our education institutions, or are the changes above sufficient to revolutionise pedagogy? Are schools too conservative and resistant to change to be impacted by new technology? Is technology the only catalyst for change, or should we look elsewhere? As ever, your comments on this blog are welcome.

Photo by Paul Shreeve


The future of classrooms by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Parabolic learning

Reflection and Amplification

Now that I have some time, I can sit down and reflect on an extraordinary two hour session with my BA Education Studies students this morning. They are only a small group of a dozen students, but over the last few months, my elearning module group has created a very large amount of content, including blogs, wiki pages and videos. The group wiki is here if anyone wishes to view some of their content. We have previously explored a number of learning theories, new learning technologies, concepts around crowdsourcing, wisdom of crowds, folksonomies and user generated content, Web 2.0, mobile learning and a whole host of other themes during the course.

Today was different, because normally I prepare thoroughly for the sessions. Today, I took the risk of going  into the room with just a germ of an idea to see how it would develop. That germ of an idea evolved over the course of the two hour session into something beyond anything I could ever have planned. It proves to me that sometimes spontaneity can pay dividends. The incorporation of a number of social media tools into the mix proved to be an amazing platform from which the students and I could reflect on the process of learning, and amplify our ideas to each other and the world.

I started the session with the aim of encouraging the group to learn deeply and critically about a particular topic - MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses). I asked them to prepare for a debate next week, and put up the slide: 'This house believes that MOOCs will signal the demise of campus based higher education'.  I then divided the students randomly into two teams, one arguing for the motion, and the other arguing against. I asked the members of the two teams to research their arguments, with supporting evidence, and blog their ideas in preparation for next week's debate.

As a doorknob strategy, I asked two students to act as content curators. Their task would be to create a new wiki page, and begin to populate it with resources related to MOOCs. This would act as baseline reference materials for the two sides to incorporate into their arguments, but it would also mean that the two students would need to investigate both sides of the argument and post content related to the discourse around MOOCs.

I then tweeted (and encouraged the students to do the same) a few messages to the online educator community to ask them their views on the question of whether MOOCs would eventually replace traditional forms of education. This kind of crowdsourcing activity is always a risk and quite unpredictable, because you never know who will respond (if anyone) or what they will say. I added the hashtag #moocplym for good measure so we could track the conversation across the community. Next, I projected Twitterfall and VisibleTweets live backchannel feeds of responses on the large screen at the front of the classroom. Another task then came the way of the curator team. Their next challenge was to create an archive of all the tweets, blogs, and other content related to the hashtag #moocplym and maintain a chronological record throughout the week using Storify or some similar curation tool.

Over the coming week, the two teams (with the curation team in attendance) will therefore explore the history, culture, technology and pedagogy of MOOCs, a topic they are not particularly familiar with. They will critically analyse the discourse surrounding MOOCs, create and share content on their learning, and reflect on it. Their ideas, and their associated content will be presented and amplified through the social media channels, and the ultimate act will be the debate, followed by a discussion of the entire process from start to finish. There will be a lot to talk about if it all goes according to schedule. Oh, and why did I title this post parabolic learning? Because a parabolic reflector collects energy, focuses and transforms it, and then reflects it back with greater intensity. That's exactly what I want my students to do.

First image source
Second image by Steve Wheeler


Parabolic learning: reflection and amplification by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Be open

In Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf deliberated and wrestled long and hard to open the doors to the mines of Moria. In the story of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, the mouth of the cave was opened by uttering the phrase iftaḥ ya simsim - 'Open Sesame'. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ healed a deaf girl by uttering the word 'Ephratha' - meaning 'be opened'. All through our history and popular culture we hear stories about difficult problems or barriers being solved or overcome. There are many, many problems in the world, some of which are impossible to solve. Others appear to be impossible to solve until someone comes up with a solution, and then we all say - ah yes, I can see the answer now. 

One problem we face in the 21st Century is how to educate everyone. If we believe education is a fundamental human right, then we go all out to provide good, affordable, accessible opportunities to learn the important things we will need to survive in an uncertain world. And yet, 500 million children remain outside of education because they cannot afford to attend. We have enough money to make it happen. But it stays the same old problem. In the speech below, which I gave at the Solstice Conference in June 2012 at Edge Hill University, I argue that we need to be more open about our content and tools, ownership of learning, intellectual property and even the very practices we participate in on a daily basis - open scholarship if you will. I talk about Creative Commons, open source software, open access journals, open educational resources, community led initiatives such as MOOCs and the whole idea about being open and sharing your learning. These ideas may not fully address the problem of how to educate everyone, but at least we will make a start by making learning more accessible.

Knowledge is like love. You can give it away as much as you like, but you never lose it. The more we give away our knowledge, the more we are educating our world. So be open. You know you want to.





Be open by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Running a MOOC

Over at the University of Brighton, Peps McCrea is currently blogging about MOOCs (Massively Online Open Courses) and is speculating how they might influence the future of Higher Education. Having taken part in a MOOC run by Stephen Downes and George Siemens a couple of years ago (as a speaker not a student), I can say that it was a very enjoyable experience. I was grilled by Stephen for a sustained period of time about my ideas on Personal Learning Environments, and in true gladiator style, I enjoyed the cut and thrust of my live, widely distributed debate.

I have also presented recently at one of Steve Hargardon's live Elluminate global webinars, and have to say that the experience was very similar to the MOOC. You present your ideas, including slides and audio connection, live to a massive group of participants that span the globe, and then you discuss those ideas for a while. I know that there is more to a MOOC than participating in live webinars. MOOCs also host online discussion, solo and group activities and other learning activities designed to promote critical discourse, reflective actions and discursive learning.

Everyone who participates enjoys the experience, and everyone goes away with more questions than they arrived with. That's learning. That's connectivism too, according to Siemens and Downes. And connectivism is one of the major underpinning theories of the MOOC. It's not so much what you know that matters anymore, but who you can connect to and learn from that is the key principle of learning in a digital age.

That is both the strength and the weakness of the MOOC. You see, you can connect to anyone, anywhere, at any time to learn from each other. But you can also miss those connections, if certain people decline to join in. MOOCs are also at their most successful when there is a critical mass of participants. So what if you gave a party and no-one came? A sparsely populated MOOC is just .... well..... an OOC, isn't it? There is also a debate about whether connectivism is actually a bona fide theory - it has attracted its fair share of critics. Peps is asking whether MOOCs will take off in the UK. Well, in one sense they already have because many people from the UK have already taken part in previous MOOCs. If it comes down to the location of the MOOC, there is none - the MOOC is location agnostic. I actually presented my MOOC talk from a classroom in the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland. If the question relates to whether British academics and specialists will begin to write, organise and deliver MOOCs, that's another question entirely. Here are some more questions: Is there actually a need for more MOOCs? How much preparation work goes into setting one up? Will individuals in the UK step in to set up and deliver their own MOOCs, or is this going to be the preserve of academic institutions? The question of open, free of cost participation in a MOOC is a given. But what about those who wish to receive some tangible form of accreditation at the end of the programme? Who provides that?

Good luck to anyone who decides to set up and deliver a MOOC this side of the Atlantic. And as to the future of the MOOC? I suppose we shall just have to wait and see...

Image source by SpoiltCat

Running a MOOC by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Open educational practices

I made a video recording for Core Ed while I was at the Ulearn conference in New Zealand last month. They sat me in front of two cameras, and asked me to talk off the cuff, no script, about something that I was passionate about. It didn't take me long to think up what I wanted to say and I'm pleased that I did it in one take (Core Ed were pleased too, because minimal studio time and editing were needed!). I spoke about Open Educational Practices, (including Open Educational Resources and Open Scholarship) a subject which I am learning more about all the time as the movement grows and gains traction. You see, the idea behind open practices is that anyone can gain access for free, at any time and in any place - courses, software, ideas, knowledge, people... OEP requires everything to be open - for access, scrutiny and repurposing. So whether it's licensing agreements such as Copyleft or Creative Commons, or open access journals, or even massively online open courses, the open educational practices are gaining ground and influence in the academic world.



It's not going to be easy to change a model where knowledge has become a commodity though. Too many powerful people and organisations stand to lose a lot if everything becomes 'free' and open. But things are changing slowly. The publishing houses who once had a strangle hold on academic journals are beginning to lose their grip. Some are having to change their business models. Google Reader and Google Books for example, are giving us all more than a glimpse of the pages of just about every book that has ever been published. And open access journals are opening up knowledge for all without payment. So when a student comes up against a paywall - what will they do? They will go elsewhere of course - to the free versions that are out there on the web. I know many colleagues who now refuse to publish their research in traditional journals - only open access will do for them. Traditional journals can be slow to publish, there is often a backlog of journals articles and too few issues to put them in, and citation frequency from open access journals can be more rewarding. These refusnik colleagues are growing in numbers too, and so are the open access journals to accommodate them. Is this the start of the end for traditional academic publishing? Watch the video and then tell me whether you think I'm on the right track about OEP, or whether I'm barking up the wrong tree. After all, that's exactly what open scholarship is all about....


Open educational practices by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.