Last week I attended a conference sponsored by the New York Times called Schools for Tomorrow designed to highlight directions forward for the application of technology to education, both in K-12 schools and in higher education.
Some interesting perspectives, but also a snap-shot of an industry still in the middle of deciding how best to think about technology's role in learning – and still (mostly – not completely) missing how to deeply interleave threads of understanding about learning with the potential of technology.
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Seemed clear to most discussants that technology won't solve education problems by itself. The key is to get a good education solution, and then use technology to make that solution scalable, affordable, inspectable, improvable, etc.
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There are too many false dichotomies that need to be removed: “great tech” vs. “great teaching;” “rote-learning” vs “conceptual understanding;” “on-line” vs “in-person” and many others. Good solutions will be blends.
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For classrooms, there was much awareness (not complete) that “flipped” learning environments (lectures moved to media, teachers do “other things” with the class time) offered great promise.
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There was (mostly) a correct rejection of the “superstar teacher” distribution model as a solution – just videotape a superstar teacher, and distribute to the masses. As a senior Singaporean learning leader, Horn Mun Cheah, pointed out, you have to distinguish between “learning about” and “learning how”- simply watching lectures only helps the former, which is not enough.
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The need for a combination of factors to be right: quality teachers, quality leaders, good data flow – and some awareness that the actions to grow learning performance depend on the level your system is at currently.
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At least one instance of learning science turning into a possible intervention: a company called Brainscape is apparently trying to apply research on spaced memory practice to speed up certain basic learning tasks (but only one such organization represented on-stage in the college track. . .)
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At least one mention (from the University of Phoenix) about using massive scale of learners to derive more efficient and effective means of instruction (but only one such mention on-stage in the college track. . .)
Still, there is a long way to go:
- In response to an excellent question from David Brooks about technology “Tell me something that works,” none of the original panelists gave specific pointers to principles or studies showing evidence of what can be done, just a reference to a few school systems (Rocketship Schools, School of One) that are using technology with some hope of overall progress.
- No cogent answer to another Brooks question, “Is there such a thing as learning styles?” Indeed, there is recent work showing there does not appear to be evidence in favor of narrowing instruction for a student to a specific learning style, but no mention of this.
- While the idea of “flipping” classrooms was spoken of approvingly, there was no detailed discussion of what, exactly, you have faculty and students do with their classroom interactions – and how do you know the new activities optimize learning
- More generally, there were essentially no learning science experts anywhere on the panels. Imagine going to a cardiovascular disease conference, and finding no one speaking about the scientific underpinnings of the disease!
- Very little discussion of how to solve the fundamental mismatch between skills that are taught, and skills that are needed by learners at their next stage, whether more school, or on the job. This is a world-wide problem (from the WSJ, about India: “75% of technical graduates and more than 85% of general graduates are unemployable by India's high-growth global industries”), with some companies (e.g. in healthcare) contemplating ceasing to hire new graduates because of the amount of retraining required. There are techniques to fix this mismatch (e.g., cognitive task analysis), but almost no one in higher education is working on this at scale.
Some old shibboleths still trotted out:
- “Online learning is worse than 'real world' learning” (In fact, there is a variety of evidence that on-line learning and blended learning can be as good or better than classroom learning.)
- “It's not what you know, it's who you know that matters, now” (Ignoring that someone in your chain of Facebook or Linked-In generated connections had better have some deep-seated mastery relevant to the hard problem you're trying to solve.)
- “Always great to have students/teachers make their own content” ( 1) Unclear these activities actually wind up more efficient for learning than other activities at all times; 2) not all students or teachers have enough information about what works for learning to build optimal learning experiences for specific types of skills.)
- “We won't have to memorize anything any more” (A lot no longer needs to be memorized, but the evidence shows learning is accelerated through fluent mastery of certain skills, specific to each domain, to allow conscious working memory to be most effective and creative for the next stage of learning or problem-solving.)
Lots of room to move, here! At Kaplan, we're working to put the right pieces together over time:
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A deeper understanding of what real expertise consists of, on the job or in school, to improve our competencies;
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The use of evidence-based techniques to improve the learning experiences we put our learners' minds through, whatever the environment (on-line, classroom, or blends of the two);
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Measurements and evaluations of the results of our learning environments, both near- and long-term, so that we have solid data on changes in learner progress based on our interventions and changes; and
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An increasingly rich program of carefully run pilots to use our scale to determine what works, and doesn't work, for our learners.
More to come on all this!
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