Excerpts from the article:
- As Information technology brings us a mind-numbing array of options for mobile learning experiences and communications, an age-old tension between two different visions of learning-Content Delivery Vs Discovery Learning-INTENSIFIES.
- Now, the distinction is not just rhetorical, but a life style distinction: Scarcity Learning (Content Delivery) in the classroom or Abundance Learning (discovery) often out in real-world situations.
- In Scarcity Learning, the student is the TARGET for delivery systems, while in Abundance Learning the student is the LOCUS, the starting point, of learning.
- Today the most confounding factor is the question, not about what students or faculty members simply like, but instead: What kind of approach best prepares students to become life long learners, always curious, not afraid of the inevitable changes that will occur in their lifetime, best able to write, best able to work in teams, and most technologically adept.
- Study shows people change - 7 different jobs, on average, by the time they reach 38.
- A lot of education today takes a kid who’s 18, 19 years old and asks them to focus on something really boring and they are not treated as the responsible young adults that they are.
- Higher education has unwittingly chosen to use the very technologies that have changed our broader economy to RESIST change in education.
- In the free market, in society, people are choosing to use technology inventively and boldly, but in the controlled market of the academy, administrators limit the technology options and proceed without imagination or courage, except in rare cases.
- So, here’s the opening question if we want to begin to address all this differently: Do we all believe in “Student-Centered Learning” or not?
- Now there are many more concrete ways to support a Student-Centered Learning Design, ways that truly are Student-Centered. So let’s revisit these choices, and include them in our institution’s top-level technology strategy discussions.
- Another related question we must consider: Can the education enterprise, and the technology vendors who sell technology to us, focus on student management tools instead of just institutional management tools?
- We need technology / Application for supporting the student in her learning before, during, and after enrollment in a course of study.
- College is not a game but the beginning of life as an adult.
- Student-owned technology takes this can-do attitude and willingness a step farther: Treat students as their own agents in learning through their ownership, literally, of their own technology and the resources managed by that technology.
- Institutions and industry need to collaborate on making these student-owned technology applications available and usable on campus.
- Choices about student-centered learning are now strategic, institutional issues.
- Challenging the students to manage their own learning record over time, using technology that they maintain, and which persists between courses and after graduation, and used with proper guidance, makes the student not the target but the locus of learning.
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