New Education

Author

Kersti Peenema

Keywords

Education, competencies, creativity, e-learning, knowledge

Abstract

In this article Kersti Peenema from Tallinn University focus on the new goals of education. The main goal of article is to find an answer based on literature analysis to the question whether e-learning can meet the competencies of tomorrow. Peenema expresses her belief that using Web 2.0 tools in education will help develop creativity and competencies of tomorrow.

Intorduction

Development of technology is rapid and this has impact to the society and education. With the development of electronic forms of communication and World Wide Web new learning spaces are being created (Jarvis, Holford & Griffin 2003). As society is changing more knowledgebased the question arises: what kind of education we do need to meet the requirements of tomorrow.

Research Question

How can e-learning meet the competencies of tomorrow?

Method

Method used in this blog is literature analysis.

Future competencies

Ken Robinson (an expert on creativity) argues in one of his presentations, that we do have the same kind of educational system for a long time now: mathematics is still at the top of the curriculum and arts down of the list. He poses a question: whether the structure and goals of today's education meet new requirements of society 50 years in the future? His answer is no as for the future we have to support more creativity.

Quite the same is said in the Report of National Centre of Education and the Economy in 2006 where skills of future are listed as: collaboration, communication, creativity, innovation, information literacy, critical thinking, problem solving and global awareness (Rosenfeld 2007). Erica de Vries argues also, that people need in the future to have competence in defining problems, finding information and collaboration (de Vries 2003). The nature of work is changing: there are more people who are working in the knowledge-based professions. Knowledge-based professions have a continuous need for updating their competence (Severinson Eklundh, Groth, Hedman, Lantz, Rodriguez, Sallnäs 2003). These people are dealing with different mental problems every day. Based on this, we can say: problem solving will be the key issue in future, but successful problem solving can be based only on creativity. So how can we support creativity instead of killing it?

As society is becoming more knowledgebased more people who are part of educational system are representers of knowledge-based professions, it means that lifelong education and the availability of different educational possibilities are growingly important questions. Here e-learning can definitely help by offering different tools to learn in formal as well in informal education. But the question is: will e-learning meet the requirements of tomorrow?

Use of technological solutions and real life

When web changed to web 2.0 it brought along the change of goals and the essence of web. Instead of being just arbitrator of information (offering/receiving) web 2.0 is about creation of new information and knowledge. In web the user was passive and just gained information, in web 2.0 the user is active (!) and takes part of knowledge creation. This is qualitative change and it has changed the goals and structure of web. Similar to web 2.0 there is already discussion about education 2.0 but it remains quite technological. So there must be a qualitative change in education before it is legitimate to use the term education 2.0. Todays discussions about education 2.0 are supporting the same essence of education as it is today. Will there be education 2.0 or are we just using new tools of technology to fulfil old goals of education?

So we don’t have yet deep discussion about education 2.0, but still: can e-learning somehow support creativity as basis tomorrow's competencies? Roschelle and Pea in 1999 have pointed out, that today's web-based communication is pretty much text-based. This leaves knowledge creation to background and supports just passive reading (Järvelä, Häkkinen 2003). So today many opportunities stay unused. More active creation and use of videos, live-conferences, live-interaction, online communities and (why not) different simulations would help us solve that problem and fortunately we can see it already happening. But as the design of virtual environments is political (Gillespie 2003), it must be possible to create a learning environment to support creativity. Let us take for example virtual environment Second Life (SL) what has being used as a learning tool . Terry Beaubois created a virtual classroom on architecture . Since almost everything is possible in SL, it gives to the student's possibility to try out different architectural design. Students can try things what they would never try in a normal classroom: it is possible by either denying the laws of nature (gravitation) or it's just not too expensive. This all enables students to "think out of the box" and foster their creativity.

Of course there rises a question: how can we create a bridge between this kind of learning and real life with real situations. It is very important to know how to transfer our knowledge to the real world. In this transfer reflection has important role: does this kind of learning make students reflect more their knowledge? Visualisation of their knowledge helps to bring out tacit knowledge. Students are more conscious about it and it might become a ground to the creation of new knowledge. It might be even great that you have to visualises everything (even by writing) because if helps to reflect. So this is real win-win situation: tacit knowledge will become visible and conscious and knowledge will be available to others and used a ground for creation something new. The key question is how to do it so that people will want to make it visible.

Second Life is a multiplayer role play game (Doherty, Murphy 2007). As future games will be more complex and realistic and players will have more control over them (story, structure) (Goldstein 2003), this means that using different games in learning will add more fun and creativity to the process. And having fun in learning usually guarantees a good learning outcome. But using different games is hole different approach to the education then usual classroom study.

Different generations

There is one more problem in the field of new education. Differences between the generations are growing larger and larger and not only from an attitude side. Young people of tomorrow will still have another attitude toward life, but they will have a different skill profile and different thinking structure. As technology is more widely available, more people are using it. Because of use of technology there skill and thinking profile is different and this is causing a conflict between the generations. As more learning is becoming knowledgebased there will be a fundamental shift in the relations of teachers and learners (Jarvis et al. 2003). They will be from different generations and the old ways of teaching do not work. So it gets harder to understand and predict the needs of future and the essence of new education. If we can, then it's clear that new education requires radical change in the ways in which learning is organised and executed. E-learning may develop the skills and creativity; it is the great enabler (Thompson, Randall 2001). It all depends whether we can realised that.

Conclusion

In this paper I analysed impact of development of technology to education. Society is changing and therefore the goals of education need to change. With wider use of technology we have different technological tools to support new goals of education.

References:

Doherty, P., Murphy, P. (2007) "Science visit the metaverse and change your mind", Fantasy & Science Fiction 113 (3), 127-134.

Ecklundh, K. S., Groth, K., Hedman, A., Lantz, A., Rodriguez, H., Sallnäs, E-L. (2003), " The World Wide Web as a Social Infrastructure for Knowledge-Oriented Work", in van Oostendorp, H. (ed), Cognition in a Digital World, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., pp. 97 - 126.

Gillespie, T. (2003), "The stories digital tools tell", in Everett, A. & Caldwell, J. T. (eds), New media: theories and practices of digitextuality, New York: Routledge, pp. 107-126.

Goldstein, G. (2003), "People @ Play: Electronic Games", in van Oostendorp, H. (ed), Cognition in a Digital World, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., pp. 25 - 46.

Jarvis, P., Holford, J., Griffin, C. (2003), The theory and practice of learning, London and Sterling: Kogan Page Limited.

Järvela, S., Häkkinen, P. (2003), "The Levels of Web-Based Discussions: Using Perspective-Taking Theory as an Analytical Tool", in van Oostendorp, H. (ed), Cognition in a Digital World, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., pp. 77 - 96.

Rosenfeld, E. (2007), "Beginning the conversation about education 2.0", Teacher Librarian 34 (4), 6-6, http://search.epnet.com/, [accessed 2 Oct 2007].

Thompson, P., Randall, B. (2001), "Can e-learning spur Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship?", Educational Media International 38(4), 289-292.

de Vries, E. (2003), "Educational Technology and Multimedia From a Cognitive Perspective: Knowledge From Inside the Computer, Onto the Screen, and Into Our Heads?", in van Oostendorp, H. (ed), Cognition in a Digital World, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., pp. 155 - 174.