Note

• Geography21(gY) > 3C+c >6C?

Brian Whalley

Presented at The HERODOT meetingLiverpool Hope University

5th September 2008

The PowerPoint in Screen mode has a number of images in some places

NOTEs, including references, are included in the Notes section of the slides

Geography21(gY) > 3C+c >6C?

(Towards Bologna and Lisbon; perhaps with some help from the Elephant's Child)

Brian WhalleySchool of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology

Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN

or, ‘You’ll never walk alone’

Education 21C is a function of:• Over-arching policy

– Governments and Institutions (Bologna)– Employers and employability

• Educational means– Deep learning etc developed pedagogy for 21C

• Educational aspirations– Curriculum aims, syllabus achievements

• Students (Generation Y)– The 6Cs to graduateness

• Student-centred education– The 3Cs for tutor involvement

• Support mechanisms– PDP, charting, 'conference-system classroom'

Consider….

How do we deliver a geography degree for the 21st Century?

For ‘Generation Y’Taking into account:

– Bologna– National preferences (mass education in UK)– Institutional preferences– Personal idiosyncrasies– Idiosyncrasies of tutors?

And, inevitably:Skills (and employability)

What skills? Traditional typology'Professor Snape's' perspective, 'in today's competitive job market, the pressure is on students to obtain a ‘good degree’ '.

(Higgins, Hartley, and Skelton, 2001)This begs the question:

‘what makes a good degree?’

and thus, how might it be (best) delivered?What is a graduate in Geography?

What should the institutions be like?

• To research or not to research?– Charles Clarke 2003

• Funding of HEIs?• Students’ funding?• Should students attend their home

university (UK)?• What lessons can we share across

Europe - and beyond?Whatever happens - we need a good adaptive system for students

Some things that Bologna/Lisbon suggests or requires:

One academic year corresponds to 60 ECTS-credits, equivalent to 1 500 - 1 800 hours of study

i.e. 10 ECTS credits 150 hours of ‘involvement’ per module - what do we do in this time, but Lisbon statements say the process:

‘gives greater weight to practical training, and the way credits are measured reflects how hard a student has worked. The new grade will reflect not only a student’s performance on exams, but also his or her lab experiments, presentations, hours spent on study, and so forth’

I’ll use this as an underlying issue to see how we might lookAt student education in the (mainly) First Cycle.

Learning experiencesNOT: ‘pile ‘em high and lecture ‘em

long’– And then examine them!Sage on the stage from this;

the lecture?

Traveling scholar and student

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (The Sage of Bologna?)

(The Sage on the Page?)

Could Bologna/Lisbon bring:

• Master-apprentice• Centres of excellence (Masters as well as PhD)

• Sharing resources– Distance learning etc

• Sharing Experiences• Focus on

Educational Aims:

TP1 Citizenship etcTP2 21st Century geographyTP3 Innovative TeachingTP4 Lifelong Learning

Back to medieval learning via personalised learning

• The mediaeval university• '[she] argued that we should get back to a

medieval concept of the university as a community of scholars unfettered by difficulties of the wider society.’

• Traveling masters and their apprentices– Was this medieval situation as elitist as has

been made out?• We now have the chance to broaden the scope,

access and allow 'elitism for all'.• ‘Stuff on the web’ - well rather more than this

– Using e-learning in a wider context

Trial and error - how can we provide good learning experiences?

'You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.’

(Douglas N Adams, 1992)

Photo: Chris Ogle

How to avoid the panic?

Or Tom vs Captain Najork as a metaphor

for student learning?

You win by ‘messing around’ rather than learning the Nautical Almanack

Five conceptions of learning (Säljö 1982)

1. as passive receipt of information2. as active memorisation of information3. as active memorisation of information or

procedures, to be used at some time in the future

4. as understanding5. as a change in personal reality; seeing the

world differently.

Are there ways in which e-communication could help?

How can we best bring in good assessment practices?

How might we get there?

It will not be easy - to get from a 21C lecture theatre toa revitalised medieval mass apprenticeship scheme

The Elephant’s Child

Acacia xanthophloeaAcacia xanthophloeaKeen SageKeen Sage

Limpopo - in MozambiqueLimpopo - in Mozambique

Experiential learning:

FieldworkLabworkProjectsE-learning etc‘Exploration’

Subject matter (syllabus) is really no problem

Howard Gardner

• The Disciplinary Mind• The Synthesizing Mind• The Creating Mind• The Respectful Mind• The Ethical Mind

Gardner, H. 2007, Five Minds for the Future

At de Lange (2001)

Humankind characteristics:

•Thought-exchanging (dialogue)•Game-playing•Exemplar-exploring•Art-expressing

•Problem-solving

6 Competenciesstudents need to gain

Competence – encouragement by challenge and remarks to achieve skills levels

Confidence – promoting remarks to show themselves, and others, their achievements

Critical thinking – which is what we have been wanting all along in 'Thinking skills’, used in problem solving

Creativity – in what students do and how they do it

Collaboration – bringing in team-working and ethics

Commonality – of purpose, to achieve specified (and unspecified) objectives

Curtiosity – which is more than curiosity.

Marcia Mentkowski

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Itiel Dror

Control – handing appropriate responsibilities to students

Challenge – student abilitiesCommitment – student commitment

to learning opportunities

What might be the best ways (note plural) todevelop these?

Using cognitive psychology

What actually is ‘deep learning’

• Something that is assessed in ways other than unseen examinations?

• Experiential?•Thought-exchanging (dialogue)•Game-playing•Exemplar-exploring•Art-expressing

•Problem-solving(Using the ‘150 hours’ effectively)

Quick break!

• What questions do you want to ask?

• Does your neighbour agree?• Make a note - and if I can’t answer

them at the end then question yourself (or colleagues)

Structures to helpScaffolding* so things don’t quite hit the ground! - better have a safety net

Trial and error

Where does the feedback come in? Remarks?This should be a continuous (or stepwise) process

Can we build all these components together?To emulate what?Perhaps a student learning system

within a medieval mass apprenticeship scheme

*Scaffolding relates to PBL via Vygotsky but some have queried its value

Learning activity

Specific interaction of learners with otherpeople, using specific tools and resources,oriented towards specific outcomes

LearningOutcomesNew Knowledge, skillsand abilities. Evidence of This and/or artefacts of the learning process

LearningEnvironmentTools, resources, artefacts affordances of the physical and virtual environment for learning

OthersOther people involved and the specific role they play in the interactions, e.g. support,

mediate, change, guide

Identities: preferences, needs motivations. Competencies: skills knowledge, abilities

Roles; Approaches and modes of participating

Learners

An outline for a learning activity, HelenBeetham 2007

Charting

• DIDET project

• Allison Littlejohn– Flexible learning

Undergraduate-postgraduate-PhD and the wider community

charting Supporting employers andemployment using another 3Cs

Slides from:Littlejohn, JISCPresentation, 2008

Hamilton HoltConference-systemclassroom

Problemspecified

Manipulation of

system

Problemsolution

CluesGuidance

Help

Provision ofFeedback on

solutions

RulesSystem

ExamplesProcedures

Task Task Task

ResourcesSupport Support

Assessment

T Tacit knowledge required

S Sticking point(s) likely

TS

A temporal sequence describing a rule-based learning design, In Oliver et al. 2007. Describing ICT-based learning designs that promote quality learning outcomes

R R

Back to our 21st century, ‘Medieval university’ structure?

Can we build, via ‘Bologna’, a system which provides the best of the old with the new?

Which allows all of our students to:

Undertake the ‘best’ educationA best fitted curriculum and syllabus

for the 21C

Communities of learningWe need to develop these

– At a variety of scales of operation - HERODOT– In particular, at our own institutions -– Student centred but bringing in– Tutors, pedagogy*, employers, internet,

web 2.0, digital repositories,etcWisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki) etc

* Using cognitive psychologyCollective Learning: Consuming knowledge Connecting knowledge Contributing knowledge Charting knowledge

Ways forward (rather than conclusions)

• Develop a broad skills base• Include employability skills• Use Problem-based learning• Aim for the 6Cs• Use the 3Cs• And charting (etc)

Confidence Critical thinking CreativityCollaborationCommonalityCurtiosity

Control ChallengeCommitment

Geography21(gY) > 3C+c >6C?

Thank you

And from the Elephant’s child -who, after all his struggles and‘satiable curtiosity, had a very fine,and very useful, new nose.

Hamilton Holt (born August 18, 1872, Brooklyn, New York, died April 26, 1951, Woodstock, Connecticut) was an American educator, editor, author and politician.

[edit] Editor

After graduating from Yale University, Holt became the editor and published of the liberal weekly the Independent in 1897 and remained so until 1921. He was an outspoken advocate for reform, temperance, immigrant rights and international peace. In 1906 he published a collection of immigrants' life stories entitled The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves. In 1909 Holt was a founding member of the NAACP. In 1924 he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut as a Democrat. He was soundly defeated by Hiram Bingham III, 60.4% to 38.6%.