Instituto Carlos III-Juan March

Transcription

Good afternoon. I am going to talk about the two terms that Sum up the ideal converging point for educational institutions. This is what I want to talk about. About the development of social technologies,… which may have little to do with technology itself. Towards the construction of Learning Ecosystems. In the next few minutes,… I am going to try to explain these two concepts. But, first, I'd like to explain…. What I found out while I was preparing this talk. What really inspires me. Which are my motivations when I am working? When I think of education, being a university professor. Honestly, I shouldn’t say this but, I don't get much inspiration from TEDtalks or Ken Robinson,… which I know are relevant. Actually, I recently discovered that…. What inspired me was an album that I used to listen to as a child. And I didn't understand English,… or its meaning, which you all know. And it took me time to understand it. It impressed and affected me deeply. It took me many years to understand why. It criticised a dystopia,… very related to politics but also to education,… to Victorian education. Honestly, I believe that wall has not fallen yet. Or maybe it is falling but only one piece at a time, right? Besides, I think that the time was coming.… for the fall of the wall in university education. Which I think is good, as it will let us to build,… not new walls, but new projects. Strangely enough, recent events show…. That many people have opted to knock down the political wall first But the time will come for university's walls too. And I think that time is coming soon Because…. Even in this world, Marked by the digital culture and not technology, universities are still analogue Despite overflowing with technology With computers, software, etc. There are many indications, many signs and many people. Respected people as Neil Gershenfeld of MIT and other university professors, conducting research everywhere,… reflecting on bad education, and the bubble of higher education There are not just financial or real state bubbles. And if we take a closer look…. at what's going on in the university world,… we'll realize that, on one hand,… There is a relatively low-cost university,… giving out disciplinary training,… based on the transmission of knowledge. And on the other hand,… there is an education for the elite, that allegedly fixes those problems. There's much to argue here but I won’t go there. But this education has an unrealistic cost. The cost is a bubble. Quite hard to justify in the terms of the business model of students. And there are many people warning us about that problem. Therefore, there is a gap between those two systems… and a bubble. Why is the first system bad? It is not essentially bad but… Honestly, disciplinary training is dead. And it is not dead because it's unnecessary. Knowledge transmission is always necessary. More so now than ever, maybe. But we don't need… “That” anymore, to transmit knowledge. That's what I call the old educational model. Disciplinary. Where one authority transmits knowledge to others,… and these "others" are homogeneous. What we look for is that everyone acquires the same knowledge. that at the end of the process, everyone comes out being able to do the same things, in the same way. We look for standardisation. We might even say we want quality,… a highly appreciated term at times. However, most times,… quality is the greatest enemy of innovation and creativity. To do so we no longer need classrooms, or teachers. We can do that in many different ways,… but I'll talk about that later. Why? Because today’s´ learning is digital Because learning is based now in practices and values…. that have little to do with those spaces you saw before. New ideas, concepts, practices are coming up Like that of expanded education, which we'll hear about later. Just remember two questions posed… in Seville, two years ego, with the people of ZEMOS98, Have you stopped to think in the past few years…. what have you learned? Where did you learn it? How did it happen? And the answer is that it almost never happened inside a classroom It was almost never an exchange of knowledge between a professor and a student And what is more important, is that it never led to a diploma And that diploma is becoming more irrelevant by the moment. Why? Because education is already happening,… Mainly, in learning communities. Communities propelled by common interests,… which make up P2P networks or communities. A much reviled word, P2P, that means "among peers." Science is P2P as well. It happens among peers. That is the way we learn. We learn out of passion, propelled by the need to know,… by experimenting, by researching. The prestigious MacArthur Foundation financed a few years ago…. a wide-ranging study where a group of US anthropologists…. studied teenage communities. They documented how social networks.... posed an essential learning space in understanding teenage education. And that precisely, as educational institutions,… from schools to the family itself,… our role was to turn the internet into that learning space. To teach teenagers how to learn. And, in that context, arises a whole new concept of education. A new education based on "social technologies." For me, social technology is hardware, is software… It's a series of machines, but also an organisational model: A model of interaction, of relationships…. and a set of practices. A way to learn. That combination is what generates new opportunities. Here is another example related to Seville. The "Bank of Common Knowledge." It is the best example of social technology…. and a learning project. It's a space managed by a collective,… a collective, "Platoniq," related to the world of Art. They created a learning space based in a marketplace. A market for exchanging knowledge. There is people offering knowledge and people demanding knowledge. And it is not an a priori hierarchy And it is hardware and software existing in a public space,… and in the Internet too. Knowledge is documented, digitalised, etc. This is but one example there are very different examples. But this one is a learning space. This case was developed in a high school in Seville…. that is extremely relevant. These are new ways to learn. Similar projects were developed in the Faculty of Engineering in Mondragon…. and in museums, just to mention a few examples. New learning spaces. As you can see, all of this is happening at the fringes of universities. But it is announcing the fall of the wall. The fall of the wall is being announced. And there are other interesting signs. For companies, the wall fell in the 1990s. Companies are digital now and not because they sell online. For the media, the wall fell in this decade. Communication media are already digital. Even if we still read them on paper. They are in tune with digital culture and practices. In politics, the wall fell, or is falling now, as we can see… But it was in 2008, when we saw this more clearly. In the electoral campaign in the US. And I reckon education is entering this process too. And the fall of that wall will let us build a new society. Based on new values, more interesting and inclusive ones. Values that generate more well-being than previous ones. The main reason is that, nowadays,… innovating, experimenting, is very cheap. This democratises that possibility. Enables us to make many experiments,… to engage in social technology experiences,… to learn in many different ways. As Clay Shirky says, nowadays,… we can develop highly sophisticated projects,… like Wikipedia for example, without a formalised organisation. Or we may turn our companies, our universities, our institutions,… into platforms themselves. Into spaces designed to foster collaboration in networks. Networks no longer located in or out. Walls dissolve, borders dissolve. The meaning of a company or a university today… is precisely to dynamize, to manage a series of resources…. used by both insiders and outsiders, and people neither in nor out,… to develop joint projects. That is the sole meaning nowadays of an organisational structure. However, it is a really important meaning. And this makes for the appearance of many new actors. That is a general picture of it. New concepts are coming out, as is the case of the "P2PU." The Peer 2 Peer University. Which surely, for today's university rectors,… must sound as strange as it did…. to the people in charge of the Britannica Encyclopedia, Wikipedia in 2001 Let's think about what is happening now. And then iTunes University is create Just a platform for, let's say, traditional universities… to upload their contents. Today I can take a course of any university in the US…. thanks to iTunes University or YouTube’s educational channels. And a reality, not so famous but very important,… specially since the learning processes happens throughout life,… is that of corporate universities, which are appearing everywhere,… innovating and fostering learning… in ways very different from conventional universities. These are new actors. Emerging actors that, in a way, place the old model in check. Therefore, I see no other way.... but to rethink education, as well as institutions. If we want our institutions to stay relevant,… we have to rethink their object. Which is their function? Which use do they have? What do they contribute to society? I honestly think our institutions are dysfunctional to a great extent . Because they no longer contribute anything of significance to society. Or they keep contributing what we no longer need. But what is what we need? This is a skills map. These skills were mapped by Henry Jenkins. And in a project by UNIA, International University of Andalucía,… we grouped them in those five boxes. They are like the great transversal skills… that a person must have to move in today’s world. The digital world, so to speak. Attention skill: The key bargaining chip. Cooperativeness. Participation. Network awareness: Knowing how we can live and work…. within such a strange and complex structure. Networks are unlimited and uncertainty-filled structures. Today’s organisational structures. And lastly, critical thinking:… Not to just consume. To consume and produce critically. Note that those five skills…. have little to do with software or hardware. And still they result from a study about digital skills. Because it is everything digital what nourishes…. our ways of learning and living. And that's how it is because what we need today… Someone spoke of "T" professionals. What we need is people with great insight…. and profound knowledge in certain fields. We still need specialists,… but they are of little use with no global perspective,… no peripheral vision. Because these specialists will have to work in teams…. and coordinate with others. But to coordinate a team,… we need varied teams, with that double vision. The double axis. We won't get those skills and that kind of professional…. with the classic approach of transfer of knowledge We need brand new learning methods…. to develop this kind of people, both professionals and citizens. Let's not forget this is a process evolving in these two directions,… which should be jointly developed. In that sense, I think the Internet is fundamental. Firstly, because it conceptualises what we have been talking about. Influences our society. And, secondly, because more and more universities go digital. And again, it is not because of computerised classrooms. I think there shouldn't be computers in class. Actually, it is because institutions are organised through its website. The website organises the institution or organization…. and vice versa. And if we don't think in that way, if we keep seeing two realities,… if we keep distinguishing between physical and virtual space,… we will arrive at this picture. Our hardware and software won't understand each other…. and will eventually lead to failure. Then this pops up, the infamous blue screen. In this case, in a Mac. Let's think a little about that. I'd like to end reflecting a little on how to conceptualise… I'll keep it to a conceptual level. How can we conceptualise this university? How should today's university be? A university that really adds value, how would it be? A university aiming to give people a learning experience…. based on the concepts mentioned earlier. A significant learning. Enabling people to live life both as citizens and professionals. Starting from the base, let's imagine a series of layers. Placing one on top of the other. We might think of a university like that gray rectangle. A space, as far as we can see, closed. And in that university, what we find nowadays… Of course there are people. But over all we find objects, digital objects. I'm not talking about subjects, courses, programs, etc. I'm talking about objects, other than those. These are the components, the units that make up the Internet. Texts, videos, pictures,… There are many classifications. Chaos. What you see there. What I tried to represent was chaos. Apparent chaos Note how today’s order doesn't involve shelves, libraries. We don't achieve it by arranging data in perfect order,… in a closed space so that no one messes with it. We achieve it, there, by means of two simple technologies. One is tagging: the famous tags, which provide taxonomy. Gives logic to it, letting us put the data in order. But, there is no longer just one order of things. We no longer live in a world with only one way to order things,… but multiple compatible ways. The second one is search engines. Another very basic technology, but very relevant as well. Combining tags and search engines we can find whatever we need. But this is not the end to it. This is not the end. The world is here. There are lots of digital objects floating in the world around us. So many that producing them inside is not that interesting anymore. It is rather more interesting to find valuable objects outside. This is the concept of content curators. The digital curator or media curator. This is a loanword from the world of Art. But it has much to do with information and knowledge too. Then, institutions have to look actively for the contents…. that are relevant for their users, for their students and teachers. And they have to bring them inside. But not physically. Today, contents may have many lives. Contents generated at Harvard University…. I can use them in my own university I can refer and recommend them. I can reuse it, transform it, etc. This is the ecosystem where we are moving. An ecosystem of objects. This already enables us to learn. It is what people do in most cases, they learn from this space. They are pure self-teaching process, And very powerful ones Let's not forget it. It is the base of learning today. Not all learning is like this, but most of it is. If we build on from there, we start to add value. What is a university for? Firstly, for guiding that self-teaching. This is a very complex world. Even with the right technology, it's hard to move about it. And it is very useful to have someone’s recommendations. People that ease the way, accompanying us in the process. These people may recommend us a set of objects… or routes to consume them. That are going to provide me with a certain formation See the difference? Universities no longer need to have a common catalogue of courses. They can have countless. What they need are professionals able to master the combinations,… so that their students can teach themselves with aids But not just courses, of course. We can make itineraries. We can make it all more complex. Ideally, we can have many different learning routes. We are no longer in that classroom one hundred years back. Now, almost every student can design its own classroom. They are accompanied but can design their own itinerary. This is not Utopia, it is a reality. A reality we are not yet aware of. But there starts the interesting part. This is the value that University can add to its students. But that’s one part of the process. The part the exchange of knowledge The second part is the "facilitated learning." It's the active learning. Most interesting things nowadays can be learned only by doing things. Developing projects, facing real problems…. and looking for solutions to those problems. Making prototype solutions for those problems. And how do we do that? We do it in a team. Through collaboration. A very important space for universities. Here is another example, a few metres away from here. It's Medialab-Prado. Again an institution related to the world of Art. It is much smaller that this one and has nothing to do with education. But it's a very good example of a learning or educational space. One that, I think, should be the model for many universities. A place where problems are tackled,… where a very diverse group of people collaborate to develop projects. Where teachers do is accompanying in the process. Accompanying the learning process. When a problem is well laid out, if we reach a solution,… What we learn is a lot. That learning experience, is a very significant one,… deeply relevant to our lives. Something we can apply later to many other spaces. I believe that, fortunately, walls are falling down. Things born outside, move now into university spaces too. University walls are falling down. And there's no longer a distinct inside and outside. These are dying. There are many Medialab-Prados, halfway to universities today Finally, what I wanted to advocate for here… is the idea of public space. As the place where we live with each other,… where we interact, where we argue and, therefore, where we learn. I wanted to remind you of another public space. A public space close by in Puerta del Sol square. In a different interpretation of the situation,… right now, that place is turning into a learning space. A place where hundreds of thousands of people…. are learning to be activists, to be citizens, to be political. Because only with citizens, that are activists… and truly political,... we'll be able to build a better society. Thank you very much.