Near Future Teaching: building a collective vision for digital education

Siân Bayne, University of Edinburgh, UK

64 PGT programmes online, c.3,000 distance postgraduate students

35 MOOCs (Coursera, Futurelearn, EdX), c.3m MOOC learners

commitment to growth in distance education

a history of strategic investment and leadership

Digital Education at Edinburgh

Futures Studies

Futures studies is the systematic study of possible, probable and preferable futures including the worldviews and myths that underlie each future.

In the last fifty or so years, the study of the future has moved from predicting the future to mapping alternative futures to shaping desired futures.

Inayatullah, Sohail (2013) Futures Studies: Theories and Methods. Online.

What futurists can do is to facilitate the development and application of individual, organizational and collective foresight.

One result of good foresight work is a well-developed decision context embracing aspects of past, present and possible futures.

Slaughter, R. (1996) The knowledge base of futures studies as an evolving process. Futures. 28:9.

1. is longer-term than ‘planning’ (from five to fifty years)

2. is committed to authentic alternative futures where each scenario is fundamentally

different from the other

3. is more participatory, in that it attempts to include all types of stakeholders instead

of only powerbrokers

4. consciously uses different ways of knowing

5. sees the futures process being as important as the elegance of the final strategic

plan itself

6. action-oriented, more concerned with creating the future than simply predicting it

Adapted from: Inayatullah, Sohail (2013) Futures Studies: Theories and Methods. Online.

EdTech:competing futures for higher education

“As a technological project based on a particular sociotechnical imaginary, IBM’s Smarter Education ambitions exemplify its wider aspirations to conceive citizens computationally in terms of their neurobiological malleability and amenability to algorithmic optimization.”Williamson, Ben (2016) Computing brains: learning algorithms and neurocomputation in the smart city. Information, Communication and Society

‘Smart’ classrooms

Ienca, M. and Andorno, R. (2017) Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology. Life Sciences, Society and Policy 13:5

After analysing the relationship between neuroscience and human rights, we identify four new rights that may become of great relevance in the coming decades: the right to cognitive liberty, the right to mental privacy, the right to mental integrity, and the right to psychological continuity.

Universities: futures work in learning and teaching

Rule 1: We are teaching and learning focused *and* institutionally committed

Rule 2: What we talk about here is institutionally/nationally agnostic

Rule 3: You are in the room with the decision makers. What we decide is critical to the future of our institutions. You are the institution

Rule 4: Despite the chatter, all the tech ‘works’ – the digital is here, we are digital institutions. Digital is not the innovation.

Rule 5: We are here to build not smash

Rule 6: You moan (rehearse systemic reasons why you can’t effect change – see Rule 3), you get no beer (wine, juice, love, peace, etc)

from ‘alumni to populi’ –from 4 years 18-22 to 6 years across a lifetime

from 4 class years to 6 years personalised – ‘calibrate’, ‘elevate’, ‘activate’

dissolution of disciplines in favour of ‘teaching hubs’ for particular skills

from ‘majors to missions’ – from disciplines to global ‘impact labs’

Designing the future of digital education at Edinburgh

Facer, K. and Sandford, R. (2010) The next 25 years?: future scenarios and future directions for education and technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 26.

Principle 1: educational futures work should aim to challenge assumptions rather than present definitive predictions

Principle 2: the future is not determined by its technologies

Principle 3: thinking about the future always involves values and politics

Principle 4: education has a range of responsibilities that need to be reflected into visions of its future

1 Foresight:Taking the community pulseReviews and projections (scientific/technical; educational/social)

2 Scenario development:Scoping plausible future worldsDesigning educational futures for each

3 Testing:Student panelAcademic expert panelChildren’s panel

4 Surfacing challenges, insights and recommendations

5 Translation into policy and action

We are here!

Outputs

Co-produced values- and evidence-based position on futures for:Investment in (educational) technologyInvestment in people/cultureNature and development of future curriculum

Taking the community pulse

Think tank for Vet Students

Dr Jeremy Knox

Future Teaching Manifesto

Teachers should be educated better to better educate us. | The

future must be as inclusive as possible. |No one should feel

othered or alone. | The university should be a space for learning

and unlearning. | The university experience should constantly aim

to decolonise and deconstruct systems of oppression so people feel

included and represented. | University should be inclusive,

representative, and caring. | Education should be diverse,

accessible and human. | The university must be representative and

intersectional. | Fresher’s Week shouldn’t be the best week of a

university experience. | The university should be inclusive:

intellectually, pastorally, physically and otherwise.

Values-centred learning design

Intimacy and relationships

Personalisation/AI

Interdisciplinarity

50 short ‘vox pop’ interviews

Data

Values

Humans

Community

Data

Knowing and learning

Tactile, material, virtual

Reviews

AutomationParticipation and mobilityAcademic precarityNew degree modelsErosion of trust in public institutions

Datafication of societyArtificial intelligence (AI)Virtual and augmented realitiesEd-neurotech and cognitive enhancement drugs

Social

Technological

Scenario development

#1

Boundaries between employment, education and retirement get looser; education over a lifetime for the ageing population becomes the norm

Educational technology in schools is mainstreamed, bringing schooling further under the influence and values of Silicon Valley

Safe, smart drugs for cognitive enhancement become popular and readily available

Undergraduate enrolments continue to rise, including growth across the sector in access by students from disadvantaged backgrounds

#3

Years of automation and AI bring a lack of meaningful employment for large segments of the population

STEM and creative arts/humanities start to converge as interdisciplinary degree programmes become more common

Augmented, virtual and simulated realities move from marginal to mainstream

The proven negative cognitive effects of ubiquitous technology create strong off-the-grid counter-cultures

“The big data revolution and improvements in machine learning algorithms means that more occupations can be replaced by technology, including tasks once thought quintessentially human... Frey and Osborne's original (2013) study on employment suggested 47% of US jobs were at risk of computerisation.”Citigroup and University of Oxford (2016)

Automation

Learning analyticsLecture captureAutomated assessmentPlagiarism detectionCampus-wide AIAutomated TAsIntelligent tutoringAttention mapping‘Smart’ classrooms

creative teaching in partnership with code

better ways of valuing professional teachers and teaching

responsive teaching at scale routine academic work eliminated

‘productivity’ over pedagogy de-professionalisation of

academic work amplified academic precarity human teachers only for the elite

Automation

Analytics

personalisation and data-enabled alerts eliminate failure and attrition

nuanced views of large, diverse student populations enable targeted intervention

design of courses refined through new insights from participation data

academic performance metrics linked to student engagement data

data analytics drive a culture of student and academic surveillance

prediction eliminates agency

Distance

universities become more open and inclusive new decolonised forms of education emerge

through global student networks the best higher education becomes globally

accessible

human co-presence becomes de-valued universities lose their connection with cities campuses become hollowed-out simulacra

Empty HallsThey slide their glasses on, insert their ear pieces delicatelyAs the dark lecture hall fills with ghosts awakened electronicallyConnected now, the space is more illusion than realityThe students flicker in and out, avatars without integrityAs the loading bar spins they watch the lecturer refresh“Was she ever human?” they gossip. “Has she ever known flesh?”David Creighton-Offord

Siân Bayne, University of Edinburgh

@sbayne

Links and references: https://bit.ly/2GJOsPN