New Modes of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
Via a post on the Learning Analytics Community Exchange (LACE) LinkedIn group which described how a “Report on Modernisation of Higher Education specifically refers to LA [learning analytics]” I came across the High Level Group’s report on the Modernisation of Higher Education which covers New modes of learning and teaching in higher education. The 37 page report, available in PDF format, provides two quotations which are likely to welcomed by educational technologists.
“We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher’s hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world” David Warlick
and:
“… if we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow” John Dewey
The coverage and tone of the report can be gauged from the table of contents:
- Introduction: why Europe needs to act
- Harnessing new modes of learning and teaching to modernise higher education
- Challenges and how they can be addressed
- Recommendations
- Selective glossary of terminology
- Acknowledgements
- Members of the group
From the section on “Harnessing new modes of learning and teaching to modernise higher education” I noticed a number of areas of particular interest to me:
- Greater global and local collaboration and cooperation: I noticed that this focussed on “collaboration and cooperation” rather than competition.
- More personalised learning informed by better data: This was the aspect of the report which is being addressed on the LACE LinkedIn group.
Report Recommendations
However it was recommendation 13 which surprised and pleased me:
Governments and higher education institutions should work towards full open access of educational resources.
In public tenders open licences should be a mandatory condition, so that content can be altered, reproduced and used elsewhere.
In publicly (co-)funded educational resources, the drive should be to make materials as widely available as possible.
I also found it interesting that copyright concerns weren’t considered to a significant barrier in the report. Instead the report focusses on the legal challenges posed by the privacy implications for the collection, analysis and reuse of learning analytics data. For example Recommendation 14 states that:
Member States should ensure that legal frameworks allow higher education institutions to collect and analyse learning data. The full and informed consent of students must be a requirement and the data should only be used for educational purposes.
In addition Recommendation 15, the final recommendation in the report, states that:
Online platforms should inform users about their privacy and data protection policy in a clear and understandable way. Individuals should always have the choice to anonymise their data.
Conclusions
It’s pleasing when a significant report is closely aligned with the interests of one’s host institution! In this case the ebook Into the wild – Technology for open educational resources by Amber Thomas, Lorna M. Campbell, Phil Barker and Martin Hawksey (which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License) provides a series of reflections on three years of the UK OER Programmes from staff at Cetis and Jisc who were closely involved with the three phases of the Jisc OER programme.
In addition since the start of 2014 Cetis have been working on the EU-funded LACE (Learning Analytics Community Exchange) project. If you’ve an interest in this important new area feel free to visit the LACE project Web site, subscribe to the LACE Newsletter, join the Learning Analytics Community Exchange (LACE) LinkedIn group, or simply follow the @laceproject Twitter account and the #laceproject hashtag. If you were following the Twitter stream you may have noticed the announcement of the Notes from Utrecht Workshop on Ethics and Privacy Issues in the Application of Learning Analytics – a very timely report in light of the recommendations made in the Report on Modernisation of Higher Education!
View Twitter conversations and metrics using: [Topsy] – [bit.ly]
