digital learning & sustainable development: opportunities, risks …€¦ · capital over the...
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Digital Learning & Sustainable
Development: Opportunities,
risks and challenges
Prof. Albert Sangrà, PhD.Academic Director,
UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Barcelona, 24 November 2016
1) The Global World’s Challeges: going towards Digital Learning
• Consequences of going into the Digital Era (UNESCO docs)
• Digital Skills required for teachers & students (citizens) (UNESCO + OECD)
• SDG #4: Quality Education & Education for All (UN)
• Equity, participation and quality: the case of the developing countries and what
sustainability means
2) The benefits of the scenario: the opportunities
• The increase of online education
• The effectiveness (potential –flexibility …- and outcomes -% results-)
• The contribution to productivity (pay off, studies on that)
3) The risks
• Big data: doing business with your personal data
• Tech companies: the lack of ethics in business
• Bad pedagogy: mere translation of traditional patterns to new technologies
(MOOCs, etc.)
• A critical approach (Selwyn)
4) Final remarks: the challenges
• To look for the balance
• To be aware: do not accept every single proposition
• To be demanding with our practices
• What the universities are expected to do (!!!!) (not to embarce onine in a hurry,
go beyond MOOCs)
1) Global World’s Challenges: going towards Digital
Learning
2) Opportunities
3) Risks
4) Final remarks
Content
Global World’s Challenges
“If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then your better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.”
Bob Dylan
Information and
Knowledge Society
(Castells, 2001)
Internet is changing the
way economy, work,
communication, and also
education perform in the
society
UNESCO
Higher Education in the World Report 6Towards socially responsible HEI, globally and locally
engaged
OECD
Working Party on Measurement
and Analysis of the Digital
Economy SKILLS FOR A DIGITAL
WORLD 2016
A Skilled Workforce for Strong,
Sustainable and Balanced Growth 2016
Rationales for the use of ICT in Teaching and
Learning at Higher Education Institutions
• Enhancing the quality of teaching and learning
• Accommodating the learning style of millennials
• Increasing access to learning opportunities and flexibility for
students
• Developping skills and competències needed in the 21st.
Century
• Improving the cost-effectiveness of the system
(Bates & Sangrà, 2011)
Learning is changing
http://www.slideshare.net/courosa/why-social-networks-matter
[They’re digital natives]
http://www.slashgear.com/babys-first-ipad-24121114/
Opportunities
• Students involved in online distance education: 5.8 million (fall 2014)
• 2.85 million (taking all online)
• 2.97 million (taking some, but not all, courses at a distance)
• Growth rate of students taking at least one distance course: 3.9% (2013-
2014)
• Education level:
• 72.7% of undergraduate
• 38.7% of graduate
• Students not taking any distance education courses: 390,815 and
dropping down
Allen, E. & Seaman, J. (2016). Online Report Card. Tracking Online Education in the US
• E-Learning is the second more used method for training in companies
(43,5%)
Training for Employment 2014 Key findings (Fundación Tripartita para el Empleo)
• Traditional face-to-face training slows down in favour of e-learning
Beyond Knowledge (Barómetro del Observatorio Cegos, 2014)
• “The potential of e-learning to impact learning, society and economy in
developing countries, and to produce a worforce capable of leading
countries into globalized, knowlege-based economies is very relevant”
Michigan State University (2011). An Analysis of e-learning Impacts & Best
Practices in Developing Countries. The ICDT4D Program.
• UOC students had positive relative earnings gains
Carnoy, Jarillo, Castaño-Muñoz, Duart & Sancho-Vinuesa, (2012)
“With the inflow of an estimated $6 billion of venture
capital over the past five years, E-Learning is being
driven not only by startup dot-com entrepreneurs but
also by big corporations, for-profit spin-off ventures, as
well as big and small universities.”
(E-Learning Market Trends & Forecast 2014-2016 Report)
Source: https://www.docebo.com/landing/contactform/elearning-market-trends-and-forecast-2014-2016-docebo-
report.pdf?_ga=1.7275249.2126762081.1446379388
Efficient employability skills
Adult education principles:
• Responsible learning
• Experiential learning
• Cooperative learning
• Reflective learningCleary, Flynn & Thomasson (2006)
Significant improvement through online education
(Australian Flexible Learning Framework, 2009)
1. Critical thinking, analytical thinking
2. Ability to analyze and synthesize, critical thinking, interpret relevant data
3. Management skills: ability to manage teams
4. Improve professionally in my job
5. Competitiveness: Latest state of technologies.
6. Help me grow on a personal or emotional level; Personal enrichment
7. Help me learn and solve obstacles that present themselves professionally; personal ability to resolve problems
8. Autonomy and opening new work borders
9. Knowledge development and its application to both personal and work life
10. Discovery of new concerns
11. Better time management
12. Organizational skills
13. Self-criticism
14. Cultural knowledge
15. Ability to work in teams
17
Skills students
value they got
through online
education
Research in progress PSU-UOC
(Sangrà & Qayyum, 2016)
Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-
Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (2010).
U.S. Department of Education. Washington, D.C.
Students in online conditions performed modestly
better, on average, than those learning the same
material through traditional face-to-face instruction.
Learning outcomes for students who engaged in online
learning exceeded those of students receiving face-to-face
instruction, with an average effect size of +0.20 favoring
online conditions
• “Cyberlearners performed significantly better than
traditional learners. Mean score (final exam) for the
cyberlearners was 11.3, while the mean score for
traditional learners was 9.8”
Navarro & Shoemaker (1999)
• In an empirical study (ALN) efficacy of e-learning was
showed 2/3 higher than face-to-face
Asynchronous Learning Networks (2001)
Burge, Cambell Gibson & Gibson (2011)
Flexibility
Interaction
Garrison & Anderson (2011)
Personalised learning means ensuring that
individual differences are acknowledged
Buchem, Attwell & Torres-Kompen (2011)Personalization
StudentStudent
Student
L
E
N
A
G
N
IR
Student
Dillenbourg (1999); Guitert (2014)
Collaboration
Cross (2007, 2010);
Redecker et al. (2011)
Informalization
Formal, non formal and informal learning
Lifelong and ... Lifewide(The LIFE Center, 2007)
18,5% 7,7%
Barron (2004); Jackson (2013);
Sangrà, González-Sanmamed &
Guitert (2013)
Learning
Ecologies
My Lifelong
Learning
Ecology
FACE-TO-FACE BLENDED
ONLINE
INF
OR
MA
L
NO
N F
OR
MA
L
FO
RM
AL
Learning
Ecologies
Analysis
Framework
Online education as good as or
better than face-to-face
instruction:
71.4% in 2015
(57.2% in 2003)
Source: Babson College-OLC Online Report Card 2016
Graphic: http://www.pearsoned.com/higher-education/online-report-card-2016/
Openness
The power of
networks and data
Risks
From economy
• Massification of
access
• Disruptive
business models
• “Uberisation” of
education
Massification of access
Quality
CostAccess
Technology
Disruptive business models
(Christensen, 2011)
“The economic value of high-quality teaching”
(Hanushek, E. (2010). The Economic Value of Higher
Teacher Quality. Working Papers, 56. National Center for
Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. )
Source: emilianoperezansaldi.com
Student data as the ‘new black”, as oil, as a
resource to be mined
Image credit: http://fpif.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/great-oil-swindle-peak-oil-world-energy-outlook.jpg
We know where you are. We
know where you’ve been. We
can more or less know what
you're thinking about
(@FrankPasquale, 2016)
Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
How much (more) student data do we need?
‘how much is enough data to
solve my problem?’ (Adryan,
2015)
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uncle-
leo/1341913549
“Datafication” of education
• A panacea for many corrent educational challenges and
problems
• A new way for governing and controlling education
systems
• Reproduction of inequalities and social relations
• Intensification of managerialism within education
• Dataveillance
• The reductive nature of “what counts” as “education”
(Selwyn, 2016)
Image credit: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Caught between correlation and causation
Caught between correlation and causation
Image credit: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- “My teacher told
me I’ve improved
my writing since I
do my homework
with a laser
printer …”
“Uberisation” of education
“Foodies are reactionaries”
“Rinehart criticized people who eat regular food as
being “reactionary.”
He thinks that his own industrialized food product
is going to save the world, and that “new” and
“different” are necessarily better.”
(http://www.returnofkings.com, June 1, 2013)SOYLENT
The need of humanistic competencies for technologists
“… if we say that reality is one, we also know that it is complex and if we don’t
collaborate between disciplines, from science and art, we will live a partial
reality.” (Aymerich, Ara, 7/6/15)
Technology should support, but not shape life.
While Artificial Intelligence (AI) “tools are producing
compelling advances in complex tasks, with
dramatic improvements in energy consumption,
audio processing, and leukemia detection”, we are
also faced with the reality that “AI systems are
already making problematic judgements that are
producing significant social, cultural, and economic
impacts in people’s everyday lives.”
(Crawford & Whittaker, 2016, par. 1)
Image sources: https://twitter.com/urbandata/status/695261718344290304
https://za.pinterest.com/barbaralley/fair-is-not-equal/
Access,
funding and
rankings
Justice, care and student support in a resource-
constrained world
The future of
learning:
Digital,
distributed,
data-driven –
but …
increasingly
unequal
Quality
CostAccess
Technology
Source: Paul Prinsloo, University of South Africa
Quality
CostAccess
Technology
Openness
Final remarks
• Increase of learning opportunities for as many
people as posible based on quality criteria,
sustainability and equity.
• A new, more flexible and adaptable structure of HE
education course has to be carried out
• Industries and Universities has to develop
framework agreements for mutual benefit
• Online education has a potential that have to be
unleashed through quality provision
• The European-led research has to deepen in the
contribution of online education for getting a better
skilled workforce (learning design, quality
assurance, accreditation, online teacher training)
• Data on interactions (opportunities provided for a
good learning experience)
• Guarantee of well-trained and competent group of
teachers in online education
• Resources for learning available to the students
• Basic and applied research, particularly in online
education methods and the results achieved by the
students (student performance)
Thank youMoltes gràcies
http://edulab.uoc.edu/
twitter: albert_sangra
http://unescochair.blogs.uoc.edu/blog/