Digital Pedagogy :
Two days from now we will have the 55th anniversary of the first Internet message when the Internet crashed after sending the first two letters (‘lo’) of the text message. https://thisdayintechhistory.com/10/29/first-message-on-the-internet/
And today the India Mobile Congress is being inaugurated by the Prime Minister at the Pragati Maidan in Delhi. https://www.indiamobilecongress.com
The mobile Internet is transforming the lives of so many people in so many different ways. In this post I am contemplating on the future of education.
The countrywide classroom initiated by the UGC in the 1980’s may morph into the ‘ One world Schoolhouse’ in due course. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1358165990240203
By 2047 we can project the developments in the Internet and its impact on all stages of education , from pre-School, through school, Higher Education to life-long learning. A whole new model of teaching-learning as well as assessment will evolve.
Let’s begin with the traditional terms used in the context of learning : pedagogy, andragogy and Heutagogy. They refer to how children learn, how adults learn and how the self-directed learner learns.
In a knee jerk reaction to ChatGPT, about 4 months after its launch some universities banned AI altogether. But there is now a shift in attitudes. Learn more about managing AI effectively: https://ow.ly/jovB50PZ2jj
Benjamin Bloom in 1984 published a famous paper ‘ the 2 sigma problem’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom’s_2_sigma_problem?wprov=sfti1#
where he drew attention to one to one mastery learning, and hoed that one day we will have methods of group instruction that are as effective as one to one.
Carl Weiman Physics Nobel laureate for the year 2001 for his experimental work on the Bose Einstein condensate and winner of the 2020 Yidan Prize, the world’s largest award in education is an evangelist for ‘active learning’. https://youtu.be/9A13RWOs6oA?si=tSEoxZpCMYOMMYHH
Unequivocally the research referred to points towards the ineffectiveness of lectures as a teaching-learning method. And suggests various modes of ‘active learning’ with the teacher taking the tole of a ‘cognitive coach’ in analogy to a sports coach.
To seek the most optimum pedagogy for a given context, we have a very good resource. Initiated by Prof Mike Sharples of the UKOU for about 10 years, the UKOU publishes a report every year on innovative pedagogies.
And the recent report of 2023 invokes a phrase ‘ Pedagogies using AI tools’ : https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/ou-iet/4acfab6d-4e5c-4bbd-9bda-4f15242652f2_Innovating+Pedagogy+2023.pdf
The emergence of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT-4 has the potential to transform education practices. These tools can create content, including text and images, and are increasingly being integrated into various educational tools and platforms to meet Bloom’s 1984 challenge to achieve hyper personalisation.
You can get more details by reading that section of the report by following the link: https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovating/ You can also get examples of other types of digital pedagogies in the earlier reports in the series.
Here are 10 that I have short-listed from the reports of the years 2012 to 2023:
- Pedagogies using AI tools (2023)
- Podcasts as pedagogy (2023)
- Watch parties (2022)
- Using chatbots in learning (2021)
- Learning with robots (2019)
- Blockchains for Learning (2016)
- Learning through social media (2016)
- Flipped Learning (2014)
- MOOCs (2013)
- Rhizomatic learning (2012)
