Active Learning and Technology: Designing Change for Faculty, Students & Institutions

URL: http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0752.asp

Authors: Anne H. Moore, Shelli B. Fowler, and C. Edward Watson

"Much of the rhetoric about contemporary higher education suggests that colleges and universities need to embrace change due to advances in knowledge, technology, transportation, and more—advances that have dramatically shifted the way we all function in the modern world. But what manner of change for learning itself do the public narratives suggest? Commission reports, report cards, and public agenda profiles of U.S. requirements for higher education seem to be asking for substantive change... (Good Reasons for Change) Daniel Pink argues that knowledge workers in an increasingly global economy will need "a very different kind of mind," one that combines critical analysis with the type of big-picture thinking that was previously associated with "creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers." Pink maintains that education will need to develop "high concept" and "high touch" skills in addition to the mastery of domain knowledge(s). A recent report on the state of graduate education agrees. According to the report, the economic competitiveness of the United States will depend on its ability to educationally foster the development of "knowledge workers who exhibit not just the mastery of a subject area, but the creative ability and drive to reshape the boundaries of knowledge and navigate between geocultural boundaries. As globalization makes geography matter less and technology matter more, those workers with 'high concept' and 'high touch' abilities will become increasingly valuable." For faculty to create and use teaching strategies that move in this direction, sustained faculty-development efforts are key. Developing, internalizing, and applying such local knowledge involves hands-on, minds-on creativity that is well worth the effort. Indeed, making the curricular changes required today is more than a reasonable institutional aim; it is a strategic, critical step toward meeting students' present and future needs."

Another great article about the necessity for the faculty and educators to change their T&L approach to adapt to the students' present and future learning needs and requirements, or face irrelevance :)