The autumn tends to be a time when many organizations hold conferences and this year is no different. What is different is that we are now in hybrid modes and questions remain about what we’ve learned about learning in a pandemic-affected world. Looking at my calendar I see a number of large events coming up …
Conference Season Here Again: What Have We Learned? Read More »
Our understanding of situations are co-constructed and that means our future is, too. Shaping our future — at least one we want — requires not only thinking about our present situation, but our past, too. This means listening to the stories we tell ourselves and others — and paying attention to the ones we’ve missed …
Our learning institutions are not set up for actual learning. Look at the costs and outcomes and we might design them differently.
The shift to online education by universities is going to be a big experiment in learning and survival and it’s not clear that they will achieve either.
Media communications is trending toward generating content in small forms. What does small ‘snackable’ content mean for learning big things? It’s back to school time in many parts of the world and with it a return to a different pace of life. Throughout history we’ve not had many models of structured, intentional learning. Until the …
One of the central pillars of evaluation is assessing the quality of something, often described as its merit. Along with worth (value) and significance (importance), assessing the merit of a program, product or service is one of the principal areas that evaluators focus their energy. However, if you think that would be something that’s relatively …
A recent study found looked into the experience of cyberbullying by university professors at the hands of their students. This disturbing phenomenon points to much larger issues beyond mental health promotion and calls into question many of the assumptions we have about the systems we’ve designed to foster education and what it means to be a …
Bullying, the market for education and the damaged quest for learning Read More »
Good evidence provides a foundation for decision-making in programs that is dispassionate, comparable and open to debate and view, yet often it is ignored in favour of opinion. Practice-based evidence allows that expert opinion in, however the way to get it into the discussion is through the very means we use to generate traditional evidence. …
Evaluation, Evidence and Moving Beyond the Tyranny of ‘I Think’ Read More »
Award-winning Canadian author and University of Toronto professor David Gilmour came under social/media fire for comments made about his stance of only including male, middle-aged writers in his list of readings for his undergraduate English courses because that is the experience he resonates with most. Drawing on what you know is both wise and foolish when looking at it from the perspective of systems change and by looking within and beyond our own boundaries we can see how.
The MOOC offers enormous potential to re-shape the way people learn and promoting access to content and expertise that many in this world could have only dreamed of years ago. But the naivete that such learning can be done in an monocultural way without losing something special about the context in which people learn and use what they learn might lead to some expensive lessons.
