April 2008 — News
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21st Century Teaching and Learning, Part 1
I am what is currently known as a "digital immigrant" simply because I did not grow up with new technology--"digital native" (Prensky, 2005, pp. 8-13)--but acquired certain skills and understanding of new technology through necessity. As that necessity demanded, I acquired skills that would help me navigate and survive new challenges while remaining true to my own already established ways of knowing and learning and processing of information. My background in higher education has been in traditional research-based universities that have been driven by asking questions, not teaching.
In more recent years higher education has been challenged increasingly to provide good teaching and even insitutions that previously had the luxury of mainly focusing on literary disciplines and research are being challenged to provide good teaching expertise through their faculty. Additionally, more of this teaching focus in both teaching instutions and other more traditional institutions is being driven by employment standards. As a result, K-12 preparation is also focusing on employment standards rather than conventional academic standards. The result is an entire educational system that is more employment-driven than knowledge-driven. While this is understandable in many ways, there is also a subsequent gap in the knowledge ability of students.
The problem with all of what we currently do in the general scope of education is that we, the educators, hold on to how we learned and how we process information and knowledge rather than thinking through the realties of how new students and future students think and process and the challenges they will bring to our courses. Even those most innovative "early adopters" among us struggle to discover effective uses of technology in education but do not really understand how our students perceive what we do or how they process the content we give them. All of this is further challenged in the delivery and distribution of learning. At present enough is not known to establish conclusions about which is better, but we know enough through our own experience to realize that things are different. New technology has challenged the way in which education is delivered, but newer technologies are now challenging how people process information and what they expect to be able to do with that information.
Cognitive psychologists (e.g., the work of the Vanderbilt Cognition and Technology Group) have told us for some time that people process information differently and that meditative and transmittive technologies have affected thinking and perception, which in turn has affected learning (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1999, pp. 274-289). Therefore, instructors have had to become instructional designers conscious of how technology works and what it can offer to the teaching and learning process. Current mobile technology challenges that design even further as it demands a totally different approach to instructional design and also teaching methodology. It requires a fluidity never before seen and new skills from both teacher and student. In fact, I would argue that while we focus on the skills needed for students in the 21st century, we must discuss more and learn more about the skills required of teachers in the 21st century.
