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New technologies and adult learners
By Kim Thomas |
Note: This is one of two articles which came out of Futurelab's seminar series, 'Re-thinking Learning Networks: Home, School and Community'.
Read other seminar article - 'The school of the future'
Read seminar provocation paper
Rumours of the impending death of the classroom have been exaggerated. While the influential educationalist Roger Schank has long predicted the end of schools, arguing that physical school buildings will be replaced by online learning communities, the reality is more disappointing: far from displacing the traditional model of teaching, ICT, as used in schools, tends to support it. As Professor Ian Cunningham, a visiting fellow at the University of Sussex, puts it, "Interactive whiteboards are being used to get the control back to the front of the classroom because teachers don't want the kids to run riot on the terminals doing their own thing."
Where we are beginning to see stirrings of change, however, is in adult education. Adult learning, on the whole, tends not to be bound by the restrictions of government-imposed targets, and learners are generally studying through choice rather than compulsion. And adult learners often have other commitments, such as work or family responsibilities, that make it harder for them to gather in a single place at a fixed time.
So what can new technologies offer that traditional teaching methods can't? One answer is that the acquisition of IT skills can in itself be a conduit for disadvantaged learners to take control of their own learning. Steve Thompson, community media coordinator at Teesside University, works with community groups to help them create their own websites, or 'digital villages'. Thompson was initially recruited by Teesside to work with people from the former steel communities, but his work has expanded to take in a range of groups from survivors of domestic violence (who produced the 'Warrior Women' website) to asylum seekers and refugees in Stockton.
For many of these learners, it's their first introduction to digital technologies. Thompson has found, however, that his role is not to teach the technologies specifically but to respond to what students want to learn: "All I see as my place is to show people how to do things they couldn't do before and point them in the right direction to get further resources." Describing himself as an 'animateur'. Thompson has helped his groups of learners create animations, blogs, wikis and community radio programmes, among other things. It's a method that has borne fruit: "You can get people to do things and once they've done them, that's it. The confidence is there, you can take the safety net away and they can fly solo."
What new technologies can bring is recognition that learning is a social process in which learners can collaborate, both by helping each other and working together on common goals. The experience of the UK online centres, intended to address the digital divide by providing access to socially excluded learners, bears this out, says Fred Garnett, Policy Advisor Community Learning at Becta.
Research commissioned by Garnett into how people learnt in UK Online Centres found that most people weren't interested in learning the technology for its own sake. "People would go and learn stuff in the centre because it helps develop their community," says Garnett. "They won't go in because they get a certificate to say they know how to use Photoshop, but they will use Photoshop to produce posters for a community festival."
There's an assumption in government, argues Garnett, that people who have dropped out of formal learning are not interested in learning. The opposite, he says, is true: "Everybody wants to learn - the formal framework we provide for learning turns certain people off." One of the findings of the research into UK online centres, carried out by Dr John Cook of London Metropolitan University, was that while most of the learners visiting the centres did not attend with the intention of gaining a qualification or finding a job, many developed those aspirations once they'd been attending.
Cunningham, who currently runs the Centre for Self-managed Learning and works both with senior managers and with socially deprived teenagers, agrees that the key is to start with the interests of the learners: "If you start with what she [the student] wants, then she'll do it. If you start with what the school wants to teach, it's a waste of time." By learning to use the internet to research their interests, students pick up valuable skills that can be applied elsewhere.
Some caution is needed. Professor Colin Harrison of Nottingham University argues that we shouldn't overestimate the benefits of technology, pointing out that it is possible to engage learners successfully without technology, just as it is possible to use technology badly. It is the pedagogy that is important, he argues, pointing to educational initiatives centred around parenting or literacy that have successfully enabled learners to take greater control of their own lives and to make connections with others.
Yet the one genuinely new opportunity offered by internet-based technologies is the ability to create online communities of people who have never met each other. As Garnett says, "Learning is a social process, and technology can support the social process of working collaboratively."
Using the internet, remote learners can collaborate either synchronously, using tools such as instant messaging, shared whiteboards and video-conferencing, or asynchronously, using e-mail, discussion boards, blogs, wikis and podcasting. The OU, which already uses group conferencing and instant messaging among groups of learners, is now in the process of launching a virtual learning environment (VLE) for its students that will include all these technologies. "If we were developing the Open University to start in 2009 rather than in 1969, we'd be crazy to think of all these learners working away in isolation without forming learning communities," says Niall Sclater, the OU's virtual learning environment program director.
Pockets of innovation are appearing in other universities, with a handful now supplementing lectures with podcasts: one Bradford University lecturer, Dr Bill Ashraf, has abolished physical lectures altogether and now only podcasts. Indeed, the idea that students have to be physically present in the same room as their teacher, and each other, is coming to seem outdated. Cunningham, who used to run the Fielding Institute's distance learning MBA, points out that the advantage of asynchronous discussion boards is that it frees students to talk who might otherwise be intimidated by face-to-face contact. Asynchronous discussion, he says, is a leveller, enabling people with disabilities, or language difficulties, to communicate freely. Similarly, Paul Leng, director of e-learning at the University of Liverpool, has found that the online MBA run by the university enables students from all over the world to collaborate and learn from each others' experiences.
The potential for sharing information and resources is substantial: perhaps in time British universities will come to follow the example of the Massachussets Institute of Technology, which makes many of its course materials freely available online. The most exciting thing about the internet is its democratising potential - it allows anyone, once they have the skills, to take responsibility for their own learning, to seek out the resources they need and to collaborate with others. Cunningham puts it neatly: "We use the same process with 7 year-olds that we do with chief executives. We find out what they want to learn and help them to learn it."
August 2006
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