The future in higher education

Taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/umdnews/7881316248

The Future in Higher Education: Trends to come in the very near future

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Wedmesday, March 23, 2016 Post 237

“Life is not linear but organic” (Robinson, 2010), and so is education. Learning is then a process in which pupils create their own knowledge coming from very different angles, viewpoints, and perspectives. That is, technology nowadays is auspicious of all these new trends in autonomous, flipped learning students are facing and encountering every step of their education process. Instead of profligate technologies or intentions to use Internet-mediated “learning,” as stated by Prof. Sebastian Thrun, we teaching professional ought to look for ways to “democratize” learning (VOA Voice of America, 2012) in various formats to involve as many of our students as possible in the new trends that are common for them, more than they are for us individuals who were born before this digitalized way of education (Robinson, 2010) learners are experiencing in their day-to-day lives.

Mobile computing, or simply apps, supported by Galaxy, Android, and iPhone, is one of the most important trends in digital learning. “Mobile apps are particularly useful for learning as they enable people to learn and experience new concepts wherever they are, often across multiple devices” (NMC Horizon Project, 2013). Take the case of the students who need to take the GRE test and are looking for ways to practice, enhance, or learn new lexical items to be graded on the vocabulary, written part of this test; what can they do? Kaplan or Magoosh have created apps to help learners work on their word-base to face this part of the GRE test.

Mobile computing, based on the NMC Horizon Project (2013), has a time-toadpotion span of one year or less. As stated above, and avoiding a harangue of incomprehensible facts about apps, we can have a glimpse of how these mobile computing products are contributing to higher education. The array of apps is so vast that learners can practice from algebra to phonetics, from vectors to literature, and so on. And as “new research from the University of Maryland has found […] mobile Apps and even text messages - enhanced learning and produced a richer learning experience for college students” (UMD Research Shows Mobile Apps Help Students Learn, 2010), can we faculty members imagine the potential these apps have in our fields of work and teaching? And how about going beyond the acrimony some pre-digital ear teaching professionals profess towards technology-mediated learning and assessment, and getting the right training to create our own apps ourselves to have summative evaluations (quizzes, tests, etc.) or terminology review and its corresponding practice?

Mobile computing is fertile ground but though its adoption is not that much, we faculty members need to get the training to move upwards in the latter of education technology.

As a language professor working with literature and phonemics in higher education, I often struggle to stop the areas in which learners are having trouble and cannot provide them with immediate feedback for their academic improvement. If I could get to use and apply learning analytics, students will be blessed with

meaningful and instantaneous feedback. As stated by West (2012), “many of the typical pedagogies provide little immediate feedback to students, require teachers to spend hours grading routine assignments, aren’t very proactive about showing students how to improve comprehension, and fail to take advantage of digital resources that can improve the learning process.” Those “typical pedagogies” West (2012) mentions are present in our day-to-day teaching/assessment practices and we cannot get back to our pupils with meaningful feedback for their improvement. And in spite of the fact that learning analytics is still taking its very first steps, all these data produced by learners can help us plan courses, lessons, learning activities, etc. to help them improve individually. We will see how it evolves in the next two to three years, which is its timefor-adpotion horizon timeframe (NMC Horizon Project, 2013).

“Data-driven approaches make it possible to study learning in real-time and offer systematic feedback to students and teachers” (West, 2012). With an approach like this, neither learners nor teachers do have to wait for datat to be analyzed to supply individualized feedback that can help students their learning practices. As stated by Siemens (2013), “Learning analyticsis is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs.” If we had access to these “measurement, collection, analyis and reporting of data” from any form of student learning activity, we could be able to work with pupils in higher education to really develop their skills and competencies needed for their working field. By spotting any single area where students need to coached, then the teacher can intervine to give a helping hand if the system cannot provide learners with individualized coaching.

“Known in industrial circles as rapid prototyping, 3D printing refers to technologies that construct physical objects from three-dimensional (3D) digital content” (NMC Horizon Project, 2013). 3D Printing in education contexts can be the next boom in learning. Though this is not my area of expertise, nor my cup of tea, this type of new technology can be a real hit in product design, engineering, and so on,

where students can create prototypes that can be then physically represented (printed) for further analysis and improvement. Though its time-to-adoption horizon is four to five years (NMC Horizon Project, 2013), its potential in higher education is simply out of question.

From the Getting Smart webpage (Parker, 2012), it can be seen the many possible uses for 3D printing in educational fields. Parker (2012) singles out several uses for 3D printing, among them she states its use in biology, auto industry, geography, drafting in architecture, graphic design, history, and artifacts in anthropology. In today’s higher education, all these areas benefit from this kind of printing. 3D printing can give learners tactile experiences they could not have had before when they had only pictures of books instead of the manipulation of a replica of the object of study. We are indeed in the verge of encountering a gamut of uses for this piece of technology that time will help us discover and utilize in higher education.

If we are just passive spectators during the abandonment of broken models of education systems, as Robinson (2010) refers to them, and we do not dare to challenge what we educators have taken for granted since our student college days, learners will mutiny on us demanding for more meaninful ways of getting an education and of develping the skills and competencies needed by them for their current and future jobs.

We cannot simply state that these innovations in education systems around the world are just barging in on my comfort teaching zone, and we cannot be blinded by the old dogmas in education that cannot cope with the advancements in technology we all are facing in the 21st Century.

References NMC Horizon Project. (2013). NMC Horizon Project Short List 2013 Higher Education Edition.

Parker, N. (2012, November 14). 7 Educational Uses for 3D Printing. Retrieved from GettingSmart.Com: http://gettingsmart.com/2012/11/7-educational-uses-for-3dprinting/ Robinson, K. (2010). Bring on the Learning Revolution . Retrieved from http://www.tedx.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution Siemens, G. (2013, January 9). The Structure and Logic of the Learning Analytics Field .

Retrieved from SlideShare.Com: http://www.slideshare.net/gsiemens/columbia-tc? ref=http://www.learninganalytics.net/

UMD Research Shows Mobile Apps Help Students Learn. (2010, March 23). Retrieved from Merrill College of Journalism, University of Mariland: https://www.flickr.com/photos/umdnews/7881316248 VOA Voice of America. (2012, March 21). Getting a Free Education, in Huge Online Classes. Retrieved from SlideShare.Com: http://www.slideshare.net/jonacuso/seedmassiveopenonlinecourses West, D. (2012, September 12). Big Data for Education: Data Mining, Data Analytics, and Web Dashboards. Retrieved from Bookings: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/09/04-education-technology-west