A4BakerHoehlMeyers

A4BakerHoehlMeyers

To Do

• please work as a group (minimum: 2 members; max: 6 members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)
• read Fischer, G: "Lifelong Learning - More Than Training", Special Issue on Intelligent Systems/Tools In Training and Life-Long Learning (eds.: Riichiro Mizoguchi and Piet A.M. Kommers), Journal of Interactive Learning Research, Vol. 11, No 3/4, 2000, pp. 265-294. http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/lll99.pdf
• reflect on the following statement about Lifelong Learning:
  • "If the world of working and living relies on collaboration, creativity, definition and framing of problems and if it requires dealing with uncertainty, change, and intelligence that is distributed across cultures, disciplines, and tools-then education should foster transdisciplinary competencies that prepare students for having meaningful and productive lives in such a world."
• in your statement, address the following issues:
  We are asking "YOU" questions - use this as an opportunity to discuss your individual experiences among the members of your group → you can answer individually or find the largest common denominator

Part 1

• do you agree with this statement?
• what does the statement mean for YOU?
• do you prepare yourself to be a lifelong learner? what are your most important activities you undertake?
• does your education at CU prepare you for being a lifelong learner?
  • which activities are most important for this objective?
  • which activities are "in the way" to achieve this objective?

Part 2:

• which support from Information and Communication technologies (or: which Digital and Social Systems) are most important for lifelong learning?
  • describe requirements for them
  • describe your personal experience with them

Group response

1. Members of the Group

Chris Baker, Jeff Hoehl, Jane Meyers

2. Statement Part1

Very nice work.

The purpose and goals of education are often debated and can be very personal, however, education broadly functions to #bubblec("prepare one, of any age, for the future", "For the future or not rather for their future? And in the second case: is what their teachers think of as the students future not mostly the past and present of themselves?"). The United Nations' International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) goes on to say that education is a fundamental human right and that "education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups, and further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace" [1]. In other words, education can be seen as a way to allow all humans to be economically productive, socially productive, and open-minded. To fulfill its purpose, education should also prepare students for the world they live in. Thus, if a student's world "relies on collaboration, creativity, definition, and framing of problems" then his or her education should definitely "foster transdisciplinary competencies that prepare students for having meaningful and productive lives".

Although it is believed that education should prepare students for their world using interdisciplinary tools and broad learning methods, it is often the case that education, in our experience, does not. For reasons of practicality, economy, and assessment, current educational systems often rely on traditional methods to teach students rather than emphasizing group work or creative problem solving methods. More importantly, the curricula are often narrowly focused on specific topics with little emphasized relationship to other disciplines. It can be difficult to implement systems where collaboration and creativity are emphasized to teach large groups of students not only due to economic reasons but also due to traditional values (i.e. use what is "tried and true"). Since institutional change is often difficult and slow, it thus partly becomes the responsibility of the student to enrich his or her own education. In other words, a diverse and comprehensive education is the responsibility of both the educators and the students. Schools should not only teach free thinking and critical analysis but students themselves should embrace and attempt to use these tools as much as possible in their academic and personal lives. It is also important to note that a healthy balance of educational styles should be used. Memorization of facts and the ability to research new facts are both important tools to have. Furthermore, both disciplinary and interdisciplinary research methods are important. In order to extend a particular field of knowledge, in academia or professional life, specialization is often required. This allows students to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn from others' mistakes. Interdisciplinary research can allow for new insight and more creative problem solving. In short, educators and students that use the entire breadth of tools available to them handle living in a world of "uncertainty, change, and intelligence that is distributed across cultures, disciplines, and tools" best.

As graduate students, we are in the unique position of being exposed and privy to a mindset and educational framework more supportive of lifelong learning principles. Aside from academia, activities we do to this end include actively pursuing our interests, staying on top of local, national, and international news and events, and trying to be open-minded and reflective in discussions with others. One of the most important lifelong learning activities we engage in is in recognizing that for almost all problems there are multiple perspectives to consider and numerous ways to approach them. Therefore, we feel that it is necessary that life long learners be open-minded constantly challenging themselves to understand and learn something that they might never have considered before.

We feel that for the large part, graduate courses at CU tend to encourage lifelong learning while undergraduate courses are more consistent with formal education models. Our experience with graduate courses is that they support more relaxed environments where active participation, contribution, and open discussion are encouraged around a centralized class topic. Graduate coursework is also much less test oriented and driven by an individual's self interest, typically culminating in the form of projects or papers. Even though there are exceptions, in our experience undergraduate coursework is typically very rigid, where tests are common and prescriptive projects normal. These limitations provide little incentive or motivation for students to engage in courses anymore than is absolutely necessary. When you provide students the freedom to apply the course knowledge to new problems and domains, not only do you stand to learn something yourself, but they only stand to learn more by engaging in a meaningful activitites.

References
1. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_cescr.htm

3. Statement Part2

Information technology can certainly be leveraged to support one's goals of becoming a lifelong learner. One broad category of technology that plays a key role in lifelong learning is information retrieval systems. While consuming information produced by others may at first glance seem more like an activity that belongs more to the institutionalized learning model, it certainly has an important role in lifelong learning as well. Seeking information about a given topic allows us to "stand on the shoulders of giants" and become aquatinted with the subject without having to explore it entirely ourselves, a task that certainly takes longer than a single lifetime. This activity has been around for a long time, but information technology helps us take a more "lifelong learning" type approach by allowing us to better cope with information overload and seek the specific information relevant to us. Take for instance Google's personalized search. When one of the writers of this document, a computer programmer, searches for "ruby", Google leverages his previous searches to realize that he is seeking information about the programming language, not the precious stone. Additionally, Google leverages both his own data and the entire community's data to order the results such that the results near the top are the ones most likely to be useful to him. Thus Google could possibly be described as a social as well as digital system, and helps to retrieve semi-contextualized information, a key part of the activity of lifelong learning.

Another broad category of information technology that can aid our lifelong learning efforts is technology that supports social networking. This includes so called "social networking" websites, but goes farther than just those. Take online instant messaging and cell phone based text messaging for instance. These tools help bring our network of friends and colleagues within easy reach. When working on a challenging task, one can contact a friend or colleague that may know some relevant information, or simply be able to act as a sounding board for ideas off of. In addition to an immediate source of collaboration, we can use these tools to maintain our social networks so they can be leveraged when we need them, a practice Bonnie Nardi calls "outeraction" [1]. The occasional "hello" or casual discussion about how a friend's day is going helps maintain a level of closeness, making both individuals more willing to provide assistance when called upon.

References
1. Nardi, Bonnie et al. Interaction and outeraction: instant messaging in action. In proceedings of the 2000 ACM conferance on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.