A4HauckOrinPitts

A4HauckOrinPitts

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

Mason Hauck, Amanda Orin, & Stephanie Pitts

2. Statement Part1

Very nice work!

The "we" in this reflection reflects the largest common denominator of our group. Our opinions coincide to a degree to which we feel the term "we" is inclusive of all of our individual opinions.

The statement presented here is difficult to disagree with from a logical view point. #bubblec("As an if-then statement it is a valid argument", "Very nice and precise analysis. But what do you think about the if-condition? Realistic? Close to truth?"). If all of the things proposed are true, then what follows is a logical conclusion. We agree that the world of working, and more importantly in our opinion, living require a kind of thinking that involves dynamic problem solving and the ability to understand more than a prescribed set of equations or facts. It follows that education should foster the sort of environment where this sort of thinking is commonplace. We do not believe that formalized education should be the only entity responsible for life-long learning. In fact, though fostering dynamic thinking and problem solving are positive things that could come out of educational reform, ultimately we believe that driven individuals bring this kind of learning to the for front without much prodding.

We believe that it is an individual's responsibility to educate themselves. For a motivated learner it is not difficult to find resources for learning any topic with the technology available today. Perhaps then the real issue in the "new education" is in fact bridging the digital divide. The responsibility of formalized education then is to present the technology and make it available. Then students have the tools to go beyond a lecture based class and guide their own learning.

We considered greatly the idea of the phrases "sage on the stage" and "guide on the side" and we think the most effective of these two is a combination. When formalized education can teach concrete concepts and then encourage students to go further with these topics and do something of interest to their person, rather than do an assigned lab or problem set, the learning that takes place is more significant. Even when a lab is assigned but students are able to pull from it their own conclusions and inferences, the learning is more significant than when they are simply drawing a box around the answer to a math problem.

In our group we feel that we are actively preparing our selves to be lifelong learners. Both Mason and Stephanie have worked for the Colorado Space Grant Consortium where we have had to take engineering concepts and apply them to real world problems. We have had to frame and solve these on our own. Amanda is working in the craft technology on her senior project. There she must pull from everything she's learned up to this point in college and apply it to a broad spectrum project. These are both places where what is learned in a "sage on stage" class can be taken and applied in a learning environment. The things we are learning force us to take what has been compartmentalized into the "drawers" of learning and open many of them, see how they are connected and create something bigger from them.

Our educations at CU do a very good job of preparing us to be lifelong learners because there is a good balance of focus between learning tools for problem solving and learning effective problem solving approaches.

A person's problem solving "toolbox" is composed of knowledge such as facts or equations that they know or have access to. A problem solving approach can only be effective for widely varied problems if it is flexible and encompasses and is based on a logic that is common to all of those varied problems. A person's ability to frame problems for themselves is core to such a problem solving approach.

For all three of us, the lecture portion of classes have represented good resources in allowing us to expand the internal knowledge that composes part of our problem solving toolboxes. The tools that a single person can remember can never be exhaustive for all possible problems, but knowing or at least being familiar with many such facts allows a person to arrive at a solution in a reasonable amount of time rather than having to relearn each tool when it is needed.

We consider the lab work, independent study, and internship opportunities that have been part of our education at CU to be the opportunities that have most allowed us to refine our problem solving approaches beyond what would be possible solving simple, predefined problems. This sort of work improves a person's capability not only use the tools that they know, but to find tools that they do not know when they need them.

3. Statement Part2

The most important support for lifelong learning from Information and Communication technologies would have to be online course materials (course web pages or course information system such as Moodle for Computer Science) as well as search engines. When the course web pages / course information system is not experiencing bugs or errors or other such technical difficulties, they are the most common source of supplemental materials that a student - one could obtain lecture notes, assignments (problem sets or answers to problems sets), examples discussed during lectures, links to various course-related resources, and even up-to-date individual score reports (assuming the person is enrolled within the course). Search engines are very similar in this aspect, but are more of an extension to it in the essence that one could easily look for and find other course pages from other colleges/universities that teach the same topics/material, so it provides additional supplement to what may already be given within a course at a local level.

The major requirements for these technologies would be bringing the relevant information to the forefront, pushing back or completely eliminating the irrelevant information, and easy accessibility. For example, when working on a complicated problem within a course, one could mentally break down the problem into smaller and more manageable pieces, but there is always the possibility of being unfamiliar with a certain term or concept referred to within the problem - at this point one would pull up a search engine on his/her web browser and input the appropriate keywords of the term/concept to search for. Almost instantly the results that the search engine deems relevant are posted at the top of the list, and, as one goes down the list, the results are not as relevant to the keywords inputted.

An extension of this would be a search engine that is associated with a university library to search for relevant articles/books/media to the topic, or even a broader reach of relevant articles, theses, or published materials beyond the university resources (which may be limited), such as Google Scholar.