A4KellerClark

A4KellerClark

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

Scott Keller, Matthew Clark

2. Statement Part1

Matt

I agree with the statement that education should foster transdisciplinary competencies to prepare students to work in a world where knowledge is distributed across many groups. Even in small domains, there is more information than can be mastered in ten years, so people will specialize. Knowing how to interact with other specialized groups will be quite important. This statement does not mean that everyone needs to become a coordinator who goes between groups; there will always be a need for gurus who specialize in a subject at the expense of other knowledge.
I already am a life long learner; I've been a part-time CS student and full-time worker for six years. The CU CS department is not so good at preparing people to be lifetime learners, as it more seems focused on creating gurus. There is an effort at making students work in groups, but usually the project is to apply information which has been handed down, not to seek out new information. I think a textbook seems to get in the way of lifetime learning. Classes with a traditional textbook focus on presenting the material in the book, where classes which focus on current research encourage the students to seek out new information on their own. Perhaps even traditional textbook centered classes could bring in some current research as well, especially in a field growing as quickly as CS.

Scott

I agree with Matt that education should foster such competencies. Unfortunately though, the current system of learning seems to steer away from this kind of thinking. As a CS major, I have noticed that up until recently, I have been taking classes that are very straight forward approaches to computing, programming, and problem solving. They have been so much so, in fact, that for a while I feared for my integration into the "real world" as I have not had practice with collaboration between disciplines nor the chance for creativity. However as of last semester, I felt the need for broader knowledge and a chance to express my creativity. My current collegiate situation has been rather unique from what I have seen of the general populace in that I have chosen to pursue a multidisciplinary approach to learning. I am a computer scientist, a studio artist, and have had the pleasure of enrolling in the ATLAS program all of which serve to broaden my skill set and to encourage collaboration and creativity. The problem is that, for the most part, colleges tend to foster specialization. Students have to branch out themselves and search for collaborative situations and (in engineering anyway) discover a channel for creativity. Now that I have moved into the DSS track and began ATLAS's multidisciplinary collaborative program, I feel that CU is preparing me to be a lifelong learner as far as the statement goes. The only obstacle now is, as Matt said, traditional classes that are textbook or generic lecture oriented where information is fed and not searched for.

3. Statement Part2

Matt

My experience has been with the use of a wiki as workplace documentation. Hunt and Thomas, in their excellent book on programming, The Pragmatic Programmer explain the DRY principle: Don't Repeat Yourself. "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system." This principle serves to make it easy to update the information when things change. If the information exists in only one place, and is read from there anywhere else it is needed, then updating it is simple. At the very least, anything that is going to break when the information changes will break as soon as it is updated. If the information has been copied to multiple locations, then it is very likely that when one is updated, others will be forgotten, causing bugs of an uncertain nature. In terms of documentation, this means that only one set of instructions for a task should exist within an organization. This way, when the instructions change, the documentation only needs to be updated once. The wiki is an excellent framework for this, as it has a low knowledge requirement to entry, and it allows edits by anyone. In this way, the responsibility for updating procedures can be distributed across the organization.
A wiki in the workplace also contributes to lifelong learning, as each member of the organization can find new information, add it to the wiki, and make it accessible for all. This has a downside, as well, though, as people tend to think that everything needs to be in the wiki, and soon it is hard to find meaningful information due to the number of pages and the length of the navigation. A search engine helps with this problem.

Scott

My two choices of ITs that are important to lifelong learning are relatively linked: the search engine, and public forums. As Matt said, it is sometimes difficult in our information age to sift through what's important and what is meaningful. Personally, if I have a question, want to learn about something, or have a problem, my first action is to search for it. Which brings me to forums. Wikis are great for documentation and presentation of more universal information. However, there are plenty of things that wikis fail to absorb especially more directed or local issues. In these cases, forums better suit the need for quick, non intensive, solutions or information.