A nice little publication worth a squiz

Martin Weller is certainly a busy fella, isn’t he though? This time he’s a co-author of an excellent new publication from the UKOU, Innovating Pedagogy 2012. It’s apparently the first of a regular series, and seems a great idea: a short (38 pp.) report “Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers”.

The structure is nice and simple (modelling the Horizon report), presenting an overview of each of ten new and emerging innovative pedagogies, along with a collection of links for further reading. The potential impact and timescale are also bravely estimated. Some of the ten are pretty predictable (e.g. MOOCs), while others are just poking their heads into view (learning analytics) or currently largely unknown (rhyzomatic learning). As the authors explain, “Our aim is to produce a series of reports that explore new pedagogies for an interactive world. The reports are intended for teachers, policy makers, academics and anyone interested in how education may change over the next ten years. By pedagogy we mean the theory and practice of teaching, learning, and assessment. This first report proposes ten innovations in pedagogy that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education.”

I’m not going to give you the full list of all ten; go on, check it yourself and see what excites you. Perhaps you’ll be fired up by the ‘rebirth of academic publishing’ or want to delve into ‘badges to accredit learning’ (I’m a bit iffy about this one). Whoops, I’m giving away too many of them, so better stop.

So just to change the topic before I sign off, have a look at Martin’s latest issue of the Meta Edtech Journal. You’ll find more about learning analytics, along with other engaging stuff.

PS In the Introduction to the report, you’ll find passing mention of ‘disruptive innovation’, in the form of the following: “… the innovations are not independent, but fit together into a new and disruptive form of education that transcends boundaries …”. If this topic fascinates you, take a squiz at the piece on ‘Innovation at the edges‘ by Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab. To quote: “Today, what you want is you want to have resilience and agility, and you want to be able to participate in, and interact with the disruptive things. Everybody loves the word ‘disruptive innovation.’ Well, how does, and where does disruptive innovation happen? It doesn’t happen in the big planned R&D labs; it happens on the edges of the network. Many important ideas, especially in the consumer Internet space, but more and more now in other things like hardware and biotech, you’re finding it happening around the edges.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *