I’d been keeping an eye on Martin Weller’s blog over the past few months waiting for news of this year’s Innovating Pedagogy report. I was surprised that I hadn’t heard/seen anything, so did a search and found that yes, it’s been published at last – seems to have drifted a little each year.

Click to access/download report

Martin isn’t on the author list this year, which probably explains his lack of reference. The writing team is quite different for 2015, consisting of two groups, one from the UK Open University (as usual, with Mike Sharples in charge)  and the other from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, US. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Anyway, their inclusion seems to be an effort to be more cross-sectoral in the approach, with the OU team focussing on higher education and the SRI team covering the rest.

 Innovating Pedagogy 2015 follows the established pattern: succinct and well-written outlines of 10 perceived new and emerging pedagogies.

This year it’s the following:

1. Crossover learning: Connecting formal and informal learning
2. Learning through argumentation: Developing skills of scientific argumentation
3. Incidental learning: Harnessing unplanned or unintentional learning
4. Context-based learning: How context shapes and is shaped by the process of learning
5. Computational thinking: Solving problems using techniques from computing
6. Learning by doing science with remote labs: Guided experiments on authentic scientific equipment
7. Embodied learning: Making mind and body work together to support learning
8. Adaptive teaching: Adapting computer-based teaching to the learner’s knowledge and action
9. Analytics of emotions: Responding to the emotional states of students
10. Stealth assessment: Unobtrusive assessment of learning processes

In addition, the team has handily gone back over the previous reports and examined six identified pedagogic themes, which they’ve labelled scale, connectivity, reflection, extension, embodiment and personalisation.

My own interpretation of what is going on with these reports is that they are revealing how technology is enabling us to do the things we’ve been doing all along, but in new ways. For example, number 6 can be viewed as the latest iteration in enabling students at a distance to undertake scientific experiments. Decades ago, for example, the UKOU was sending out packs of lab equipment to students to undertake at home. Now they can do it remotely. Number 1, crossover learning, might be viewed as a new form of independent or informal learning, long an area of study and experimentation.

Does stealth assessment represent something entirely new? I’ll leave that question for you.