Changing Conditions

for PBL?

A Critical View on Digital Technologies as

a Springboard to Unfold the Potentials

Thomas Ryberg (ryberg@hum.aau.dk)

@tryberg (twitter)

Professor mso (Maybe Sort Of)

E-Learning Lab – center for user driven innovation,

learning and design

Dept. Of communication and Psychology

Aalborg University

Outline

Beyond educational hype – a springboard to singling out the novel

An historical perspective on educational technology

What are the challenges to PBL? What are the opportunities

Rather than concrete suggestions and examples a hopefully provocative

invitation to think critically and creatively about IT in edcuation

Vocal discourses of imminent and radical changes

– Game-changers, disruptions, paradigm-shifts, 2.0s, don’t miss the train

Huge gaps between:

The actual qualitative changes technologies have brought about in

edcuation and the speed of those changes

The same ‘train of thought’ seems to return to the station without

realising it has been there before…a city ring

#EDTECH IS BIG BUSINESS

IT’S FULL OF:

But also unrealised potential…

“There must be an industrial revolution in education in

which educational science and the ingenuity of

educational technology combine to modernize the

grossly inefficient and clumsy procedures of

conventional education.”

- Sidney Pressey, 1924, inventor

of the Automatic Teacher, the first

electronic device used in schools

The motion picture is destined to revolutionize

our educational system and...in a few years it will

supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of

textbooks.

—Thomas Edison, 1922

Prof. C. C. Clark of New York University conducting a class from his home (1935)

Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/predictions-for-educational-tv-in-the-1930s-107574983

“The scene will be a

commonplace one tomorrow,

without a doubt, when television

will be as indispensable to our

every day home life as the radio

program receiver is today.” (The April 1935 issue of Short Wave

Craft magazine)

“Tomorrow our whole radio

broadcast background, so

far as the listener is

concerned, will be changed

when television becomes a

common everyday

convenience. Not only will

various subjects be taught

or lectured upon and

brought into our homes, but

the latest styles in men’s

and women’s clothes,

furniture, etc., will be

flashed on our home

television screen, and

dozens of other advertised

products, travel tours, etc.,

as well.”Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/predictions-for-educational-tv-in-the-1930s-107574983

Nailed it!

….With the advertising….

Please sit idly back and let’s bask

in the successes of TV education

1954

http://www.idealearninggroup.com/blog/history-of-elearning-e-is-for-evolutionary

Often heard and recited in relation to X

learning technology….Laptops, Ipads,

MOOCs (individual, self-paced learning)

http://www.teacherstechworkshop.com/2013/10/a-nice-timeline-of-virtual-learning.html

60’ies: Several US universities adopt online courses

Illich 1972: Deschooling society and learning networks

MOODLE: Designed to enable dialogue and collaboration – mostly used for slides

MOOCs: Before 2012? And how are some MOOCs different from televised courses

from 1930 - 1960

Networked Learning: A conference series since 1998

History of #edtech not a neat and orderly

progression – rather a struggle between

perspectives / pedagogical ideals (Weller, 2007)Broadcast view

• Deliver or make content and

resources globally available -

on demand

• Self-paced, individualised

• Reuse, scalability, cost

efficiency (reducing the role

of the teacher)

• Learning objects, OER

• Also: Control,

standardisation,

institutionalisation,

industrialisation

• “The broadcast view can be

found in higher education

and national policies and it is

also common in corporate

training” (Jones & Dirckinck-

Holmfeld, 2009)

Discussion view

• Focusing on knowledge as

developing through dialogue,

collaboration and

communcation

• Mutual dependency or

relations between students

and between students and

facilitators

• Groups, intimacy, relations,

cooperation and collaboration

– dependency in time

• A fringe perspective – mostly

in Higher Ed

Jones, C., & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, L. (2009). Analysing Networked Learning

Practices. In L. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, C. Jones, & B. Lindström (Eds.),

Analysing Networked Learning Practices in Higher Education and

Continuing Professional Development (pp. 10–27). Rotterdam: Sense

Publishers.

Weller, M. (2007). Virtual learning environments : effective development

and use. London: Routledge.

Recurring ideals – discussion view

Learning and Social media ’Progressive’ education (since 19XX)

User-driven Learner-centred

Collaboration Collaborative learning

Participation Active students vs passive recipients

2 -way communication Dialogues and interaction

Creating and sharing Knowledge construction vs acquistion

Bottom-up Ahierarchical, flat – students as co-producers

And the story of how these ideals are continously tamed, institutionalised and grinded intopulp….(discussion view is subsumed in/ eaten by broadcast mode)

LMS to PLE: Moodle/LMSs – from social-constructionist ideals of ‘dialogical spaces of activity’ to being viewed as retrograde, conservative silos for slides and teacher centredteachings

MOOCs to MOOCs: Began as radical idea of opening courses to outsiders and designingfor non-controllable, non-measurable learning in social networks and blogs to becomingcommercialised Ivy-league video-courses with tests and certificates

You sez MUUUHKS won’t change

education az we knows it!?

Perhaps…I dunno….

What I do want to say is:

Technology will not radically reshape education to

become egalitarian, progressive or student centred…

Radical ideas of education will!....

PBL was (and is) a pretty radical idea within education

and thus a unique opportunity for us!

What would we like to become?!

Bøgelund. P. (2015). How supervisors perceive PhD supervision – And how they practice it. International

Journal of Doctoral Studies, 10, 39-55. Retrieved from http://ijds.org/Volume10/IJDSv10p039-055Bogelund0714.pdf

Ohh you two – get a room!

The original and hopefully future values of Problem

Oriented Project Work / Aalborg PBL model – in my

humble opinion these ideals are increasingly important

SO WHAT MIGHT BE NEW?

EMERGING MODES OF

WORK/LEARNING

*Personal learning networks*

*Mass collaboration*

Both challenging – in some ways – how we understand

collaboration and group work within PBL and collaborative learning

TH

IS!

Co

mple

xm

aasiv

esocia

l and

pers

on

alnetw

ork

s

Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)

Ego-centric networks formedthrough e.g. social network sites (facebook, twitter, pinterest)

Traversing and harvesting the ego-centric network for information, ideas, and resources(and contributing)

The individual person’s ability to form and sustain a personallearning network

Many strengths and potentials –but heavily individualised notionsof learning underpinning the ideas of PLNs

Mass collaboration

Diffuse, uncoordinated mass of people contribute to sustained or more ephemeral constructs

Sustained: Wikipedia, Open Source. #nlc2016, SomeMOOCs

Ephemeral: wild-fire or flash activites – #jegharoplevet –eruptions and burst of hecticactivies – short-lived activation of massive networks

Many strengths and potentials –but what is the quality of the contributions, how to get an overview, diffuse and chaotic, nojoint goal – requires knowledgeand literacy to draw from and make sense of (information overload)

Challenges:

Creating a coherent tapestry and connecting in a meaningful way the disparate

threads into a whole

Challenges:

Maintaining balances between hectic flows and streams and then puddles of

tranquility and peace – hectic collection and tranquil digestion

An intermediate level?:

The ”small” group (class, group, semester) with known members, trust,

cohesion and a partially joint enterprise (goal) – interpretative communities

Mediating both between the individual traversing of networks as well as the

chaotic, diffuse, and hectic mass collaborations (wild-fires)

Challenges to PBL in teaching (active learning) and PBL as project work:

How do we mediate between and knit together the individualised personal learningnetworks of the students and engage them in meaningful mass-colaborations

We have a ‘wealth of personal learning networks’ in semesters and courses and wehave a ressource in students that can engage with others in mass collaborations on important societal challenges (environment, fighting poverty)

Challenges to PBL in teaching (active learning) and PBL as project work:

How do we ensure that group and project work remains an important learning

experíence in a globalised networked world

That PBL remains an anchoring point for students learning experiences and

something which meaningfully connects the threads

Thanks

For

Your

Attention

It was. A. Pleasure. For me. #Itsallaboutpunctuation

References for pics

• CC-licensed material from Flickr – starring in no particular order and some not used..:

• https://flic.kr/p/8R3pxY

• https://flic.kr/p/dB91Ut

• https://flic.kr/p/8dvw75

• https://flic.kr/p/qsLSmd

• https://flic.kr/p/dzRrDS

• https://flic.kr/p/6VNKXh

• https://flic.kr/p/cmeJ4

• https://flic.kr/p/4TyeQM

• https://flic.kr/p/aKUcW

• https://flic.kr/p/dHs5hE

• https://flic.kr/p/8KL7E5

• https://flic.kr/p/am3MHH

• https://flic.kr/p/FvPnH

• https://flic.kr/p/e6nbU

• https://flic.kr/p/5Btq14

• https://flic.kr/p/PVNng