Education’s Jet Pack Moment at the eLearning Summit

This July, online educators from across the P-20 education, library, and workforce communities gathered at University of Northwestern, formerly Northwestern College, in St. Paul to attend the 2013 eLearning Summit. The Summit theme was eSynergy: Bringing It All Together. You can find presentation handouts and more information on the Summit website. The Summit is sponsored by the University of Minnesota, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU), the Minnesota Department of Education, TIES, myefolio, and Minitex. The opening keynote speaker was Jeffrey R. Young, who covers technology for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and spoke about “Education’s Jet Pack Moment.” Young began with a brief historical review of moments when education and technology have converged, paying particular heed to the thoughts of R. Buckminster Fuller. In the early 1960s, Fuller presented three premises related to education: that education can be automated, that science can play a role in improving teaching, and that the best researchers are not always the best teachers. Many aspects of these premises have come to pass. And the “game changing” moments of late (those “jet pack moments”) seem to revolve around a combination of big data and automation. That combination has changed teaching, as Young points out. Automation in the form of flipped classrooms and video lectures has changed the way that some teachers deliver content. The use of data in teacher dashboards (which feature real-time analytics about student learning progress) and data-driven student pairings (to aid in peer instruction) offers the potential to support classroom work in new ways. Technology has influenced learning support materials as well. Many traditional textbook publishers now consider themselves “courseware providers.” Content is more interactive and more automated, from videos to responsive exercises to automated and instantaneous grading. And automation and big data influence student advising, too. Some schools are beginning to use a Netflix-like model for data-driven advising, and some employ recommendation engines to harness big data about past students. As these changes become more prevalent, Young asked his audience of experienced, tech-savvy teachers to not lose sight of education’s core values. Actual jet packs are probably a bad idea. How good of an idea is automated education? The 2013 eLearning Summit hosted two other exceptional keynote speakers, Cable Green of Creative Commons and Gary Lopez of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education. Keynote presentations will be available via streaming video later in the year.