Category: speculative fiction Page 1 of 2

2033 – Future education scenario 3 of 3

On August 28, 2024

In future education, futures, my research, speculative fiction, speculative futures

In a recent paper* we describe three education scenarios and ask youth to respond to them. Positioned in 2033, these futures represent three distinct possibilities for what education could look like in a decade. I’m curious what others think about them, and I’ll post one per day here, as my “back to school return to reviving this blog.” What are your reactions, thoughts, and feelings to this one? I’d love to know!

Future 3: The year is 2033. Public universities and colleges around the world struggle to stay open due to sharp declines in enrolments and continuing social and economic instability. Many schools close, and those that remain become increasingly unaffordable. Students that pursue higher education usually come from wealthy families. However, a variety of companies emerge to fill gaps. These companies offer short courses that help people develop work skills, such as how to use different kinds of software and how to analyze data. Some of the teachers in these companies are individuals who found success in their industries and are well-known chefs, international authors, famous engineers, and business executives of all kinds, for example. They have huge social media followings and are celebrity instructors. These companies do not provide any kind of financial aid, and access to their courses usually comes with strings attached, such as contracts to do temp work for the company.

This scenario describes a situation in which traditional universities are rare and inaccessible for most and the “social media university” emerges to fill the gap. It anticipates a future in which technology companies, particularly social media companies, further commodify education according to neoliberal logics. This style of university is a platform-based form of digital higher education in which celebrity experts and influencers occupy the role of educator as a function of their social media followings and professional prestige. Without financial support, learners/users exchange labor for skills development, while wealthy students continue to attend more conventional institutions to pursue their interests. The notion of a social media university reflects the interest of education technology startups which feature online education experiences offered by celebrities and influencers, as we examined in this paper.

* published in the the inaugural issue of the Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital education (see a review by Tony Bates).

2033 – Future education scenario 2 of 3

By George Veletsianos

On August 27, 2024

In future education, futures, my research, speculative fiction, speculative futures

Future 2: The year is 2033. After a period of instability brought about by the disastrous effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, and global conflict, higher education has become totally focused on addressing these crises. Earlier efforts have been vastly scaled up to focus education resources on supporting climate justice for the most vulnerable people and places in the world. Universities have become hubs of local knowledge and places for community cultural and scientific development. In these spaces students develop climate and peoplefriendly trades and skills. They also develop their critical and creative thinking focused on decolonization and anti-racism. Learning happens through projects and through solving local problems, and learners of all ages join programs based on interest, curiosity, and community need.

The second future – the university for local community and local knowledge – pivots towards more regenerative forms of education, with a focus on systems-level solutions to imagined disasters of the next decade. With respect to anticipatory regimes, this future departs from the strict techno-utilitarian approach to embrace more relational modes of teaching and learning. Universities in this scenario have a mission grounded in justice and supporting knowledge for communities, with an emphasis on inter-generational learning relevant to specific places. This scenario is more utopian in its vision, even as it contends with a proposed future history of increasing climate and ecological catastrophe.

* published in the the inaugural issue of the Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital education (see a review by Tony Bates).

2033 – Future education scenario 1 of 3

By George Veletsianos

On August 26, 2024

In future education, futures, my research, speculative fiction, speculative futures

Future 1: The year is 2033. In the decade following the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education has increasingly become driven by collecting and analyzing vast amounts of student data, such as tracking student time online, physiological data, employment rates, etc. Learners attending public colleges and universities primarily pursue technical skills associated with a few streams of programs, including computer programming (such as the development of Artificial Intelligence and green technology), health, economics, finance, and business. The arts, social sciences, and humanities are no longer publicly funded. Learners can pursue such programs in expensive private universities, but only a few can afford them.

This is a future in which technical and business education dominates. This is the scenario in which higher education is almost totally oriented towards economic demands and expectations. We modeled this scenario after work in the literature which emphasizes futures in which the arts and humanities decline due to their lack of economic practicality. In such examples, the survival and growth of higher education heavily features future labor as a key indicator of institutional success, including meeting demands for skilled technologists and finance workers. Additionally, surveillance technologies are further integrated into institutional apparatuses, with data being a key management tool of student learning and outcomes. Already a concern in education at all levels, a number of education scholars have speculated about the risks of increasing use of these types of education technologies, many suggesting negative outcomes resulting from it.

* published in the the inaugural issue of the Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital education (see a review by Tony Bates).

New publication: How do Canadian Faculty Members Imagine Future Teaching and Learning Modalities?

By George Veletsianos

On May 8, 2024

In future education, futures, papers, scholarship, speculative fiction, speculative futures

What do future learning environments look like? Is online learning “the new normal?” Or, are we back to the “old normal?” What does the “new normal” look like? Never mind concepts of “normal,”… what do learners and faculty imagine future learning environments, technologies, and modalities looking like? Colleagues and I completed and are planning a series of studies around these ideas, bringing together threads in our research that examines online learning, emerging technologies, challenges facing higher education, and speculative methods. We recently published one of these and I am sharing the pre-print below.

When I prompted ChatGPT to generate an image depicting this paper it generated the image below. This image provides an interesting juxtaposition to our findings, because our findings highlight the relative persistence of the status quo and reveal a lack of more radical futures.

Here’s the paper: Veletsianos, G., Johnson, N., & Houlden, S. (2024). How do Canadian Faculty Members Imagine Future Teaching and Learning Modalities? Educational Technology Research & Development, 72(3), 1851 – 1868.. The final version is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-024-10350-4 but here is a public pre-print version.

Abstract

This study, originally prompted by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational practices, examined Canadian faculty members’ expectations of teaching and learning modalities in the year 2026. Employing a speculative methodology and thematic analysis, interview responses of 34 faculty members led to the construction of three hypothetical scenarios for future teaching and learning modalities: a hybrid work model, a high tech and flexible learning model, and a pre-pandemic status quo model. In contrast to radical education futures described in the literature, the findings do not depart significantly from dominant modes of teaching and learning. Nevertheless, these findings offer insights into the expectations that Canadian faculty members have with respect to future teaching and learning modalities, the contextual issues and concerns that they face, the use of speculative methodologies in educational technology research, and the potential impacts remote learning trends have on the future of education in Canada.

A call for more work and scholarship focused on hopeful learning futures

By George Veletsianos

On October 25, 2022

In futures, speculative fiction, speculative futures

Education systems worldwide are facing enormous challenges, and many individuals and organizations urge for the re-imagining of these systems. One of the ways education researchers have responded to such calls is to use speculative research methods, and more specifically by writing speculative fictions. Such work is exciting for many reasons, and has recently expanded rapidly. For a variety of reasons, a lot of this work is pessimistic and dystopian. While such work is important, and indeed a necessary antidote to the technosolutionist narratives, dystopian and pessimist stories limit us, our imaginations, and our responses. They typically focus on things to fight against, rather than things to fight/strive towards.

A DALL·E 2-generated image in response to the prompt “hopeful education future in the style of solarpunk”

In the most recent paper that my colleague Shandell Houlden and I wrote, we call for a greater number of and more diverse stories of hopeful learning futures. Recently, I read an article about the climate films that society needs, and the sentiment expressed in it fits well with our argument: We need to imagine not only “what could go wrong… but also what could go right.”

I hope this paper is valuable. There’s a lot of ideas that we’re still unraveling and grappling with, and as always we’d appreciate any feedback on it. Below is the abstract and links to the preprint (open) and published version (behind a paywall).

Abstract

In this paper we grapple with the possibility of rethinking education futures by arguing for the continued use of speculative education fiction in critical education studies, a method which has the potential for radical imagination. However, we note that as a research method such fictions need to rely less on what we identify as pessimistic visions of the future, which are visions exploring themes such as disconnection, lack of autonomy and sovereignty, and technological, corporate, state and/or authoritarian control, as these visions and themes are currently over-represented in recent publications using this method. We further demonstrate the limits of these thematic visions by tracing the relationship between the ways in which pessimistic storytelling, related as it is to apocalyptic storytelling, risks reinforcing inequality, especially with respect to settler colonial injustice. Alternatively, we propose using this method to help develop hopeful futures. These are futures shaped by themes such as connection, agency, and community and individual flourishment, and suggest a turn to the genres of hopepunk, solarpunk, and visionary fiction as models of storytelling grounded in hope which imagines more liberatory education and learning futures.

Houlden, S. & Veletsianos, G. (2022). Impossible dreaming: On speculative education fiction and hopeful learning futures. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00348-7 or preprint (pdf).

…a couple of “behind the curtains” comments:

We wouldn’t have written this paper if it wasn’t for Shandell’s expertise in narrative, which to me highlights once again the value of interdisciplinary collaborations. We wouldn’t have published it if it weren’t for journals which are open to creative work, and the editors who support it (e.g., Petar Jandrić at Postdigital Science and Education, the editors of Learning Media and Technology). The tendency of very many edtech/ID/DistanceEd/HigherEd journals to narrowly define what is and isn’t permissible restricts the futures that we can imagine and the scholarship which we can produce. Yet, peer-reviewed journals are just one way to do this work, so stay tuned: We are working on a podcast.

New paper: Focusing on the ecological aspects of online and distance learning

By George Veletsianos

On June 1, 2022

In future education, futures, learner experience, online learning, scholarship, speculative fiction, speculative futures

As part of a special issue on Systemic Implications for Online Education, colleagues and I wrote a commentary highlighting the ways in which online teaching and learning are more than individual and social practices. They’re situated in environments with particular people, in particular contexts, with particular technologies, within particular institutions. To make this more concrete, we described a near-future speculative scenario of a student’s experience, as a way to help individuals – both at our institution and elsewhere – consider technology use in higher education beyond the pedagogical level. You can download a preprint (pdf) or the final version (which isn’t that different than the preprint) from https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2022.2064827

Person in environment: Focusing on the ecological aspects of online and distance learning

Abstract
Online and distance learning is a practice situated in environments—places, spaces, and times, with particular people, in particular contexts, with particular technologies, within particular institutions. In other words, the practice of online and distance learning is not wholly individual: it is situated within broader environments. In this reflective article, we argue that to understand learning in online contexts, it is important for researchers to understand the broader environments in which learners are located. We illustrate this argument by presenting a narrative of a fictitious learner pursuing a degree in decentralized finance.

Veletsianos, G., Childs, E., Cox, R., Cordua-von Specht , I., Grundy, S., Hughes, J., Karleen, D., & Wilson, A. (2022). Person in environment: Ecological aspects of online and distance learning. Distance Education, 43(2), 318-324.

Learning futures and queer futuring

By George Veletsianos

On May 4, 2022

In future education, futures, speculative fiction, speculative futures

Our efforts to study and produce learning futures have led us to thinking about the following question: what are some just and ethical approaches that we can use toward creating more imaginative, hopeful, and powerful learning futures? In other words, how do we approach the work of generating learning futures with humility, openness, and recognition of the various ways in which various systems limit who participates in this conversation. For instance, there’s a dearth of instructional design models that account for equity, diversity, inclusion and justice, (OK, there’s maybe 2), and Stephanie Moore notes that the “models have are not the models we need.”

One approach specifically tied to learning futures that I came across comes from Fleener, M.J. and Coble, C. (2022), “Queer futuring: an approach to critical futuring strategies for adult learners”, On the Horizon, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1108/OTH-03-2021-0049

Extended abstract in case others find it interesting is below.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop queer futuring strategies that take into consideration adult learners’ needs in support of transformational and sustainable change for social justice and equity.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper develops the construct of queer futuring, which engages queer theory perspectives in a critical futures framework. Adult learning theory informs queer futuring strategies to support adults and inform education to sustain transformational changes for social justice and equity.

Findings

With social justice in mind, queer futuring opens spaces and supports opportunities for adults to engage in learning activities that address historical and layered forms of oppression. Building on learning needs of adults to create meaning and make a difference in the world around them, queer futuring strategies provide tools for activism, advocacy and building new relationships and ways of being-with.

Research limitations/implications

The sustainability of our current system of growth and financial well-being has already been called into question, and the current pandemic provides tangible evidence of values for contribution, connection and concern for others, even in the midst of political strife and conspiracy theories. These shifting values and values conflict of society point to the questions of equity and narrative inclusivity, challenging and disrupting dominant paradigms and structures that have perpetuated power and authority “over” rather than social participation “with” and harmony. Queer futuring is just the beginning of a bigger conversation about transforming society.

Practical implications

Queering spaces from the perspective of queer futuring keeps the adult learner and queering processes in mind with an emphasis on affiliation and belonging, identity and resistance and politics and change.

Social implications

The authors suggest queer futuring makes room for opening spaces of creativity and insight as traditional and reified rationality is problematized, further supporting development of emergentist relationships with the future as spaces of possibility and innovation.

Originality/value

Queer futuring connects ethical and pragmatic approaches to futuring for creating the kinds of futures needed to decolonize, delegitimize and disrupt hegemonic and categorical thinking and social structures. It builds on queer theory’s critical perspective, engaging critical futures strategies with adult learners at the forefront.