Category: speculative learning futures podcast Page 1 of 2

3 ways higher education can become more hopeful in the post-pandemic, post-AI era

Below is a republished version of an article that Shandell Houlden and I published in The Conversation last week, summarizing some of the themes that arose in our Speculative Learning Futures podcast.

3 ways higher education can become more hopeful in the post-pandemic, post-AI era

The future of education is about more than technology.
(Pexels/Emily Ranquist)

Shandell Houlden, Royal Roads University and George Veletsianos, Royal Roads University

We live at a time when universities and colleges are facing multiplying crises, pressures and changes.

From the COVID-19 pandemic and budgetary pressures to generative artificial intelligence (AI) and climate catastrophe, the future of higher education seems murky and fragmented — even gloomy.

Student mental health is in crisis. University faculty in our own research from the early days of the pandemic told us that they were “juggling with a blindfold on.” Since that time, we’ve also heard many echo the sentiment of feeling they’re “constantly drowning,” something recounted by researchers writing about a sense of precarity in universities in New Zealand, Australia and the western world.

In this context, one outcome of the pandemic has been a rise in discourses about specific, quite narrowly imagined futures of higher education. Technology companies, consultants and investors, for example, push visions of the future of education as being saved by new technologies. They suggest more technology is always a good thing and that technology will necessarily make teaching and learning faster, cheaper and better. That’s their utopian vision.

Some education scholars have been less optimistic, often highlighting the failures of utopian thinking. In many cases, their speculation about the future of education, especially where education technology is concerned, often looks bleak. In these examples, technology often reinforces prejudices and is used to control educators and learners alike.

A picture of a collage showing a Facebook-jammed image that says 'You've been Zucked'
Amid accelerating technology, what kind of future do we imagine for higher education?
Annie Spratt/Unsplash

In contrast to both utopian and grim futures, for a recent study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, we sought to imagine more hopeful and desirable higher education futures. These are futures emerging out of justice, equity and even joy. In this spirit, we interviewed higher education experts for a podcast entitled Speculative Learning Futures.

When asked to imagine more hopeful futures, what do experts propose as alternatives? What themes emerge in their work? Here are three key ideas.

It’s about more than technology

First, these experts reiterated that the future of education is about more than technology. When we think about the future of education we can sometimes imagine it as being tied entirely to the internet, computers and other digital tools. Or we believe AI in education is inevitable — or that all learning will be done through screens, maybe with robot teachers!

But as Jen Ross, senior lecturer in digital education observes, technology doesn’t solve all our problems. When we think about education futures, technology alone does not automatically help us create better education or healthier societies. Social or community concerns like social inequities will continue to affect who can access education, our education systems’ values and how we are shaped by technologies.

As many researchers have argued, including us, the pandemic highlighted how differences in access to the internet and computers can reinforce inequities for students.

AI can also reinforce inequities. Depending on the nature of data AI is trained with, the use of AI can perpetuate harmful biases in classrooms.

Ross notes in her recent book that social or community concerns shape how our societies could imagine education.
Researchers involved with Indigenous-led AI are tackling questions around how Indigenous knowledge systems could push AI to be more inclusive.

Policymakers and educators should consider technology as one part of a toolkit of responses for making informed decisions about what technologies align with more equitable and just education futures.

Emphasizing connection and diversity

In line with thinking about more than technology, the second theme is a reminder that the future of education is about healthy social connection and social justice. Researchers emphasize fostering diversity and celebrating diverse expressions of strengths and needs.

Experts envision and call for education that is more sustainable for everyone, not just a privileged few. Kathrin Otrel-Cass, professor at University of Graz, and Mark Brown, Ireland’s first chair in digital learning and director of the National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University, suggest this means teaching and learning should be at a slower pace for students and faculty alike.

In this vision, policymakers must support education systems that regard the whole learner as an individual with specific physical, mental, emotional and intellectual needs, and as a member of multiple communities.

Acknowledge the goodness of the present

There’s lots to be gained by noting and supporting all the great things related to education that are happening in the present, since possible futures emerge from what now exists.

As two podcast guests, Eamon Costello, professor at Dublin City University and collaborator Lily (Prajakta) Girme, noted, we need to acknowledge the good work of educators and learners in the small wins that happen every day.

In 2019, researchers Justin Reich and José Ruipérez-Valiente wrote: “new education technologies are rarely disruptive but instead are domesticated by existing cultures and systems. Dramatic expansion of educational opportunities to under-served populations will require political movements that change the focus, funding and purpose of higher education; they will not be achieved through new technologies alone.”

These are words worth repeating.

 

 

Shandell Houlden, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Education and Technology, Royal Roads University and George Veletsianos, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology, Royal Roads University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 7 with Drs. Mark Brown and Kathrin Otrel-Cass

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 7 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 6

In this episode, George and Shandell sit down with Mark Brown and Kathrin Otrel-Cassto bring a sense of closure to the podcast. Our guests voice similar hopes to other guests around a desire for slower, more ethical futures. We also get into the nitty gritty of what futures can and can’t do for us in the present. What are we actually doing when we imagine the future? What are the limits of this work? What are our responsibilities as publicly-funded scholars when  futures methodologies become part of how we do research?

Professor Mark Borwn has over 30-years experience of working in Higher Education and has played key leadership roles in the development, implementation and evaluation of several major university-wide digital learning and teaching initiatives. Before taking up his current position, as Ireland’s first Chair in Digital Learning and Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning, Mark was Director of the National Centre for Teaching and Learning at Massey University, New Zealand.

Kathrin Otrel-Cass, Ph.D., is Professor of educational research and digital transformation at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research methods are in many cases grounded in visual ethnography. Her interest in visuality has led to the establishment of a video research laboratory at her previous workplace at the University of Aalborg in Denmark and in Graz she has built the first Austrian video case archive for teacher education. She is the coordinator of the ESERA SIG on video based research and has a published record on topics to do with visuality in educational research.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 6 with Amy Sojot

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 6 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 6

In this episode, Shandell chats with Amy Sojot, a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Amy’s research uses interdisciplinary approaches to address contemporary educational assumptions through philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, and pop-cultural critique. She is an active member of the Tinalak Filipino Education Advisory Council and the College of Education Doctoral Students Association (COEDSA) Council, serving as COEDSA Chair from 2017–2019. Appreciating the playful side of theory and philosophy, Amy relishes a nerdy conceptual pun. This focused conversation, drills down into the details of a recent paper Amy wrote on “Cronenberg Pedagogies,” a paper which is a weird as it sounds. Amy’s take on the future of education is grounded in ethics but Shandell says “joy, given how much fun it was to talk.”

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 5 with Dr. Nilofar Shidmehr

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 5 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 5

In this episode, Shandell has an intimate conversation with Dr. Nilofar Shidmehr, an Iranian Canadian poet, where they explore what creativity, imagination, and perhaps most importantly, connection mean to learning today. What is the value of making art for doing scholarly research and creating knowledge? What can we learn about learning and education from appreciating what different education systems offer or constrain? Nilofar is a bit of a renaissance woman, earning a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, before abandoning that career to go on and earn a BA in Philosophy and Creative Writing, an MFA in Creative Writing, and a PhD in Cross Faculty Inquiry in Education, all from the University of British Columbia. She’s published widely in literary journals as well as in scholarly contexts, and is a scholar of arts-informed research and one of the pioneers of poetic inquiry as a methodology of research. Currently, she teaches related courses in the Liberal Arts Program at Simon Fraser University. She has published five books of poetry and two collections of short stories in English and Persian.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 4 with Dr. Felicitas Macgilchrist

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 4 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 4

George and Shandell  chat with Felicitas Macgilchrist about the future of education. Felicitas Macgilchrist is Head of the Media | Transformation department at the Georg Eckert Institute and Professor of Media Research at the Georg-August-University of Goettingen’s Institute of Education. Her current research focuses on the discourses and practices around educational technology, including critical and speculative approaches to digital education. Her projects ask which policies and practices are shaping media change in today’s schools. This episode is a  free ranging conversation, in which we go deep into design and the ethics of design in education. We talk about futures in which slowness is centred, considering how we might make better space for ourselves and each other, and how those of us with privilege can promote the already incredible futures work happening in places around the world today. We also get into the thinking about what the metaphor of rewilding can tell us about digital education today and into the future, and how awesome science fiction is.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 3 with Dr. Eamon Costello and Lily Girme

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 3 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 3

In this episode, George and Shandell sit down with Dr. Eamon Costello and Lily Girme to get their insights into the future of education, how speculative methodologies can help us subvert expectations about the future, and how thinking about the future can be an act of resistance. Dr Eamon Costello is an Associate Professor of Digital Learning in Dublin City University. Lily, or Prajaka Girme, is a frequent collaborator with Eamon, providing the visual designs for their shared work. She’s an academic developer in Dublin City University and is pursuing PhD research into the University of Sanctuary initiative. With these two scholars, we begin to wonder how thinking about the future can be a process of connection and appreciation, and where it allows us to work towards not just liberatory futures, but also liberatory presents.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 2 with Helen Nde

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 2 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 2

George and Shandell chat with Helen Nde and dive deep into understanding storytelling and the power of story for education. Helen shares her work on storytelling from the African continent, highlighting some of the unique qualities and ways in which different African stories work, and how that can inform how we approach learning as a community and collective process. Helen’s rich insights into story as a cultural process is a reminder of the need for diverse storytelling in our worlds.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Page 1 of 2

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén