Festival of Creative Learning 2017
For our second Near Future Teaching Pilot Workshop, we hooked up with the Festival of Creative Learning.
The model was similar to our first, though we decided to skip the intros to digital technologies at the beginning and instead to have prompt cards on each table that the participants could read and react to at various points in the workshop if they needed inspiration.
Some responses that came out of our final discussions included the following:
- The University of Edinburgh is very research-focused, maybe a broad educational model isn’t useful for Edinburgh?
- How do we address discussion across disciplines in a university like Edinburgh?
- If computers are doing the marking, feedback could be quite challenging.+
- Global collaboration with other universities to fund the implementation of expensive technologies?
- Always being online and available, students have less separation between university and home.
- The University should be teaching students how to separate work and non-work time, and time management skills.
- Design space, technology and curriculum to support learning.
- Green screen and hologram teacher, students have massaging seats and sofas.
-
Lecturer using visualisations, material can move around in 3 dimensions, physical interaction with things is still important.
So, quite a lot was raised that was provocative and fascinating, and will help us going forward with the project as we try to get a sense of what staff and students might want from digital learning technologies in the future. Here are some of the conclusions that we discussed at the close of the session:
- What are the values and what is the purpose of the University?
- What sort of education do we want to provide?
- What should a University be?
- Focus on the individual student and consider mental health.
- How do you create an environment that supports students throughout their entire journey?
- How can technology help students to be more comfortable and visualise concepts?
- How can technology be helpful and personalise the learning experience?
Overall, it was a stimulating and intriguing workshop, where we learned a lot about not only what students think about technology but also about how we might develop our Near Future Teaching sessions as we continue with the project.
Join the Near Future Teaching conversation by responding to any of these topics here and/or on Twitter by using our hashtag: #UoE_NFT and our Twitter handle @NearFutureTeach.