In this interesting video entitled “Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age”, Mitchel Resnick, the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at MIT’s Media Lab, took a look at whether digital technologies are living up to their promise in terms of providing educational value to students.
While his focus was on school-age children, his assertions apply across the board — the way adults learn is really no different from the way the younger set learns, although the kids might be a tad quicker. And so the video could easily be retitled, “Rethinking MOOCs.”
Resnick is the insightful MIT scientist who stirred up TED audiences with his talk, Teach Children to Code. If you haven’t seen that, it’s worth 16 minutes of your time. If you have, then what Resnick has to say here won’t be too surprising.
In the video, Resnick asserts that most digital learning at present is really no different from traditional classroom teaching; only the delivery method has changed. In most cases, the model is the imparting of information from an expert, the teacher, to the student — a knowledge transfer, to use a current buzzword.
To be sure, it’s a glitzier, higher tech transfer of information than the average classroom, but Resnick’s perspective is that it could be so much more.
Digital learning has the potential to change what we learn, how we learn, when we learn, and with whom we learn. All of this potential is based on human beings’ innate ability to construct meaning out of the experiences around them, a learning theory called constructivism first proposed by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget.
What we learn
Digital technology is capable of delivering learning simulations that bring to life high-level ideas and concepts, making them accessible not only to more learners than ever before but different learners.
Resnick gave as examples two activities built with MITs Open Source StarLogo language: an activity that allows the user to input parameters for the behavior of individual birds and another for individual cars. The simulations show how unrelated individual movements can result in flocking behaviors and traffic jams — adjusting the parameters for individual components results in a different type of flock or traffic pattern.
Any middle schooler can use the software, but what the student learns is about emergent phenomena and decentralized systems — graduate level material that traditionally has required complex math to solve. This type of knowledge simply wasn’t accessible to the average middle school student — or average parent — before the availability of this type of computer simulation.
What other subjects might now be more accessible via digital technology?
How we learn
Resnick’s example here might have been a bit self-serving, but it applies nonetheless: Lego’s Mindstorms robotics kits. How much fun is this? Kids can build and tinker with their own robots, designing command sequences that result in actions carried out by their creations.
Tinkering, Resnick points out, is a fun and powerful way to construct understanding. It’s learning by trial and error; by forming a hypothesis, testing it, and adjusting it based on results.
Digital technology provides a means for similar opportunities to tinker and learn in a wide variety of subjects that would never have been taught this way before. While you might not want a young chemistry student to throw water on a chip of sodium in a classroom, you can do it digitally almost as impressively.
What other types of powerful learning experiences does digital technology make possible?
When we learn
Traditional classroom teaching is 9-5 (more or less) with some carefully structured homework time to be done on schedule.
Digital technology allows learning to take place when and where the desire to do so arises. A student can engage in a simulation or online discussion at any time of the day or night. The flashlight and book under the covers is giving way to a tablet or smartphone under the covers.
With whom we learn: Digital technology has connected learners directly to a far wider range of people of different ages, backgrounds and life experiences than was ever before possible. This provides for extensive learning opportunities.
Some of the learning occurs naturally with every interaction as a result of absorbing information and integrating new experiences shared by participants.
Other mutual learning is more structured. While Resnick didn’t specifically mention MOOCs in his video, cMOOCs (the “c” stands for connectivist) and flipped classrooms are perfect examples. In these situations, learning is the outcome of collaboration through interactions among individuals. Just like we learned playground rules from our peers during first grade recess, the interaction is naturally instructive..
This type of learning is no longer teacher imparting knowledge to students; it’s us teaching us.
Resnick wrapped up the video by asserting that digital technology is breaking down barriers to learning — barriers between disciplines, barriers among people of different ages and backgrounds, and barriers provided by physical classrooms themselves.
It puts the learner in control of his or her own learning — and while idea that may be alarming to some, it’s worth noting that a century ago, an Italian educator named Maria Montessori created a system of early education based on the same principle of learner control that generally yields remarkable results.
Digital technology expands this concept to a vast universe of learning possibilities. You might think of it as “Montessori gone wild.”
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