Review of "stories about how technology has enhanced learning"

[mrtimbones]

I speak for largely for myself when I say that I suspect that many of us may have been using some of these pedagogic practices in one form or another, perhaps in a less obvious form than those discussed on the videos? I liked Mazur’s approach—I don’t mean the clicker thing—but the underlying approach, which, from the snippet we were asked to watch appeared to discussed a form of the flipped classroom. However, I wasn’t entirely convinced by his assertion that information transfer is the easy part of pedagogy in comparison to assimilation. Personally I don’t think that this is always the case, and perhaps MOOCs and TEL might be an example of this. I say this as both a participant and a deliverer of online instruction. His flipped approach would, I believe, suit my subject (Art & Design) particularly for the discussion of more abstract and subjective topics and this is something that I have been considering trying recently.

On watching Keegan’s “dodgy”, “guerilla” ARG process, I thought we have been shown this to question not only her pedagogy, but whether we should be disregarding ethics at the expense of learning, and to maybe question the need to redefine ethical approaches to education. She appeared to disregard ethics simply on the grounds that she felt her approach was helping the students. Keegan views ethics boards as inhibitors of innovation no matter how well meaning they are. Does innovation require the abuse of power and use of deceit? Are the results worth the gamble? Her own institution were obviously OK with it and I guess she is now encouraged her to present her findings on the lecture circuit. I am sure it was memorable, and she claimed it got results, but I still think it ethically unsound. On this occasion Keegan was lucky enough to have a seemingly malleable group. I would have liked to have known more about the students who didn’t engage and how Keegan would encourage those not participating. This was quickly glossed over. Did personality play a large part in her ‘success’? Tutors with less forceful and manipulative approaches than that of Keegan’s might have got a very different result including getting fired.

I thought Mitra’s work was simply great, but couldn’t think of how I might apply this to my subject.

[mrtimbones]

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[GraphDesProject]

I liked Mitra…but then I got sent some links that made me feel guilty… See my post in this forum called Collaboration is Key and replies from Phil Tubman . Mitra and educational colonialism? The wall booths are all derelict. Also, taller boys ousted all the others and took over. So it doesn’t seem to be as feel good as we were discussing yesterday. Agree about Keegan though. Sancha (@GraphDesProject)

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