Postgraduate Course: The Future of Learning Organisations (fusion online) (EFIE11017)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | Currently, in most places, there are many distinctions made between formal educational institutions, workplace learning settings, and informal contexts of cultural and community learning. This course takes a holistic rather than sectoral view of the current educational landscape and engages in a critical and questioning way with the trends, values and constraints that may shape individual and collective experiences of learning in the future.
At a time of considerable social, technological and ecological change, this course challenges students to anticipate and critically examine the future of learning organisations. With an intensive 2-day conference at its heart, students will work collaboratively across a series of workshops and presentations under the themes of 'agents and people', 'environment' and 'evaluation' in order to understand what learning organisations might look like in the near future, in a range of contexts. This will be followed by the creation of a public-facing artefact that builds on knowledge constructed through collaborative and structured independent study. |
| Course description |
This course considers the future of learning organisations from three thematic, inter-connected perspectives: agents and people; learning environments, and evaluation. Running across these themes will be questions surrounding neoliberalism and the commercialisation and commodification of educational practices, spaces and roles.
This course is taught over an intensive 2-day block, with some structured activity before and after the intensive.
The course begins with some preparatory work, followed by an intensive 2-day hybrid activity - a conference - with an emphasis on working collaboratively to consider and critique a series of vital questions concerning the future of learning organisations in a volatile and rapidly changing world. Building on the experiences and knowledge generated during the conference, students will go on to devise an individual public-facing artefact as the summative assessment exercise for the course.
Examples of work could include the creation of a virtual reality exhibition that speculates on the future of gallery education, a short story examining the possibilities and potential threats of teacher automation, or a short instructional video for students that explains how algorithms shape their search results when preparing an assignment The creation of this artefact will be supported through participation in an online exhibition, alongside structured forum discussion with peers and tutors.
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed. There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 10 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 4,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 4,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 8,
Online Activities 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
62 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% coursework
Each student will produce a public-facing artefact (for instance a website, a recorded presentation, a publication or other piece of digital media) that responds to one or more course themes. |
| Feedback |
This course will be characterised by ongoing and timely feedback from staff and peers. This will include the use of discussion spaces alongside the dialogue that takes place during the intensive 2-day conference. In addition, students will participate in an online exhibition where they will present their plans for the public-facing artefact. Staff and students will provide comments on the proposed work, representing the major piece of feedforward on the course. This event will combine approaches from the academic poster presentation and the architecture crit. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Identify, conceptualise and define new and abstract problems and issues in the context of learning organisations.
- Develop original, critical and creative responses to educational futures in diverse organisational settings.
- Communicate insights about course themes, using appropriate methods, to a range of audiences with different levels of knowledge/expertise.
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Reading List
Indicative reading list:
Amsler, S. and Facer, K. (2017). Contesting anticipatory regimes in education: exploring alternative educational orientations to the future. Futures 94: pp. 6-14. doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2017.01.001
Bayne S. (2015). Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching. Teaching in Higher Education 20 (4), pp. 455-467. Doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1020783.
Carvalho, L., & Yeoman, P. (2018). Framing learning entanglement in innovative learning spaces: Connecting theory, design and practice. British Educational Research Journal. doi: 10.1002/berj.3483
Fawns, T. (2019). Postdigital education in design and practice. Postdigital Science and Education 1(1), 132-145.
Fitzpatrick, K. (2011). The digital future of authorship: rethinking originality. Culture Machine 12: 1-26. https://culturemachine.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/6-The-Digital-433-889-1-PB.pdf.
Goodyear, P. (2020). Design and co-configuration for hybrid learning: Theorising the practices of learning space design. British Journal of Educational Technology 51 (4), pp.1045-1060. doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1111/bjet.12925
Hamilton, E.C. and Friesen, N/ (2013) Online Education: A Science and Technology Studies Perspective. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 39(2). doi: 10.21432/T2001C
Markham, A., Mager, A. and Katzenbach, C. (2021) The limits of the imaginary: Challenges to intervening in future speculations of memory, data, and algorithms. New media & society 23 (2): pp. .382-405. doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1177/1461444820929322
Nieminen, J.H., Tai, J., Boud, D and Henderson, M. (2021) Student agency in feedback: beyond the individual. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2021.1887080
Selwyn, N. (2017). Education and technology: key issues and debates, 2nd ed. (London, Bloomsbury): pp. 99-124. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference
- Creative problem solving
- Critical and reflective thinking
- Skilled communication |
| Keywords | Education,futures,learning environments,evaluation,learners,teachers |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mr James Lamb
Tel:
Email: James.Lamb@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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