THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2022/2023

Timetable information in the Course Catalogue may be subject to change.

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Postgraduate Course: The Future of Learning Organisations (fusion on-site) (EFIE11018)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh Futures Institute CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryCurrently, 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 will challenge you to anticipate and critically examine the future of learning organisations. With an intensive 2-day conference at its heart, you 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 is 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 are 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, you 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 is supported through participation in an online exhibition, alongside structured forum discussion with peers and tutors.

Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - On-Site Fusion Course Delivery Information:

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 be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- Unless the lecturer or tutor indicates otherwise you should assume the session is being recorded.

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.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2022/23, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  20
Course Start Semester 1
Course Start Date 19/09/2022
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 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Summative Assessment:

The course will be assessed by means of the following components:

1) Public-Facing Artefact (100%)

You 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 Feedback on the formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The course organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.

Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.

Feedback on the summative assessment will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

This course is characterised by ongoing and timely feedback from staff and peers. This includes the use of discussion spaces alongside the dialogue that takes place during the intensive 2-day conference. In addition, you will participate in an online exhibition where you will present your plans for the public-facing artefact. Staff and fellow students will provide comments on the proposed work, representing the major piece of feedforward on the course.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Identify, conceptualise and define new and abstract problems and issues in the context of learning organisations.
  2. Develop original, critical and creative responses to educational futures in diverse organisational settings.
  3. Communicate insights about course themes, using appropriate methods, to a range of audiences with different levels of knowledge/expertise.
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

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.

Gaskins, R.N. (2019). Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation across the African Diaspora and Global South. In Ruha Benjamin (ed.) Captivating Technology. Duke University Press.
González-Calvo, G. & Arias-Carballal, Marta. (2018). Effects from audit culture and neoliberalism on university teaching: an autoethnographic perspective. Ethnography and education 13(4): pp. 413-427. DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2017.1347885

Lamb, J., Carvalho, L., Gallagher, M. & Knox, J. (2021). The Postdigital Learning Spaces of Higher Education. Postdigit Sci Educ. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00279-9

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
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills - Curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference;
- Creative problem solving;
- Critical and reflective thinking;
- Skilled communication.
KeywordsEducation,Futures,Learning Environments,Evaluation,Learners,Teachers
Contacts
Course organiserMr James Lamb
Tel: (0131 6)51 6243
Email: James.Lamb@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Abby Gleave
Tel: (0131 6)51 1337
Email: abby.gleave@ed.ac.uk
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