Postgraduate Course: The Future of Learning Organisations (fusion on-site) (EFIE11379)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | *Programme Core Course: Education Futures (MSc/PGD/PGC)*
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. Across five weeks, you will consider how we might conceptualise and conceive positive ways and spaces of learning.
You will work collaboratively across a series of activities under the themes of 'agents and people', 'environments' and 'evaluation', in order to understand what learning organisations might look like in the near future. This will be followed by the creation of an individual 'Public-Facing Artefact' assignment, and an accompanying 'rationale', that builds upon knowledge constructed through collaborative and structured independent study.
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. A 'learning organisation' can be a school, college, university, museum, gallery, library, workplace or other setting. |
| 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 issues connected with equality, commercialisation, agency, power, environmental sustainability, and beyond.
With a strong emphasis on student-centred learning, you will have the opportunity to explore the educational contexts, and pursue the questions about education futures that are most personally or professionally meaningful to you.
We begin by introducing the field of Education Futures, before exploring our course themes of 'agents and people', 'learning environments', and 'evaluation'. These themes are explored critically and collaboratively during a series of synchronous fusion sessions, and through week-long 'asynchronous tutorials' in the collaborative whiteboard space of Miro.
Building on the experiences and knowledge generated through our structured activities and conversations, you will go on to devise an individual 'public-facing artefact' as the summative assessment exercise for the course. This will be accompanied by a 750-word 'rationale', where you will explain the purpose of the artefact, including how it connects with education futures. The audience and format for your artefact will be negotiated with the Course Organiser, through an asynchronous poster exhibition within Miro.
Past examples of public-facing artefacts include short instructional videos for teachers, proposals for education managers, educational board games, podcasts, posters, social media materials, and virtual reality builds. This is a scaffolded assessment exercise where you will be supported by individualised formative feedback from the Course Organiser, as well as suggestions from fellow students.
The learning experience on The Future of Learning Organisations is characterised by collaboration (as you learn with and from those around you), and being challenged to critique some existing assumptions about the people, places and practices associated with learning.
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.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 4,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 16,
Summative Assessment Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
156 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| 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 period. 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:
- 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:
Bayne, S. & Gallagher, M. (2021). Near Future Teaching: Practice, policy and digital education futures. Policy futures in education, 19(5).
Facer, K. (2011). Learning futures: education, technology, and social change. London: Routledge.
Holmes, W. & Tuomi, I. (2022). State of the art and practice in AI in education. European Journal of Education, 57(4), 542 - 570
Lamb, J. & Carvalho, L. (2024). Postdigital Learning Spaces: Towards Convivial, Equitable and Sustainable Spaces for Learning. Springer, Cham.
Nieminen, J. H., Tai, J., Boud, D. & Henderson, M. (2021). Student agency in feedback: beyond the individual. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 1 - 14
Ross, J. (2023). Digital Futures for Learning: Speculative Methods and Pedagogies. Milton: Routledge. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Upon completion of this course, students will gain the following skills:
- Curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference.
- Creative problem solving.
- Critical and reflective thinking.
- Skilled communication. |
| Keywords | Education,Futures,Learning,Assessment,Teaching,Technology |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mr James Lamb
Tel: (0131 6)51 6243
Email: James.Lamb@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Zoe Hogg
Tel:
Email: Zoe.Hogg@ed.ac.uk |
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