International Seminar at the UOC: What should the role of the teacher be in the twenty-first century?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) October 17, 2011 -- *The UOC UNESCO E-Learning Chair proposes rethinking what is taught and how it is taught. Experts agree that the classroom has become obsolete in a world where students get most of their information through social networks or the internet. The path lies in connecting learning with the things that impassion students. For example: video games.

Information and communication technology, ICT, has radically changed our lives, the way we communicate and how we learn. However, neither the way we teach nor the contents of the academic curricula have changed, becoming obsolete in a completely new setting.

This is one of the conclusions reached by a group of 80 experts in Barcelona at the Eighth International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO E-Learning Chair, Teacher Training: Reconsidering Teachers’ Roles, which began yesterday and ends this afternoon in the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's Media-TIC building (c/ Roc Boronat 117, Barcelona).

The seminar seeks to take a closer look at the fact that despite constant talk of new web 2.0 tools and learning using mobile devices, social networks or based on games, we forget to speak of teaching and the role the teacher would have to adopt in this educational context.

“Teachers have to include ICT and lead a new type of teaching where teachers and students take on new active roles and share responsibilities,” claimed the executive director of the UOC UNESCO E-Learning Chair, Emma Kiselyova, at the opening of the seminar. “Teachers have to lead the adoption of ICT in the classroom instead of simply trying to come up to the students' level.”

The seminar was marked by the question about the role that teaching should play in the twenty-first century and whether this has become in itself an obsolete concept that will see teachers being replaced by technology.

“The teacher will never be replaced,” stated Steve Wheeler, specialist in e-Learning and distance education at the University of Plymouth, UK. “A computer doesn't have the emotions or the ability to inspire that a good teacher has. But we have to ask ourselves what the new skills and abilities are that teachers and students need to develop in the twenty-first century and whether we are preparing them for the future or for the past. The classroom has become obsolete in a world where students absorb most of their information through social networks or the internet and where the hierarchised teacher-student role no longer works.”
The participants at the get-together stressed the importance of making the most of the use that students get out of such channels as blogs, facebook, twitter and even mobile text messages to design a new educational model.

Passion and learning

“Making children memorise in geography classes is much less productive than letting them lose themselves in Google Earth,” pointed out Douglas Thomas, teacher, researcher and journalist specialising in the relationship between technology, education and culture. “In the twenty-first century, we need more to learn or to learn to learn. That worked in the twentieth century, but not now when learning has to focus on cultivating the imagination.”
In his paper, Thomas highlighted the importance of the learning process connecting with the things that impassion students and how the idea of transferring knowledge is obsolete compared with knowledge built as a community, which is prevalent in the digital media.

“The answers, or the content, are no longer important. The key lies in knowing how to ask questions. The answers change constantly, but the questions don't. We have to stimulate the students to ask questions and research,” stated Thomas, who proposed turning video games into another learning tool, as they allow students to play, experiment, learn and make mistakes at the same time.

“We have to rethink what we teach and how we teach it,” said Hannes Klöpper, co-founder of Iversity, on online course management platform, and co-author with Yehuda Elkana of a book about the transformation of the university curriculum in the twenty-first century. “The reform of the education system has to begin with the university, as the situation has become increasingly more complex and university doesn't respond to these changes. The division of knowledge into disciplines is no longer any use. The curriculum has to be reformed to reflect this complexity and universities have to be able to train professionals who solve problems and who adapt to change quickly.”

The seminar stressed the importance of students reflecting, creating and sharing knowledge and collaborating. Social networks, it was affirmed, have redefined relationships and how we learn, with multiple, non-hierarchised entries and a curriculum built by the community.

A good example of what education in the twenty-first century should be was exemplified in the presentation by professor Peter Baptist, from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, who showed how mathematics teaching can be made attractive by introducing a multidisciplinary focus that includes rich visualisations created by artist Eugen Jost. "The teacher doesn't have to be an entertainer, just as the student is not just a client," said Baptist.

UOC – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
www.uoc.edu

Seminar website:
http://unescochair-elearning.uoc.edu/event/VIIIseminar/index_cat.html

Chair blog:
http://unescochair-elearning.uoc.edu/blog/

Universitat Oberta de Cataluny     UOC     UOC International Seminar