10 principles for the future of learning
The MIT Press has recently published a series on digital media and learning. In their report, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, they investigate the internet’s transformation of shared and interactive learning and suggest 10 principles as “fundamental to the future of learning institutions”. Physiotherapy is a traditional profession and we are only just venturing into the world of emerging technologies that enable us to partake in online education and professional development so it has been an interesting exercise trying to relate these principles to the future of learning in physiotherapy.
1. Self Learning
Self-learning has bloomed. Online learning possibilities, many of which are free, are a valid option for continued education and professional development. Discovering these possibilities is a skill that needs to be developed starting now and continuing through our professional life.
2. Horizontal Structure
Given the increasing volume of information available from endless sources and resources, learning strategy has shifted from a focus on information alone to judgement concerning reliable information. Instead of just completing a search on the internet and using the information that we find, it is becoming more important that we know how to find reliable sources, how to evaluate the information that we find and how to process our evaluations. In short, we have moved from learning that to learning how, from content to process.
3. From Presumed Authority to Collective Credibility
Learning is shifting from issues of authoritativeness to issues of credibility. A major part of the future of learning is in developing methods, often communal, for distinguishing good knowledge sources from those that are questionable. We will find ourselves increasingly being moved to collaborative environments in order to address multidimensional and complex clinical scenarios such as case studies, guideline development and research. This provides the opportunity for collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-institutional knowledge creation and learning which will become far more credible as a collective source than one presumed authoritative source alone.
4. A De-Centered Pedagogy
In higher education, many administrators and individual teachers have been moved to limit use of collectively and collaboratively crafted knowledge sources, most notably Wikipedia, for course assignments or to issue quite stringent guidelines for their consultation and reference. The report argues that “this is a catastrophically anti-intellectual reaction to a knowledge-making, global phenomenon of epic proportions”. Physiopedia provides such an example, content is written by students as part of an educational project or professionals as part of their professional development, this content can then be eternally peer reviewed and edited to provide a continually evolving knowledge source and learning environment. Such collaborative and participatory learning underscores the foundations of learning and the report suggests that “leaders at learning institutions should adopt a more inductive, collective pedagogy that takes advantage of this era of open and collaborative resources”.
5. Networked Learning
Networked learning takes place in social online environments and allows us to learn from (and with) our peers. It moves us away from traditional individual learning based on competition and hierarchy to one of cooperation, partnering, and mediation. Networked learning provides the opportunity for those of similar clinical interests to work together to produce more effective patient care in a more timely way. The iCSP (the forum for CSP members in the UK) is a great example of this where members share documents and advice in patient managment, such as in the development of guidelines or protocols.  As the report says “the power of ten working interactively will almost invariably outstrip the power of one looking to beat out the other nine”.
6. Open Source Education
Unlike individualized learning (which is largely tethered to a social regime of copyright-protected intellectual property and privatized ownership, and tends overwhelmingly to be hierarchical), networked learning, being collaborative, is committed in the end to an open source and open content social regime which is at least peer-to-peer and more robustly many-to-many. Open source culture seeks to share creation of content and it’s end product, the content, openly and freely and, by being made freely available to all, it looks to have its creation processes and end products improved through the contributions of others. This free and open content on the web is the future. In Physiotherapy we may be looking at free online education and professional devleopment resources, free clinical guidelines that have been collaboratively created by a collective of international experts and even free online journals that have been peer reviewed online.
7. Learning as Connectivity and Interactivity
The connectivities and interactivities made possible by new digital technology, in its best outcomes, produces learning ensembles in which the members both support and sustain, elicit from and expand on each other’s learning inputs, contributions, and products. Clinical challenges need not be individually faced frustrations, Promethean mountains to climb alone, but mutually shared, to be redefined, solved, resolved, or worked around—together. Our technological advances are thus making net-working—in contrast with isolated, individualized working—the default, even if we are isolated in our working environment.
8. Lifelong Learning
It has become obvious that from the point of view of participatory learning there is no finality. Individually and as a profession – Learning is lifelong.
9. Learning Institutions as Mobilizing Networks
Network culture and associated learning practices suggest that we think of learning institutions as ‘mobilizing networks’. The networks enable a mobilizing that stresses flexibility, interactivity, and outcome. This mobility allows us to complete our continual education and professional development in a more suitable place and time compared with the traditional learning by attending a course in person. As more possibilities for online learning are developed by educational providers and discovered by clinicains our learning will become easier to undertake, more mobile.
10. Flexible Scalability and Simulation
Networked learning both facilitates and must remain open to various scales of learning possibility, from the small and local to the widest and most far-reaching constituencies capable of productively contributing to a domain, subject matter, knowledge formation and creation. New technologies allow for small groups whose members are at physical distance to each other to learn collaboratively together and from each other; but they also enable larger, more anonymous yet equally productive interactions. This has far reaching possibilities for health care for which I for one am very excited about. We will be able to collaborate with practitioners from nations where experiences of health care are very different from our own. We will help each other, learn from each other, provide mentorship where support may not otherwise be available and enable each other to provide better patient care where ever we are in the world.
One things for sure….. if the future of education includes educators who have minds on the front edge of theory, application, and innovation, and show leadership in harnessing and shaping the emerging trends between technology, media, and learning, continued education and professional development could become very exciting!
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