A point that strikes me is which each year, a new body of students (18/19 years of age) enter our universities, many of us as faculty remain relatively locked in an instructional routine that has not kept up with the potential innovations available today. I am constantly bombarded with the "newest" instructional software or platform. I am not sure the balance, but ultimately, it is about achieving mastery of the material.

Hi!

No answer, but a recommendation of helpful theory to think of using:

Personally I find the information philosophy Oxford professor Luciano Floridi helpful for reasoning around these kind of complex matters. In this way we can try to imagine what an information society / economy ("the infosphere" is or can become. Otherwise changes around us look like modifications of past structures: Yes we are increasingly flooded by information; No, we cannot memorize it all, Yes, we have to be critical, Yes, everything old is now cheaper, faster and more accessible. Then we are mostly thinking of the effects of digital ICTs concerning documentation and communication, like the latest speed-up of a long development, started for real with the art of writing. But Floridi points out that a more characteristic feature of ICTs is that they can "process information" on their own, on the side of biological brains, making things both harder and easier. However, there is no need to be afraid of artificial intelligence as a threat to human thinking, ICTs of this kind are very specialised but also linked to one another so that it is more or less humans that are the immigrants in a world of digital entities, but are the only "semantic entities". Floridi talks about the process of "enveloping"' ; deciding and adapting precisely what we need ICT help for, with the purpose of becoming more human. Then interfaces between humans and ICTs then becomes crucial; it becomes like a marriage between a lazy philosophical individual and a very ambitious hard working and specialised partner. The marriage has to be designed around what the hard working specialised partner (ICTs) can do. Just initial info here, read his popularly written "The fourth revolution - hiw the infosphere is changing human reality. Most of Floridi's papers are on his RG account.

Just an idea. I am working with research in similar matters and trying to use information philosophy. Article Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies

Conference Paper Using Philosophy of Information to look at teaching, technol...

Great contribution @anders norberg

Dear,

Regarding information either open sources or related to AI.

One of the main and modern aim of philosophy of education is to enable the learners to use the information available in such a huge bulk all around in the world of knowledge either

in Open forms are in any other form, Regarding AI that is to make the computer intelligent but one must have to keep in mind that these are not to replace the humans but to facilitate the humans. Just like Robots are used in a situation where its not possible for human to perform. An other field is that of the expert systems just like to act as an expert in the areas where humans are not available or to facilitate the humans.

Just like in Human computer interaction is to know about the difficulties in front of humans.

Regarding social media the information here are provided by the humans so one must teach about the social values and norms while using the social media will help the students to assess. Now if some one want to use the information son data mining techniques can be used to know about the valuable knowledge on the social media.

Classification, Clustering,association rule mining can be used for practical purpose.

From ethological studies there are several references on the use of these technologies.

All, without exception, accredit me that the accelerated transit of the traditional method of expository learning towards a great practicality, interactivity and massive sensory incorporation. This supposes more than a change of educational paradigm, a change in the behavior of the students.

Finkel & Kruger, 2012), corroborate the management of telcellular phone as a social insulator, a phenomenon inherent in a subculture that makes its way between

teenagers and young adults.

Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318570845_Etologia_humana_y_educacion_El_nexo_teorico_omitido [accessed Mar 28 2018].

Dear everyone,

I appreciate your ideas and (academic) suggestions to my questions! My personal interest is not so much in understanding the underlying technological and digital developments in detail but rather take an student centered approach.I guess this goes in line with @Anders Nohrberg recommendation to look at where ICT can actually help in a educational setting.

How does this changing information landscape affect my own learning trajectory? How do I start seeking for information after receiving an assignment?

These questions are relevant for teachers and instructional designer because at the end of the day there will be any sort of evaluation. Therefore, we aim to prepare students to cope with all these new digital and technological trends. More precisely, we would like to think of how can we best support students to develop the right skill set and attitude to deal with (academic) information.

I found the work of Susan Bruce on "informed learning" appealing. It is a relational perspective of information and learning and can be defined as the learning experience of using information in a creative and reflective manner.

I''m curious to read more ideas on this broad but highly interesting topic!

I also agree with Norberg

The explosion of information available due to the advancement in technology has allowed learners to not only be consumers but creators of knowledge. There is also more flexibility in that you can access this information anywhere and anytime with the increasing use of mobile technology and social media platforms. I am attaching a highly read presentation in this regard that I hope will be useful for you: Data Flexible Learning Environments-Theories-Trends-Issues

Best regards,

Debra

@Debra thank you for this post. I really like how you phrase the active role of learners due to technological advancement!

I think the topic of "gatekeepers" is relevant. Not that long ago, most of the information we received was filtered by people who decided whether or not it would be published. The WWW has opened the doors to production of vast amounts of information without gatekeepers. For students encountering this information world in search of resources for research projects, they very much have to become their own gatekeepers.

In this, they can go in one of three directions: Retreat from the larger information world to the safe haven of peer reviewed material in institutional databases, ignore the need to be our own gatekeepers and simply embrace the diverse nature of information without many concerns about quality control, or gain the skills to navigate both the traditional filtered information world and the new world where they need advanced gatekeeping skills. If we want students to choose the latter, we have to do much more to equip them with the evaluative skills to make sound decisions about the information they encounter.

A dissertation recommending the advantages of blended learning article by P.A.Theis, 2017, Uni of Missouri,Kansas City entitled 'A narratological heuristic study in a blended learning class room environment' (leans on Vygotskyan ideas) could help you, and in Australia we are using Flipped learning (much the same, for work in school added to by IT connected work at home(disadvantage a disadvantage as is lack of an IT identity). Still have to learn how to attack arguments and verify ideas no matter how broad the library!!!

Another insightful paper that might really help you is by Susan R. Goldman, 2012, 'Adolescent Literacy: learning and understanding content', The future of children, Vol. 22, No. 2. Fall 2012 p 86-110. It addresses your concern and is worth thorough reading despite the title.

Dr. Ferdinand-James has also given a very good account of this question.

this link is useful

https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/102204/Pasi%20Juvonen%20A4%2021%2011%20.pdf?sequence=2

regards

The problem in the United States, at least in criminal justice (what I teach), is that using internet, social media, blogs, etc. there is no bright line as to what is fact and what is fiction. Many of the social media outlets in the United States have become highly politicized. Propaganda is the order of the day. This leads to large amounts of misinformation being out there and students are often affected by it.

Jaro, most of the contributions so far, while interesting and learned, seem to miss your point about an individual learning, i.e. what happens in the learner's mind.

This is a fascinating issue and my own personal experience , being interested in the same sort of topic, was one in which I found inspiration in an unlikely source: it was The Book of Memory; A study of memory in medieval culture, by Mary Carruthers.

It describes an intellectual culture which is founded on memory (not technology) and based on the ancients understanding of how memory worked, i.e. how learning worked. All the main ideas are supported by modern research in the cognitive sciences.

You might find it useful also.

Good luck

Jim

Actually Jim I think some of us actually tried to cover what can happen in the learners' minds (technology or not) if they are facilitated to to think critically about what they read, and to read widely! Welcome to the knowledge economy!

I don't think learning is changing that much, or that rapidly, in repose to the information landscape. Those providing distance education learned to use the Internet in place of paper several decades ago. These techniques are now displacing most face-to-face higher education. This is being dressed up in new terms such as "MOOCs", but these are old DE techniques, supercharged by the Internet. In 2008 I was commissioned to design an on-line course for graduate students in the workplace. That course has been running continually since 2009, at institutions in Australia and in North America. More in my book "Digital Teaching in Higher Education". http://www.tomw.net.au/digital_teaching/introduction.shtml

Hello,

the main trends I have described here Article Trends of E-education in the Context of Cybernetics Laws

and some consequences here Article “To Teach Learning...” or on the Culture of Thinking of Toda...

Best regards.

@Tom Worthington, intriguing statement to say that learning is not following the changing pace of other digital and technical developments. I partially agree with this statement. Particularly while considering the evolution of our brains which has not been changing that much in the previous centuries. Yet, I do believe that due to the rise of the the book print, world wide web and other technological developments, leaning has shifted towards a new paradigm. Nowadays we speak about ecosystems, informal learning and network learning. The 70-20-10 model and the rise of Learning Management Systems revolutionize the way companies train their workforce and how students acquire and access information.

I am not sure that the actual mental process of learning (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic) has changed. It is the method that they receive the information that has changed. Faculty needs to be aware that students communicate in a wide variety of new methods.

Which is the outward and visible sign of student learning ?

A point that strikes me is which each year, a new body of students (18/19 years of age) enter our universities, many of us as faculty remain relatively locked in an instructional routine that has not kept up with the potential innovations available today. I am constantly bombarded with the "newest" instructional software or platform. I am not sure the balance, but ultimately, it is about achieving mastery of the material.

Vinayak is right to question how we can tell the student is actually learning or just getting lucky when picking the multiple choice answer. I have had to go to more essays to develop critical thinking and measure the understanding of the student. Students can do the essays on-line just like any other work. David, the question with new programs or technology is what does it really do to assist the student in developing competencies? Is it an effective learning tool or is it an electronic crutch?

This is an interesting and complex question to answer, Jaro. Looking at the rapid growth of knowledge in medicine, as an example, I would like to borrow this statement from the paper by Densen 2011, "It is estimated that the doubling time of medical knowledge in 1950 was 50 years; in 1980, 7 years; and in 2010, 3.5 years. In 2020 it is projected to be 0.2 years—just 73 days." In the meantime, compared to the 60s or 70s, we have the majority of medical students spending less time on studying, or examining patients, and working long hours to pay for the costs of life and university fees. With these changes, the students are moving away from comprehensive resources such as textbooks and reading reviews, or journals' articles and using YouTube videos, Wikipedia, and other online material in their learning. While there are concerns about these resources, faculty academics and educators are still unable to figure out an ideal solution. Please refer to some of my papers. Regards

Colleagues,

I'm not sure that the volume of knowledge is increasing. The amount of information is is increasing.

I too agree with Prof. Alexander Gushchin. Now days so many resources available to spread out the information across the web, social media, video tutorials and online education. But there is no authenticity about the information. No validation of the information. If students and faculty cultivate the habit of reading the textbook, journals, and research articles, It will give authentic information from knowledge repository.

May be useful to who all are new to Learning Analytics

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_Learning_Analytics_latest_research_trend

An interesting look at IT revolution and its implications for education and learning

https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/01/learning-revolution-education/

Very solid Greg, I think we have seen much in our decades in higher education. I often wonder today if we really have identified the true important points the students need to master in our classes or if we are just throwing formation at them to see what "sticks."

I enjoy reading through these vivid disucssions!

I think we all agree that a rapidly growing information landscape concludes in significant changes in learning. Given this, the question that I will follow is how can we I) identify competencies that become more relevant for our students due to the changing information landscape II) how to constructively align these skills into our curriculum and teachers' daily practice.

Might be intersting to hear some other examples on preparing students and teachers in a changing information landscape!?

Are there information literacy and related skills that you teach in your classroom?

Jaro is right we must identify competencies and determine new ways to help students learn them. One way that I have had a lot of luck with is the use of virtual academic poster competitions for students. Through this medium the students are able to share their research with not only their fellow students at their university, but with other universities that are participating as well. It is a low cost, hi tech solution.

I am handling Advanced Java Programming language to the students of undergraduate. We are connected each other through WhatsApp, Slack, and Skype. We have formed Java group in WhatsApp and Slack. These two tools I use for communicating with students. An everyday evening I drop questions in WhatsApp and students answers the query. If students have any doubt they can post. Even Senior students are also a member of the group. I post few industry requirements so that they can align their knowledge level to industry requirement.

Slack, I use for posting the Notes and video tutorials. We interact too.

Skype I use for conducting online class and discussion. We practice project-based learning system. Every student at the end of the semester submit the project and they explain to the peer group. In this way, I help the students to develop their skills. Slack posting I have attached for reference. If anyone interested I can help you to use slack.

My students use following website for Java code practice and competition :

https://www.techgig.com

www.codechef.com

https://www.hackerrank.com

I hope this link will help you

https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/online-learning-can-prepare-students-for-a-fast-changing-future-wherever-they-are-80497

Greeting

The permanent discrepancy to my colleagues during my active academic life was the need to assume that in the university we were forming professionals that once gone away (graduated) will meet the real world of their respective profession and for this reality we must prepare them. The options of learning in this new situation, for their condition of being permanent, must adjust to the availability of time of the professionals and the learning environment needs also to be adapted to their real life, who are mainly remote and ubiquitous. In these conditions from my point of view, the demand of the professionals for remote lifelong learning is more important and pertinent than the classic face-to-face academic offer. With regard to the quality of the offer, both the professionals and the employers are at present much more interested on it and even more on his relevancy, since it guarantees both that his investment means better professional performances and better revenues https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/learning_and_earning.pdf

I would like to change the tack just slightly and propose a recent historical look at what is lost.

Jaro Pichel said:

Students use a variety of media (i.e. blogs, Youtube, MOOCs) to access and assess information. Social media is now predominant.

Why? Our society is in transit from printed, to internet based, then A.I. derived information. Of course in ten years nothing you and I discuss today will be the same and perhaps this A. I. source will be justifiably superior to our recent past. But here in a technical science school I have my doubts. Just ten years ago, my students relied on search engines (Google et al.) and were often driven to Wikipedia. In addition those search engines showed their nuts and bolts. If you wanted to see which words or phrases were more popular on the internet you could conduct a Google battle say for Jesus vs Satan. There were empty results or "Google Voids". Say if you wanted to see if there was a relation between the jet stream and Multiple Sclerosis then by querying "jet stream" "Multiple Sclerosis" you would be greeted by a SERP declaring no result found. (Today they offer some sort of result always.)

Back then, if you queried in French you got French results, in English; English results. Now, Google & et al offer more results in the language they think you speak even if not pertinent with sometimes disastrous results like Google.fr on a smartphone search suggesting that Gone with the Wind was released in 1950. (which to be fair after being isolated by WW2 was the year that movie was seen by the French)

But those same search engines now by using more marketing algorithms than search techniques present what they think you want than brute search results and thus have lost a cognitive advantage. Also, Google likes to glean information in knowledge graphs. Rarely Wikipedia is now in among the first results. This has paved the way for even worst but easier method (at present) of information acquisition via social media again with A.I. influenced techniques. This offers what everyone knows is true instead of providing raw information derived from simple links between words and their pages. Today as many of you have pointed out it is much harder work out what is true, pertinent or worthwhile.

Ten years ago and earlier I was impressed with what my students acquired from the WWW and I learned about what the amazing serendipitous power search engines provided. Today I have the impression that my students never even got started to search and have just been taking to themselves. This is only slightly an exaggeration. I hope I am NOT in the same position as my colleagues who lamented the passing of the printed world.

I tend to share the sentiments expressed by Christopher.

I have just returned from Tomsk State University (RU), who have hosted a conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, with over 900 participants. Apart from the amazing hospitality we were accorded, the high standard of professionalism of participants was also noteworthy. There were a dozen parallel tracks and it became obvious that "learning" has now a wider meaning than it ever had. Indeed there may be need to regard it as umbrella term for a variety of cognitive and affective processes.

Take machine learning, for example. Should it be regarded as learning? During the concluding panel session it was decided not to. As an educationalist I concur, but we need to set criteria. Specifically, we may clarify what we actually mean when we use the term "learning".

Learning definitely has changed with the availability of new technologies. But educating is a lot more, because it places learning in the context of human development. And, as Christopher said, we may indeed end up lamenting the passing of the printed world.

Printed and audio words from treasure island.

Thank you Leopold,

I have to mention is there is a new but fairly rare species of students that are very bookish.

I call them the Pirate Librarians.

These students, postdocs and professors often wander about with private collections of over 5,000 books and audiobooks. This is more than a typical bookstore stocked. Usually, they have an electronic document manager software like Calibre just to deal with their cornucopia. Their sources are varied but often visible under our noses.

Take for example the duo of youtube.com and clipconverter.cc.

Go query youtube with "audiobook" ( 6,280,000 results)

"audiobooks" (5,480,000 results) then convert the video of your choice to an mp3 wth clipconverter.cc or the like.

A google search with game of thrones epub or Harry Potter pdf

has yielded adequate copies of those books recently. Or you can visit Library Genesis at its many mirrors such as http://libgen.io/

There millions of books from astrophysics to mangas are found.

An interesting side note: Library Genesis supposedly has its roots in a Genetics lab in the old Soviet Union. There, "genetics" was forbidden by Lenin and considered a capitalist plot to own nature itself. So the lab had little funding to pay for outside research papers. They formed a site to share what papers they and other Soviet research centers had bought and this grew into Libgen.

Have these Pirate Librarians read or listened to all of their collections?

No, but I have seen them continually reading books from screens, something myself in my dotage am incapable of doing;-))

What effect does this universal accessibility to the printed word and the audiobook have on on our brains, work, and life. Well, that is an interesting story to follow.

An interesting reading

Shaping the University of the Future: Using Technology to Catalyse Change in University Learning and Teaching

SJ Marshall - 2018

https://books.google.co.cr/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vidFDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=teaching+and+exponential+technology+&ots=LHb8zb04jh&sig=7pgRlgFMHEWo594X_zM9mFuOO3k&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=teaching%20and%20exponential%20technology&f=false

@ Christopher Gerard Yukna

Thank for this elaborated overview on how the information environment is actually changing. I really enjoyed reading your thorough analysis especially your closing sentence stroke me:

" Ten years ago and earlier I was impressed with what my students acquired from the WWW and I learned about what the amazing serendipitous power search engines provided. Today I have the impression that my students never even got started to search and have just been taking to themselves. "

In a similar vein, many recent scholarly papers emphasis the overestimation of students and citizens alike of general information literacy skills (see below this text a list of literature). Due to the misconception of digital natives, teachers and students assume that these skills naturally develop. The risk of merely assuming that students automatically develop a complex set of skills to find and process reliable (online) sources and make use of them, hampers responsible processing of information. In a world of misinformation and 'fake news' the risks are at high stake and we as educators should be more cautious here.

My questions would be:

How can we better place information skills in our teaching/curriculum?

Any best practices how to develop information literate students in and outside the classroom?

Thank you for your responses!

Further readings

Chen, K. N., Lin, P. C., & Chang, S. S. (2011). Integrating library instruction into a problem-based learning curriculum. Aslib Proceedings, 63(5), 517-532. doi:10.1108/00012531111164996

Siddiq, F., Gochyyev, P., & Wilson, M. (2017). Learning in Digital Networks – ICT literacy: A novel assessment of students' 21st century skills. Computers & Education, 109, 11-37. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2017.01.014

Frerejean, J., van Strien, J. L. H., Kirschner, P. A., & Brand-Gruwel, S. (2016). Completion strategy or emphasis manipulation? Task support for teaching information problem solving. Computers in Human Behavior, 62, 90-104. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.048

de Bruin, A. B. H., & van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2017). Bridging Cognitive Load and Self-Regulated Learning Research: A complementary approach to contemporary issues in educational research. Learning and Instruction, 51, 1-9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.06.001

Students tend to acquire and process information quickly but it is necessary to exercise it, a strictly consultative learning should not predominate.

It is not enough to know how to access information, it will always be necessary to mentally retain some important nuclei of that information.

Every day the access to information is simplified more, but the exercise must be the complement.

It was very criticized and with justice, an education that abused the memory, encyclopedic, now we are surrounded by the danger of ephemeral learning, we learn to forget, we consult to solve problems through the assisted software. Every day the tools of the computer free us mentally of something new and this is an inevitable phenomenon.

Good points, Reinaldo especially about through assisted software. It is had to imagine but in 1997 there were almost no companies that would hire the most gifted mathematician or the cleverest accountant if they could not use a spread sheet. Twenty years later, in her book Gigged the Gig Economy, Sara Kessler recounts how software and swarms of experts furnish more accurate economic reports for industrial clients that used to take months ... in days, and without an office, commute or ever meeting face to face. And she gives countless other astounding examples from research to law. What I find disconcerting is that only a very small elite percentage of humanity is able or even aware of these "powerful techniques and communities." I do understand the importance to the educational community and perhaps the threat to all professions. But in 1997, I understood the landscape, today, well other than MAYBE stopping teaching and visiting Silicon valley and China full time I do not see how anyone could have an overview. And in a week it will be exponentially worse.

BTW it is strangely odd that the rest of the gig workers (by far the majority) are doing scut work at uber or mechanical turk.

The race between education and technology

Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F Katz

Inequality in the 21st Century, 49-54, 2018

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429968372/chapters/10.4324%2F9780429499821-10

Rethinking education in the age of technology: The digital revolution and schooling in America

Allan Collins, Richard Halverson

Teachers College Press, 2018

https://books.google.com.co/books?hl=es&lr=&id=eRhWDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=info:gx_MUiWyFREJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=UjN_rknpwA&sig=0a60IbdTKJvTNpAwDZj7ZoO1E-k#v=onepage&q&f=false

We live in the age of the 'flipped classroom' and students are encouraged to take control of their own learning. There have never been more resources at their disposal, and students who are at 'Downtown Metropolitan University' can access teaching materials from Harvard, which they may find advantageous. I wonder, though, whether students tend to skim all of this wealth of material, so that surface learning is facilitated whereas deep learning requires the same old-fashioned techniques it has always done.

Christine, what this means is that students now have access to a wealth of sources for their research. Our university library has on-line access to thousands of journal articles in all kinds of subjects. Access is provided to over 360 criminal justice journals alone (I teach criminal justice). The practical aspect of this is that I tell students to access numerous sources when they are writing their term papers or doing their research projects. Oh, the library actually has books too. It is not just a coffee shop.

Handbook of Technology Education

Marc J. de Vries

https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007%2F978-3-319-44687-5