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Being TEQSA ready – Curriculum reform in the age of Google
With so much information available online, and changing workplace needs, universities need to take this opportunity to examine what and how they teach writes Roger Hadgraft.
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Roger, very informative and real, well done…I like it..
cheers
Samuel
Hi Roger
Great article, and very pertinent.
We only need to look at what MIT, Harvard, Uni of Penn et al, and notice just how they are generating opportunity during such complex change…they have shifted from having online courses as an ‘added extra’, to shifting into overdrive, embracing online learning as core elements within new L&T models. Their edX and MITx free online courses are exemplars of where the online opportunities are taking us.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/education/harvard-and-mit-team-up-to-offer-free-online-courses.html?_r=1
So I wonder how long it will be before Australian universities follow suit….if ever!?….if so…perhaps these innovations are what are needed to capture the true outcome standards and vision set by TEQSA.
…my apologies, I pressed submit to early…
The most important and paradoxical fact shaping the future of online learning is this: A brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion. If you think about how learning actually happens, you can discern many different processes. There is absorbing information. There is reflecting upon information as you reread it and think about it. There is scrambling information as you test it in discussion or try to mesh it with contradictory information. Finally there is synthesis, as you try to organize what you have learned into an argument or a paper.
Online education mostly helps students with Step 1. As Richard A. DeMillo of Georgia Tech has argued, it turns transmitting knowledge into a commodity that is cheap and globally available. But it also compels colleges to focus on the rest of the learning process, which is where the real value lies.
Jason Quick