March 19, 2010

Professional blogs – a treasure too frequently overlooked in higher education

Image: Matt Elsberry

I teach professional English for first year BBA students who specialize in computer systems, web design, information networks and software development. These are some really bright students, they have graduated from high school with good grades, they are motivated and skillful. One of the latest task I gave them was to follow two professional blogs (in English, of course) and write a report about what they’ve learned and what they thought about the blogs. I and my colleague worked out a good list of blogs concentrating on web design, gave it to the students and asked everyone to pick their favorite ones to follow.

To be honest, we thought we wouldn’t need the list. We thought the students would know better than us what the interesting blogs of their field of study were.

The reports were a shock to me. Not that they weren’t good – they were very well written and very much to the point – but there was this one comment that appeared in one report after another after another.

Many of the students had never read a professional blog before. Some of them had never thought there would even be such thing as a professional blog. This was a whole new discovery for the students, and they reported having learned a whole lot of new things they hadn’t learned at the university. They had discovered that the blogs had the very latest information of their field and found following blogs a wonderful way of keeping up-to-date with their professional development.

We knew this, didn’t we? We know that high-quality professional blogs are one of the great blessings of social web. It’s such basic knowledge that we sometimes forget to mention it as an example when people ask what good social media is for them. (My partner is preparing a social media guide and coaching for entrepreneurs, and he hadn’t thought of mentioning this because it felt so self-evident). The question is, how is it possible that the students didn’t have a clue?

I’m afraid the answer is sad: they didn’t have a clue because they never heard anything about blogs in high school. One of the greatest tools for acquiring up-to-date information (and for participating in discussions about it, for sharing experiences and for connecting with like-minded people) has been utterly, totally, absolutely ignored in the school that was supposed to provide all-round education. And worse still, the same ignorance very often tends to continue in higher education.

This is not even funny. This is wrong. I feel bad for these bright young people who invest in their future, work hard to perform well in high school and to get accepted in the university, trusting for the school system to provide them with the best possible tools for professional success. We must live up to their expectations, and a good way to start is to take a closer look at the curriculum, learning environments and working methods in our schools.

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February 23, 2010

On Internet, democracy, hierarchies and education

Image: rhoadeecha

I’m a big fan of democracy and low hierarchy. The idea of an authority regulating the flow of information or limiting people’s access to certain resources is intolerable (Yes, I’m one of the many who embraced Google’s threat to leave China rather than submit to the local government information policy), and I find it very easy to believe that companies with transparent management and low hierarchical systems are the most potential winners.

Internet, and more recently social web, have lowered the barriers and blurred the lines between the more and the less powerful. Now it’s possible to reach the previously unreachable economic and academic leaders through their blogs, follow them on Twitter, maybe even add them as friends on Facebook. Blogs and Wikipedia have changed the entire idea of creating and distributing information: what used to require money and power is now accessible to anyone.

Relevance of the information is also determined in a democratic way: instead of a circle of high-esteemed authorities the evaluation is done by everyone. The frequency of clicks, in-built tagging and evaluation systems of applications and the recommendations of ordinary people are what count. In his insightful blog post (The Google lesson for management) Esko Kilpi aptly compares this phenomenon with academic citation indexing which is based on responsive rather than predictive linking and encourages companies to learn from it.

What can education learn from it? Being tightly – perhaps more tightly than any other field of business – connected to information, education must surely be affected by the evolution of the (post) information society. Does the democratization of information distribution and evaluation make the teacher one of the authorities of the old world that irresistibly drifts towards oblivion as hierarchies grow lower and lower? From now on, students will choose their own learning material, find it by googling or get it from their peers through online social networks, study it and present their e-portfolio based on their free-choice materials to a tutor (who by this time is the only employee of the brave new cost-efficient university)?

Education has a problem in what comes Internet and democracy and on the other side academic tradition and hierarchies. The problem is that most people have enormous difficulty in fitting both in the same sentence. They would either have the new and completely discard the old, or desperately hold on to the old and blindly reject the new. (Another problem is mixing the concepts of information and knowledge: information is something you can google, knowledge you must build yourself, and in this process a good teacher comes in invaluable).

The world has changed, and we can’t reverse the development. No matter how we try, Internet is not going away, network organizations, social web, distributed expertise, globalization and the new communication system (networked and from many to many instead of one-way and from one to many) is not going away. Education must take this into account. Learning environments and working methods must be modified to reflect the reality of today, not the one of the industrialization.

On the other hand, the world has not been reinvented. Whatever is new has been built on something that already existed before. We did not wake up one day and realize our bodies had been transferred into a new reality. It’s very dangerous to ignore or underestimate things like academic leadership and academic tradition.

Tara Brabazon, the author of University of Google mentions in her book that her student handed in a study about Beatles and popular music. The references consisted of different sub-pages of the Beatles fan page – and nothing else. This is not an isolated student, it’s a wider problem than that. My students have a hard time understanding why it’s not OK to copy+paste from the Internet when writing a report. “But someone else has already said it so well, why do I need to rewrite it?” See what I mean with mixing information with knowledge? A new type of literacy is clearly needed.

As I said in the beginning, I’m a big fan of democracy and low hierarchy. I’m a big fan of networked expertise and social web. I’m also a big fan of quality research and all the great thinkers and researchers – the academic leaders – who have contributed in the rich academic legacy we can build our future knowledge on. Celebrating the democratization of information and networked expertise doesn’t mean ignoring the significance of teaching, guidance and academic quality of education. The two do fit in the same sentence and we’d better start fitting them in the same reality in our schools and universities.

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February 15, 2010

Innovation is hard work – how can higher education help?

Image: maxgiani

Greetings from Kokkola, where I attended an innovation seminar organized by Central Ostrobothnia University of Applied Sciences. The organizers had done a marvelous job; the invited speakers were exceptionally interesting and the theme session I participated (virtual and creative structures in education) was to-the-point and raised relevant discussion. The session had participants from all over Finland through a webconference.

The theme was innovation and expertise capital, and during the two days these topics were approached from various interesting angles. As a result, we managed to draw a clearer image on the nature and preconditions of innovation, as well as the greatest hindrances that prevent innovation in higher education and business life. Being concerned about the ability of higher education to keep up with the changing world, I found the presentations and discussion extremely important.

Dr. Elisabeth Helander, former director for territorial co-operation, urban actions and outermost regions at the EU Directorate General for Regional policy posed a question on whether Finland’s expertise capital is sufficient for the globalizing economy. She had a clear message for universities: more international cooperation, better language skills and high-quality research.

Innovation doesn’t flourish in a homogeneous environment, but the variety of viewpoints and ideas creates it. Therefore intercultural collaboration is such an essential factor in building an innovation society. It is also something that Finland is astonishingly poor at. Within the EU, there are only a few former communist countries that are less international than Finland. There is just a handful of university staff and researchers from outside Finland. The quality of research has started to come down. Language skills are a problem: intermediate English is just not enough for top performance in the global playground. The situation is very alarming indeed.

Too narrow degrees and qualification requirements are also a major hindrance for innovation. This is also a problem very typical in Finland. To get a certain job you need to have a degree in engineering (quite typically, any degree in engineering won’t do, but it has to be either electrical, construction, mechanic or something else), and to gain the degree in engineering you need to study a very strictly defined combination of courses. This further enhances homogeneity, which further hinders true innovation.

Professor Riitta Viitala from the University of Vaasa listed collaboration, motivation, time and space as key factors in creating an innovation society. She also emphasized the role of true leadership and referred to a study which indicated that the world-class corporations and success stories all shared a few things in common: transparent leadership, engagement of personnel in decision-making and investment in professional development. This is something higher education institutions have a lot to learn from. The world’s top universities would not be where there are if they didn’t allow their teachers resources for professional development and research. The sad truth often seems to be that teachers are so overworked with teaching and management that there is little or no room for personal development. This is a very, very shortsighted policy, but too often the reality.

Hannele Pohjola, director at the Confederation of Finnish Industries had very similar views. She pointed out that the structures of industry and business life have changed radically and therefore we need new ways of thinking and new type of collaboration. ICT and globalization have changed the world and business models, and the change can’t be stopped or reversed.

Education can’t afford maintaining the status quo either. International collaboration, high-quality research and new educational structures are essential. An interesting remark in the discussion that followed the presentation was the fact that Finland produces an excessive amount of engineering degrees compared with almost any other country, whereas the amount of business degrees is relatively low. Hannele Pohjola saw the lack of entrepreneurship and business skills a problem and thought it would be beneficial to add them in the comprehensive school curriculum. I must say I agree.

Dr Teemu Santonen from Laurea UAS clarified the differences in the old world and the post-information society. He pointed out that whereas previously it was an advantage to be skillful enough to do everything by oneself (or within the company), nowadays success is increasingly dependent on the skill of networking and collaboration. A major change is in the communication system: people cease to be consumers of information or entertainment and become prod-users. The greatest business potential can now be found in the “gray area”, the undefined and uncategorized, the businesses that can’t be listed under traditional headings on the yellow pages.

The conference further strengthened the view I had for quite some time: higher education can’t go on doing things the “good old way”. There’s one curious thing about the change: it’s really rapid. There’s no time to stay still and observe and see how things turn out and then – maybe – react, which is something many educational institutions clearly would like to do. We need innovative minds in order to cope with the evolving challenges, and I truly hope that higher education will be able to better support the innovation instead of blocking it. That’s what education is for after all, isn’t it?

Here’s the program of the conference (in Finnish)

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January 26, 2010

Schools lost and puzzled with multitasking and ubiquitous media

Image: eflon

“The average young American spends practically every waking minute – except for the time in school – using electronic media.”

This is how an article on Thursday’s International Herald Tribune starts. The title goes: “Today’s youth always ‘on’, and then some”. These are results of a recent study. The results were a shock to the authors of the study: they had believed in 2005 that media use of the youth had already reached a ceiling – there were just not enough hours in a day for more growth. But they didn’t take multitasking into account. The kids can listen to music, play games and chat with a friend all at the same time. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that of the time used for electronic media, the children dedicate less than an hour a day for traditional channels like TV.

Of course, everybody is worried sick with the situation. Parents are doing their best to limit the media consumption of their children. Other studies have been quick to indicate a connection between heavy media use and several problems, for example lower grades in school.

I’m not saying this isn’t true. The lower grades can be proven easily. It’s not something you can have an opinion about; a lower grade is a lower grade, and apparently the children that use media a lot are more likely to get lower grades.

But why?

The easy answer, of course, is that they are so distracted with other things that they don’t have time to do their homework or study for the exams or write their reports. I’m very sure this is true, and a real part of the problem. But could it be – and now you can call me a heretic if you like – just could it be that there’s just too wide a gap between the school reality and the real-life reality? Could it be that the curriculum, the learning environments and the working methods represent a world that’s no longer here? Could it be that it’s one of the reasons to the lower grades of the children who use all their time (except for school hours) for communicating, acquiring information and solving problems in a completely different way, with completely different tools than the ways and tools of the school?

Dr. Michael Rich from Children’s Hospital Boston, the director of the Center on Media and Child’s Health was also interviewed in the article. He said that “…with media use so ubiquitous, it is time to stop arguing over whether it is good or bad and accept it as part of children’s environment, like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat”.

Ubiquitous media is here to stay. It has changed the way people work, learn and communicate. This is the reality at work places and in business life. The only exception – as we can also see in this article – is the school. Is it wise to fight the windmills and try to maintain a status quo that’s no longer there? Do we teachers understand the world these students and children will have to work in? Could it be that the behavior we are so quick to condemn and label as “bad habits”- such as multitasking and effective use of ubiquitous media – might in fact be the essential skills the children will need in order to be successful members of the society? Instead, we should realize our responsibility to teach the children to put their valuable multitasking skills into productive use. Children are smart enough to learn to use electronic media on their own, but they need guidance in media literacy and professional use of ubiquitous media. Who is going to teach them that?

Source: Today’s youth always ‘on’, and then some. Tamar Lewin in International Herald Tribune, Thursday, January 21.2010.

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December 19, 2009

Beware! Social media might get you!

Image: Stuant63

Here we go again. I was going to start the holiday and not write anything more before Christmas, but couldn’t keep quiet after reading the latest issue of the Opettaja magazine (the biggest teachers’ magazine in Finland). This was the first time social media made it to the cover, and the story itself was four pages, one of the main articles in the issue.

No reason to celebrate, though. The message was not about bringing an enriching social aspect to the education, nor was it about the changes in the communication system in working life. Oh no. It was about the horrible dangers of social media.

If there were any teachers who had started to consider extending their learning environments outside the classroom context, they sure won’t want to do it after reading this article. It described the most fearful threats, even the threat of physical violence as the result of using social media applications, and went as far as to conclude that most American social media tools are actually illegal from the perspective of EU legislation. Instead of spreading objective information, the tone was very clearly biased against social media.

Just how much fear can there be? In a country like Finland, where the national character is a bit timid and cautious, many readers are likely to buy stories like this. Here people appreciate safety and stability more than innovation or success. And if one of the main areas where innovation and development take place – Web 2.0 – is labeled as a threat and people avoid it the best they can, they are never going to see the larger social phenomenon the social media reflects: openness, networking and collaboration.

We don’t need more discouragement here! Stories like this are the worst kind of disservice to Finnish education. There are very real threats facing the education system, but they don’t come from social media. They come from blind-eyed suspicion and lagging behind the inevitable change in the world.

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December 18, 2009

Autumn term 2009: Awakenings, Social Media and New Perspectives

This is my last day at work this year. The autumn term 2009 has been a very eventful one – hectic, actually, to say the least. It’s not just that there’s been a lot of work, but the changes in the outside world have been rapid and I think I’ve grown to fully understand the scale of the shift during this autumn term. I’ve known before that education has to take a look in the mirror and start keeping up with the rest of the world, but now I have a much clearer idea of what it actually means: it is definitely not a simple technical development, but a social revolution that affects the way organizations work and people collaborate. It’s a profound change in the communication system. I’m more convinced than ever that we’ve got to start acting right away, the time to observe and see what’s going on is over.

During this autumn, some changes have taken place in my own working environment. Some teachers have started to use social media tools in education, and many of the ones who haven’t, are planning to do so. Optional courses in online teaching and social media for both teacher students and teaching staff have been arranged at Tampere University of Applied Sciences. Learning environments are being rethought, and many teachers see the insufficiency of classroom-based lecturing as a teaching method. But as my colleague said just this week in a staff meeting, there’s one problem with all the things we’re doing: the speed. It’s way too slow.

I taught the optional course on e-learning tools and social media for teacher students, and was also one of the teachers for the staff training course. Therefore I’ve had the privilege to see and hear what teachers and teachers-to-be think about these issues. I’ve been very happy to find out that the teacher student have really benefited from the course. Many reported that it had opened their eyes to see what is really going on. Some felt a bit stressed with all the changes and the rapid development, but nobody thought that things could just remain the same. Each and every one wanted to expand their expertise to new learning environments and toward more authentic learning. This was one of my absolute highlights of the term!

I’ve also studied and read a lot myself. Somehow this blog has also led me to write much more than before – I’ve never written so many conference papers and articles during one term! All of my writings have something to do with the core message: the world has changed and won’t stop changing. Education has not changed nearly in the same pace. It should, or we’ll get run over by an unpleasant truth one day: they might just not need us anymore.

I’m not going to leave it here, of course, but will continue with the same theme in 2010. One of the greatest things I’ve managed to do this autumn is a research plan for PhD studies. In brief, I’ll examine how the meta-skills requirements of the working life have changed, and study how European higher education is answering to the new challenges. But more about that later!

Now I’m leaving for a holiday. It’s going to be good to give myself a break with all these concerns and relax for Christmas. I wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas time as well!

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December 7, 2009

SITE 2010 in San Diego – see you there!

Image: Nick Chill

Last week I got some good news: both of the papers I had sent to the SITE 2010 (SITE = Society for Technology and Teacher Education) conference in San Diego, California, were accepted, one as a roundtable and the other as full paper. I’m very happy to have this great opportunity to share the results of my and my colleagues’ studies in this highly appreciated forum.

The roundtable is written with Marjatta Myllylä and it focuses on social competence in virtual working environments. I wrote about the same theme in my previous post, so I’ll not go into more detail here.

The full paper goes with the title: “The world is changing – what about the teacher?”, and I wrote it together with my colleague, Timo Nevalainen. In the paper we discuss the social and technological changes taking place in the society and their impact on conceptions of knowledge, learning and expertise.

Our statement is that the changes go way beyond simple technological development; it’s first and foremost a fundamental change in social behavior and it affects the ways organizations are run, ideas are spread and knowledge is created. Therefore it’s something we teachers cannot choose to respond to or not – the question is not whether or not it will affect education, but how exactly it will do it. These are issues I’ve been thinking and writing about a lot, also in this blog. I’m very excited to share these thoughts with education professionals from different parts of the world. I’m looking forward to extremely interesting discussions!

Hope to see you in San Diego!

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