Employability in a Global Era: How ELearning Can Help'

1
Employability in a Global Era How ELearning Can
Help.

• Dr Iain Doherty

Friday 13th November 2009
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Outline

• The Global Economy and the Global Era.
• Employability in a Global Era.
• Educating students for the Global Era.
• How Elearning can help.
• A Strategic Vision for Elearning.
• Institutional challenges and suggested solutions.
• Questions.

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The Global Economy

• Characteristics of a global economy
• Interconnectedness as companies carry out their
  various operations (research, development,
  manufacturing, assembly, quality assurance) in
  different countries across the world
• Free (or at least freer) movement of goods,
  services and labour transnationally
• Technological advances in communication and
  transportation leading to a shrinking world
  and
• Changes in the extent of global competition with
  e.g. the rise of low cost manufacturing centers.

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The Global Era

• The concept of the global economy is closely
  aligned with the concept of the global era.
• There are least two differences
• The drivers that have led to socio-cultural
  changes are not necessarily always economic in
  nature and
• Changes have impacted on all aspects of our lives
  i.e. not just our work lives
• We can see this if we look at the defining
  characteristics of the global era.

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The Global Era

• Characteristics of a global era (Suarez-Orozco,
  2005)
• Mobile capital
• Mobile production, distribution, and consumption
  of goods and services
• Mobile populations people and
• Mobile cultures beliefs and values.
• There are new challenges not just in our work
  lives but also in our daily living e.g. different
  people, different values, different religions.

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Living in a Global Era

• This mobility entails dealing with
• Rapid change
• New opportunities
• Opaque others
• Pronounced differences
• Pervasive technologies
• Abundant information
• Instant communication
• A detailed analysis of the global era would
  suggest that our students need to cope with
  complexity.

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Education for a Global Era

• The question that we need to ask and answer
  before we start to think about using technologies
  in our teaching is, What are the aims and
  requirements of education in a global era?
• When we have the answer to this question we will
  be able to use technologies constructively in our
  teaching.
• Lets say that the job of education is to prepare
  students to take their place as global citizens.

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Complexity and Complication

• This preparation requires that we set our
  students on the path to realizing their full
  potential in the context of a complex global era.
• Complexity refers to a very involved arrangement
  of multiple parts that can be difficult to
  understand and difficult to deal with working
  definition.
• The quotations on the following three slides
  capture the essence of why this is a necessary
  goal for education.

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Education in a Global Era

• An education for the global era must engender
  life long habits of body, mind and heart. It must
  tend to the social and emotional sensibilities
  needed for cross-cultural work empathy and
  learning with and from others who happen to
  differ in race religion national, linguistic or
  social origin values and world view
  (Suarez-Orozco, 2005).

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Education in a Global Era

• The work of education will henceforth be tending
  to the cognitive skills, interpersonal
  sensibilities, and cultural sophistication of
  young people whose lives will be engaged in local
  contexts yet suffused with larger transnational
  realities. An education that is neither
  anachronistic, nor irrelevant to the new world
  will need to focus on the two domains that define
  the global era difference and complexity
  (Suarez-Orozco, 2005).

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Education in a Global Era

• To succeed in a chaotic environment, graduates
  will need to be intellectually resilient,
  cross-culturally and scientifically literate,
  technologically adept, ethically anchored, and
  fully prepared for a future of continuous and
  cross-disciplinary learning (The National
  Leadership Council for Liberal Education and
  America's Promise, 2007, P.15)

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Graduate Attributes in a Global Era

• At an institutional level we are concerned with
  what our students look like when they leave us.
• We detail what our students will look like in our
  graduate and postgraduate profiles.
• These profiles describe the knowledge, skills and
  behaviours that we expect our students to have as
  a result of spending time with us.
• We need a graduate profile for the global era.

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Graduate Attributes in a Global Era

• A breadth and depth of knowledge that will enable
  students to act in a complex, world
• Students need to be able to understand and
  respond to the physical, cultural, economic and
  technological forces that shape our lives.
• Solid generic intellectual and practical skills
  such as critical and creative thinking, problem
  solving, written and oral communication skills
• Giving students the ability to get things done in
  a highly effective way.

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Graduate Attributes in a Global Era

• A developed sense of personal and social
  responsibility
• Various competencies including intercultural
  awareness, ethical reasoning, an understanding of
  the greater good.
• Increase in ability to apply subject discipline
  knowledge in order to solve complex real world
  problems
• Challenges in the work place are messy and do
  not have an answer.

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Graduate Profiles

• University of Auckland has 1 graduate and 3
  postgraduate profiles
• Graduate Profile
• Research Postgraduate Profile
• Coursework Postgraduate Profile
• Doctoral Postgraduate Profile

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Auckland Graduate Profile

• Broadly speaking the Auckland Graduate Profile
  seems to prepare students for a global era.
• The 3 areas capture the 4 aims of education
• Specialist knowledge (tends to emphasize abstract
  knowledge, concepts, theories)
• General intellectual skills and capacities
  (breadth of knowledge and higher order cognitive
  skills including problem solving) and
• Developed personal qualities (interpersonal and
  intrapersonal skills, ethical behavior, civic
  duty).

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Inculcating the Attributes

• An education for the global era is an education
  for lifelong cognitive, behavioral, and
  relational engagement with the world
  (Suarez-Orozco, 2005).
• At the granular level these attributes should be
  realized in the curriculum and inculcated through
  the teaching process.
• Writing learning outcomes, creating teaching and
  learning activities and assessing students in
  order to develop students knowledge, skills and
  attitudes.

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Learning Outcomes in a Global Era

• The learning outcomes for these domains were set
  out by Bloom and others.
• Cognitive Domain (Bloom, 1956)
• Affective Domain (Krathwohl et al, 1973) and
• Psychomotor Domain (Armstrong, 1970).
• The outcomes for the cognitive domain specify the
  necessity of teaching our students higher order
  thinking skills.
• The necessity of these skills is not specific to
  the global era.

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Learning Outcomes in a Global Era

• Learning domains remain in place but the there
  will be new outcomes in addition to the
  established outcomes e.g.
• Higher order thinking skills are still required
• Cultural competency must now be seen as a
  necessity and
• A sense of civic, global and ethical
  responsibility is not an option.
• Will there be new learning domains e.g. a
  specific domain for cultural competency?

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Breadth and Depth of Knowledge

• Breadth and depth of knowledge have in theory
  at least been an aspect of higher education in
  some countries for a long time.
• General education in the United Kingdom
  University system (Cronk, 2004)
• The ideal of liberal education in the United
  States (The National Leadership Council for
  Liberal Education and America's Promise, 2007).
• We may be talking about realizing an established
  aim in a new context.

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Introducing Technologies

• Jerome Bruner wrote that,
• In sum then, the teacher's task as communicator,
  model, and identification figure can be supported
  by a wise use of a variety of devices that expand
  experience, clarify it, and give it personal
  significance. There need be no conflict between
  the teacher and the aids to teaching. There will
  be no conflict if the development of aids takes
  into account the aims and the requirements of
  teaching (Bruner, 1997).

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Technologies in Education

• Technologies must be employed constructively to
  graduate students ready to take their place as
  global citizens.
• This can happen across the three domains of
  learning
• Cognitive (breadth, depth and higher order
  thinking)
• Psychomotor (particular physical skills required
  for professions but now more broadly e.g. people
  skills)
• Affective (beliefs, values, feelings, sympathy,
  empathy).

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Technologies in Education

• The following slides provide examples of how
  technologies might be used to realize the aim of
  graduating students ready to take their place as
  global citizens.
• Each use can be seen as supporting the aim of
  graduating students who are ready to take their
  place as global citizens.
• The majority of examples represent practice
  within the Faculty Medical Health Sciences.

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Specialist Knowledge

• Mastery of Knowledge
• Learning Management System (LMS) tends to be a
  file repository but students say they find
  information delivery useful.
• Mastery of Knowledge
• Students report lecture recordings are useful if
  they miss a lecture and for revision purposes.
• Dealing with conceptual difficulties
• Recorded PowerPoint narrations with integrated
  quizzes to facilitate student learning about drug
  interactions.

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Specialist Knowledge

• Current issues and debates in the field
• Instant access to journal articles through
  library subscriptions
• Instant access to conferences across the world
  through e.g. streaming video
• Instant access to conference debates through e.g.
  blogs written in a presentation, twitter feeds
  and
• Access to subject matter experts anywhere in the
  world through web pages, blogs, wikis, email,
  iTunes University, podcasts, vodcasts.

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Specialist Knowledge

• An understanding of the nature of subject
  discipline scholarship (characteristics,
  methodology, theoretical underpinnings).
• Students collaborate to write a grant proposal.
  Necessarily involves the use of technologies e.g.
  far easier to work online in a project management
  environment with a shared version of a single
  document and
• Models real life in which the Learning Technology
  Unit was involved in a project to support
  creation of a Surgical Research Network.

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Intellectual Skills and Capacities

• Critical, conceptual, reflective thinking
• Media rich case study engine that requires
  students to integrate knowledge from across the
  medical curriculum in order to solve the case.
• Intellectual openness and curiosity
• Lecturers challenging students through e.g. email
  discussion boards, Web 2.0 tools for
  communication.
• A capacity for creativity and originality
• The Web as a resource for inspiring and
  challenging students through access to
  information, discussion, debate.

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Intellectual Skills and Capacities

• Intellectual integrity, ethics of research
• A library resource will be available Faculty
  wide answering the needs of Faculty from all
  schools by teaching students information literacy
  skills.
• An ability to recognize when information is
  needed and a capacity to locate, evaluate and use
  this information effectively
• Problem based learning, project based learning
  with guidance to use print and digital resources.

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Intellectual Skills and Capacities

• An awareness of international and global
  dimensions of intellectual, political and
  economic activities
• U21 Health Project Visualizing Issues in Pharmacy
  which supports health interventions in developing
  countries.
• An ability to access, identify, organise and
  communicate knowledge effectively in both written
  and spoken English and/or Maori
• Centralized self-testing support resource for all
  students.

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Intellectual Skills and Capacities

• An ability to make appropriate use of advanced
  information and communication technologies
• Integration of information and communication
  technologies in a purposeful and constructive
  manner to aid learning and
• Web 2.0 applications and services integrated
  purposefully at a course level for research,
  analysis, and presentations.

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Personal Qualities

• A love and enjoyment of ideas, discovery and
  learning
• The best of the best from around the world.
  Listen to Oxford scholars on iTunes U.
• Working collaboratively and independently
• Web 2.0 tools ( blogs, wikis etc.) for
  collaborative learning.
• Self-discipline and an ability to plan and
  achieve personal and professional goals
• Pastoral care through online communication.

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Personal Qualities

• An ability to lead in the community, and a
  willingness to engage in constructive public
  discourse and to accept social and civic
  responsibilities
• Connecting with the healthcare community and with
  patients through use of collaboration tools and
  Web 2.0. e.g. The HIVE.
• Respect for values of others
• Faculty wide resource for the Maori domain so
  that all Faculty have access to the same
  information and support and can feel confident in
  what they teach in this area.

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Personal Qualities

• Personal and professional integrity and an
  awareness of the requirements of ethical
  behaviour
• Interprofessional learning initiative with the
  Faculty to connect students, health professionals
  and patients so that they can learn from with and
  about one another.
• Self management for students through e.g. The
  CALM Website

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A Strategic Vision

• An institution looking for a strategic vision for
  the use of information and communication
  technologies could do a lot worse than focus on
  the challenges of graduating students ready to
  take their place as global citizens e.g.
• The difficulty comes in translating the vision
  into reality.
• Historically, institutes of higher education have
  struggled with elearning.

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Institutional Challenges

• In the majority of institutions the potential of
  information and communication technologies for
  teaching and learning has gone largely
  unrealized.
• There is a significant gap between institutional
  strategic statements about elearning and the
  reality at the level of teaching.
• Lack of integration at a curriculum level means
  that information and communication technologies
  are an add on at course level.

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Institutional Challenges

• Lack of knowledge about graduate and postgraduate
  profiles.
• Lack of time and lack of incentives for lecturers
  to engage with information and communication
  technologies.
• Students perception that elearning is synonymous
  with information delivery.
• Students perception that the point of a
  university education is to get a piece of paper.

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Solutions

• Survey staff on their beliefs and attitudes on
  the value placed on teaching in the institution.
• Survey staff about their beliefs and attitudes
  about the usefulness of elearning.
• Survey staff on issues to do with time and
  incentives to innovate in teaching.
• Survey students on their beliefs and attitudes
  about elearning.
• Survey students on their beliefs about the
  purpose of education.

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References

• Armstrong, R. J. (Ed.). (1970). Developing and
  Writing Behavioural Objectives. Tucson, Arizona
  Educational Innovators Press.
• Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing Teaching Through
  Constructive Alignment. Higher Education, 32(3),
  347-364.
• Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational
  Objectives, the Classification of Educational
  Goals Handbook I Cognitive Domain. New York
  McKay.
• Cronk, G. (2004). Definitions and Systems of a
  General Education. Ventura College.

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References

• Krathwohl, D. R., Bloom, B. S., Masia, B. B.
  (1973). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, the
  Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook II
  Affective Domain. New York David McKay Co., Inc.
• Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. (2006).
  How Should Colleges Prepare Students To Succeed
  In Today's Global Economy? Based On Surveys Among
  Employers And Recent College Graduates. Conducted
  On Behalf Of The Association Of American Colleges
  And Universities. Washington DC.
• Suarez-Orozco, M. M. (2005). Rethinking Education
  in the Global Era. Phi Delta Kappan, (Nov ,2005).
  Retrieved from http//findarticles.com/p/articles/
  mi_6952/is_3_87/ai_n28318467/

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References

• The National Leadership Council for Liberal
  Education and America's Promise. (2007). College
  Learning For the New Global Century. A Report
  from the National Leadership Council for Liberal
  Education and America's Promise. Washington DC
  Association of American Colleges and
  Universities. Retrieved from http//www.aacu.org/l
  eap/documents/GlobalCentury_final.pdf