Cyber Change: Learning In Our Connected World

This year’s AECT International Convention features three distinguished speakers who represent different disciplines as well as different regions of the world. Their contributions represent the full range of the conference theme of integrative approaches, which we interpret broadly to include cross-disciplinary efforts as well as efforts that span human development as well as the complete life-cycle of a learning system.
 

Daphne Rainey, National Science Foundation Daphne Rainey is a Program Director in the National Science Foundation Directorate of Education and Human Resources. She earned her doctorate at the University of Colorado, Boulder and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Rainey has worked in industry and academe as a Bioinformatics Scientist in the area of genome science. She works on cyberlearning initiatives through the National Science Digital Library and Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement and Math Science Partnership programs. Dr. Rainey has worked to introduce current and future scientists to cyber-infrastructure through the use of genomics through training and curricula development at the high school, college and postgraduate levels. Dr. Rainey’s keynote presentation at AECT 2009 is entitled “Cyberlearning: Advancing Innovations in Education.” She will address how the development of cyber-capabilities and networking has changed the face of our society. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is the federal agency in the USA charged with advancing basic science and engineering research and education. The Foundation has a complementary mandate to ensure that American students are adequately prepared with the mathematical science and engineering skills needed to operate in a complex, technology-intensive society. Building a national and international cyber-learning infrastructure is considered critical to educating and advancing our society by making optimal use of fundamental knowledge, discoveries, and resources that will inspire, inform, and educate people of all ages. Her presentation will explore some of the new concepts and opportunities in cyber-learning and examine the NSF’s efforts to cyber-bridge teaching and learning with cutting-edge IT capabilities

Peter Goodyear, University of Sydney Peter Goodyear is Professor of Education at the University of Sydney and a Senior Fellow of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. He is co-director of the University’s Centre for Research on Computer-Supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo). His research addresses educational implications of technological change. Over the last 30 years he has published widely on learning and teaching with new technology, the design and management of productive learning environments and the capabilities needed for successful participation in a knowledge society (learning to ‘think for a living’). His most recent book, written with Rob Ellis, is Students' experiences of e-learning in higher education: the ecology of sustainable innovation. (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2009). He is editor in chief of Instructional Science – recognized internationally as one of the leading journals in educational research and the learning sciences. He has provided expert advice and consultancy to a wide range of organizations in the public and private sectors, in Europe, North America and Australia. He has been using IT in teaching, at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels, since the early 1980s. He designed and teaches on the University of Sydney’s innovative Masters in Learning Sciences and Technology. The title of Prof. Goodyear’s keynote address is “Learning through Inquiry and Teaching-as-design.” His presentation will start by summarising outcomes from recent research on how university students approach complex inquiry-based learning tasks that involve significant use of educational technology. The research reveals significant variations in how students make sense of such challenges, how they negotiate between their own and their teachers’ goals, and how environmental factors influence the nature and outcomes of their learning activity. The discussion will focus on some of the ways in which students’ conceptions of learning, and other beliefs about learning, interact with their technological choices and with their use (or non-use) of the various kinds of support that their teachers provide. This picture of students exercising autonomy in their learning, but making choices that are not always optimal, will then be used as a backdrop for explaining a conception of university teaching called ‘teaching-as-design’. Peter will sketch a model of teaching-as-design and then focus on forms of knowledge and ways of knowing that stand a reasonable chance of improving teachers’ educational design activity. Finally, he will draw out some implications for an educational technology research agenda that is fit for the purpose of improving the integrative challenges of teaching-as-design.

Andrei Podolskij, Moscow State University Andrei Podolskij is Professor Psychology at Moscow State University in Russia. His academic background involves both developmental and educational psychology. His research experience has focused on cognitive development with implications for teacher preparation and instructional planning. This background nicely exemplifies the kind of integrative approach we wish to encourage at AECT 2009. Prof. Podolskij has devoted his entire career to seeing that the findings of psychology find their way into practical applications in teacher training and in the classroom. The title of Prof. Podolskij’s keynote address is “On Developmental Dimensions of the Instructional Design Knowledge Base.” According to Andrei, there is a simple and obvious condition for any psychological knowledge to be accepted and used by practitioners – both teachers (trainers, instructors) and instructional designers. This condition is that a practitioner should be able to do significantly more, both in explanation and in practice with such knowledge than would be possible on the basis of common sense or practical experience alone. Two steps are necessary to ensure that this condition is fulfilled. The first, a general intellectual procedure, or a general psychologically based explaining and orienting tool should be found that would not only enable users to analyze many aspects of concrete schooling, training, or instruction situations in terms of modern learning and instruction psychology but that would also attract them toward doing so. The second, the rules of application (implementation) of such a procedure to a real practical situation must be defined. There are psychological aspects (or psychological sides) related to each of these two steps. The psychological aspects of the first step belong to the fundamental issues of human learning and developmental processes and their interrelations as well. The psychological side of the second step primarily relates to the conditions that facilitate or constrain an application of the fundamental knowledge in contemporary schooling, training, and instruction practice. Podolskij will distinguish two different aspects: (a) the developmental dimension which requires planning and designing, along with determining the short- and the long-term developmental consequences and the extent to which learning/teaching processes influence the student's cognitive, personal, moral, social, and emotional development, and (b) developmental changes that can also be viewed as a direct and immediate aim of the learning/teaching processes. His presentation describes two types of developmental dimensions of the instructional design and instructional technology and also considers main paths to apply those dimensions in the instructional designer’s and teacher/trainer/instructor’s work.