Digital Learning & Sustainable

Development: Opportunities,

risks and challenges

Prof. Albert Sangrà, PhD.Academic Director,

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

Barcelona, 24 November 2016

1) The Global World’s Challeges: going towards Digital Learning

• Consequences of going into the Digital Era (UNESCO docs)

• Digital Skills required for teachers & students (citizens) (UNESCO + OECD)

• SDG #4: Quality Education & Education for All (UN)

• Equity, participation and quality: the case of the developing countries and what

sustainability means

2) The benefits of the scenario: the opportunities

• The increase of online education

• The effectiveness (potential –flexibility …- and outcomes -% results-)

• The contribution to productivity (pay off, studies on that)

3) The risks

• Big data: doing business with your personal data

• Tech companies: the lack of ethics in business

• Bad pedagogy: mere translation of traditional patterns to new technologies

(MOOCs, etc.)

• A critical approach (Selwyn)

4) Final remarks: the challenges

• To look for the balance

• To be aware: do not accept every single proposition

• To be demanding with our practices

• What the universities are expected to do (!!!!) (not to embarce onine in a hurry,

go beyond MOOCs)

1) Global World’s Challenges: going towards Digital

Learning

2) Opportunities

3) Risks

4) Final remarks

Content

Global World’s Challenges

“If your time to you

Is worth savin’

Then your better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’.”

Bob Dylan

Information and

Knowledge Society

(Castells, 2001)

Internet is changing the

way economy, work,

communication, and also

education perform in the

society

UNESCO

Higher Education in the World Report 6Towards socially responsible HEI, globally and locally

engaged

OECD

Working Party on Measurement

and Analysis of the Digital

Economy SKILLS FOR A DIGITAL

WORLD 2016

A Skilled Workforce for Strong,

Sustainable and Balanced Growth 2016

Rationales for the use of ICT in Teaching and

Learning at Higher Education Institutions

• Enhancing the quality of teaching and learning

• Accommodating the learning style of millennials

• Increasing access to learning opportunities and flexibility for

students

• Developping skills and competències needed in the 21st.

Century

• Improving the cost-effectiveness of the system

(Bates & Sangrà, 2011)

Learning is changing

http://www.slideshare.net/courosa/why-social-networks-matter

[They’re digital natives]

http://www.slashgear.com/babys-first-ipad-24121114/

Opportunities

• Students involved in online distance education: 5.8 million (fall 2014)

• 2.85 million (taking all online)

• 2.97 million (taking some, but not all, courses at a distance)

• Growth rate of students taking at least one distance course: 3.9% (2013-

2014)

• Education level:

• 72.7% of undergraduate

• 38.7% of graduate

• Students not taking any distance education courses: 390,815 and

dropping down

Allen, E. & Seaman, J. (2016). Online Report Card. Tracking Online Education in the US

• E-Learning is the second more used method for training in companies

(43,5%)

Training for Employment 2014 Key findings (Fundación Tripartita para el Empleo)

• Traditional face-to-face training slows down in favour of e-learning

Beyond Knowledge (Barómetro del Observatorio Cegos, 2014)

• “The potential of e-learning to impact learning, society and economy in

developing countries, and to produce a worforce capable of leading

countries into globalized, knowlege-based economies is very relevant”

Michigan State University (2011). An Analysis of e-learning Impacts & Best

Practices in Developing Countries. The ICDT4D Program.

• UOC students had positive relative earnings gains

Carnoy, Jarillo, Castaño-Muñoz, Duart & Sancho-Vinuesa, (2012)

“With the inflow of an estimated $6 billion of venture

capital over the past five years, E-Learning is being

driven not only by startup dot-com entrepreneurs but

also by big corporations, for-profit spin-off ventures, as

well as big and small universities.”

(E-Learning Market Trends & Forecast 2014-2016 Report)

Source: https://www.docebo.com/landing/contactform/elearning-market-trends-and-forecast-2014-2016-docebo-

report.pdf?_ga=1.7275249.2126762081.1446379388

Efficient employability skills

Adult education principles:

• Responsible learning

• Experiential learning

• Cooperative learning

• Reflective learningCleary, Flynn & Thomasson (2006)

Significant improvement through online education

(Australian Flexible Learning Framework, 2009)

1. Critical thinking, analytical thinking

2. Ability to analyze and synthesize, critical thinking, interpret relevant data

3. Management skills: ability to manage teams

4. Improve professionally in my job

5. Competitiveness: Latest state of technologies.

6. Help me grow on a personal or emotional level; Personal enrichment

7. Help me learn and solve obstacles that present themselves professionally; personal ability to resolve problems

8. Autonomy and opening new work borders

9. Knowledge development and its application to both personal and work life

10. Discovery of new concerns

11. Better time management

12. Organizational skills

13. Self-criticism

14. Cultural knowledge

15. Ability to work in teams

17

Skills students

value they got

through online

education

Research in progress PSU-UOC

(Sangrà & Qayyum, 2016)

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-

Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (2010).

U.S. Department of Education. Washington, D.C.

Students in online conditions performed modestly

better, on average, than those learning the same

material through traditional face-to-face instruction.

Learning outcomes for students who engaged in online

learning exceeded those of students receiving face-to-face

instruction, with an average effect size of +0.20 favoring

online conditions

• “Cyberlearners performed significantly better than

traditional learners. Mean score (final exam) for the

cyberlearners was 11.3, while the mean score for

traditional learners was 9.8”

Navarro & Shoemaker (1999)

• In an empirical study (ALN) efficacy of e-learning was

showed 2/3 higher than face-to-face

Asynchronous Learning Networks (2001)

Burge, Cambell Gibson & Gibson (2011)

Flexibility

Interaction

Garrison & Anderson (2011)

Personalised learning means ensuring that

individual differences are acknowledged

Buchem, Attwell & Torres-Kompen (2011)Personalization

StudentStudent

Student

L

E

N

A

G

N

IR

Student

Dillenbourg (1999); Guitert (2014)

Collaboration

Cross (2007, 2010);

Redecker et al. (2011)

Informalization

Formal, non formal and informal learning

Lifelong and ... Lifewide(The LIFE Center, 2007)

18,5% 7,7%

Barron (2004); Jackson (2013);

Sangrà, González-Sanmamed &

Guitert (2013)

Learning

Ecologies

My Lifelong

Learning

Ecology

FACE-TO-FACE BLENDED

ONLINE

INF

OR

MA

L

NO

N F

OR

MA

L

FO

RM

AL

Learning

Ecologies

Analysis

Framework

Online education as good as or

better than face-to-face

instruction:

71.4% in 2015

(57.2% in 2003)

Source: Babson College-OLC Online Report Card 2016

Graphic: http://www.pearsoned.com/higher-education/online-report-card-2016/

Openness

The power of

networks and data

Risks

From economy

• Massification of

access

• Disruptive

business models

• “Uberisation” of

education

Massification of access

Quality

CostAccess

Technology

Disruptive business models

(Christensen, 2011)

“The economic value of high-quality teaching”

(Hanushek, E. (2010). The Economic Value of Higher

Teacher Quality. Working Papers, 56. National Center for

Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. )

Source: emilianoperezansaldi.com

Student data as the ‘new black”, as oil, as a

resource to be mined

Image credit: http://fpif.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/great-oil-swindle-peak-oil-world-energy-outlook.jpg

We know where you are. We

know where you’ve been. We

can more or less know what

you're thinking about

(@FrankPasquale, 2016)

Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance

How much (more) student data do we need?

‘how much is enough data to

solve my problem?’ (Adryan,

2015)

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uncle-

leo/1341913549

“Datafication” of education

• A panacea for many corrent educational challenges and

problems

• A new way for governing and controlling education

systems

• Reproduction of inequalities and social relations

• Intensification of managerialism within education

• Dataveillance

• The reductive nature of “what counts” as “education”

(Selwyn, 2016)

Image credit: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Caught between correlation and causation

Caught between correlation and causation

Image credit: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

- “My teacher told

me I’ve improved

my writing since I

do my homework

with a laser

printer …”

“Uberisation” of education

“Foodies are reactionaries”

“Rinehart criticized people who eat regular food as

being “reactionary.”

He thinks that his own industrialized food product

is going to save the world, and that “new” and

“different” are necessarily better.”

(http://www.returnofkings.com, June 1, 2013)SOYLENT

The need of humanistic competencies for technologists

“… if we say that reality is one, we also know that it is complex and if we don’t

collaborate between disciplines, from science and art, we will live a partial

reality.” (Aymerich, Ara, 7/6/15)

Technology should support, but not shape life.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) “tools are producing

compelling advances in complex tasks, with

dramatic improvements in energy consumption,

audio processing, and leukemia detection”, we are

also faced with the reality that “AI systems are

already making problematic judgements that are

producing significant social, cultural, and economic

impacts in people’s everyday lives.”

(Crawford & Whittaker, 2016, par. 1)

Image sources: https://twitter.com/urbandata/status/695261718344290304

https://za.pinterest.com/barbaralley/fair-is-not-equal/

Access,

funding and

rankings

Justice, care and student support in a resource-

constrained world

The future of

learning:

Digital,

distributed,

data-driven –

but …

increasingly

unequal

Quality

CostAccess

Technology

Source: Paul Prinsloo, University of South Africa

Quality

CostAccess

Technology

Openness

Final remarks

• Increase of learning opportunities for as many

people as posible based on quality criteria,

sustainability and equity.

• A new, more flexible and adaptable structure of HE

education course has to be carried out

• Industries and Universities has to develop

framework agreements for mutual benefit

• Online education has a potential that have to be

unleashed through quality provision

• The European-led research has to deepen in the

contribution of online education for getting a better

skilled workforce (learning design, quality

assurance, accreditation, online teacher training)

• Data on interactions (opportunities provided for a

good learning experience)

• Guarantee of well-trained and competent group of

teachers in online education

• Resources for learning available to the students

• Basic and applied research, particularly in online

education methods and the results achieved by the

students (student performance)

Thank youMoltes gràcies

asangra@uoc.edu

http://edulab.uoc.edu/

twitter: albert_sangra

http://unescochair.blogs.uoc.edu/blog/