Max Bell Foundation 40th Anniversary Essay and Lecture in Post-Secondary Education Policy

Summary

This project will result in the publication of an essay on the subject of changing trends occurring in the world of higher education. The impact of new information and communication technology, the easy availability of information, new pedagogical methods, and increased recognition of the importance of physical spaces are all relatively new phenomenae that are significantly changing the ways universities must address education. This essay aims to proactively assess ways that universities can harness new capabilities without losing important spaces of critical inquiry and intellectual debate.

Grant Outputs

Questioning Higher Education – http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/09/questioning-higher-education/

This article addresses three key concerns regarding the future of university education. First, today’s university students are “digital natives”, and expect to learn using digital technology. Second, professors, librarians and pedagogues must be able to teach students how to sort and transform the raw information available online into useful knowledge, requiring them to first learn to do so themselves. And third, the traditional, physical spaces of universities need to adapt to support these first two issues, rather than keeping universities locked in traditional patterns. By implementing new learning tools in schools, like “massive open online courses” known as MOOCs, traditional universities may be able to preserve their place as essential centres of learning and overcome potential problems that arise from open source learning platforms.