the kids are alright

I had a conversation with a couple of students at the JISC Users and Innovation seminar about what they thought the e-aware or e-competent tutor should be about, and what attributes would be appropriate for 21st Century HE. Their top tips included the following - they aren't rocket science, but they are usefully re-stated.

1. A willingness to take risks and explore new tools and techniques with students - a facilitation role in managing decisions about learning.
2. A willingness to involve students as mentors in learning, and thereby facilitate sharing and co-operation. This should happen across programmes as well as within modules.
   
3. The deployment of interactive technologies and techniques in the curriculum.
4. Give e-learning tools (e.g. Blackboard) a point.
5. Be responsive to the students' attitudes and approaches - empower them to use personal tools in the curriculum.
6. Use social tools that help them personalise their experience and share ideas beyond the programme. We need to pull students in, rather than push them.
7. Give students responsibility for the development of modules and programmes - give them choices and decisions to make about curriculum content and delivery.
8. Rather than focusing on telling, focus upon students' active involvement in doing and creating. Trust will help build ownership and engagement. Students doing and creating rather than listening is key!
9. Make better use of technologies to enable non-contact time activities and tasks.
   

They also pointed out that institutions need to enable the aggregation of tools and content, in order to give students safe places to share, pull in widgets and play.

JISC-sponsored Users and Innovation Seminar

So I'm in Leeds, not attending ALT, but instead at a lovely seminar/symposium organised by Lawrie Phipps of the JISC Users and Innovation programme. We're discussing new agendas/directions or maybe themes for U&I in 21st cntury HE. So far, I've been taken by a few ideas:

1. Bob R's notion of useful or meaningful "teachable moments" struck me as transferable to other moments in time when the impossible became possible. I need to think more about that and institutional maturity for pedagogies or technologies.
2. Scott, Pat P and Vania D spoke about how we engage students with content aggregators, tags, the wisdom of crowds etc. in order to produce/manufacture agents (virtual, human, intelligent) that might empower the agency of individual students;
3. how do we/students validate or generate trust in information and communication channels, and what are the implications for practice?In-line with this what are the implications for pedagogic practice that might be about cognitive frameworks that map to technologies?
   
4. what is our desired change from any pedagogic/technological innovation?
   

The only issue for me so far is that there has been lots of talk in the sessions I was in about staff or tools, and not the impact, epecially the affective change, in the students. This is my issue, but I wonder whether we are not yet in the moment with this type of research.