3rd Global Conference
The Idea of Education
Monday 9th August - Wednesday 11th August 2004
Prague, Czech Republic
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Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 6: The
Future of Education II
Chair: Frank McMahon
Road to the Future of Higher Education–-Faculty Perception
of Learning Organization
Hsienyi Lin and N.
Dale Gentry
College of Education, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA
For centuries,
universities have been a central source of discovery, teaching, and
application of new knowledge. But, universities change slowly, and the
knowledge generated and taught by a traditional university has a limited
life-span. Previous approaches within universities that emphasized autonomous
functioning may no longer produce desired results. It is proposed that
the successfully applied theory of Learning Organization as conceptualized
by Senge may provide an avenue for improvement, even survival, of the
modern university. A Learning Organization is an organization in which
individuals and the organization learn, grow and change in constructive
and productive directions. It seems logical that universities, the entry
point of higher education, could benefit from this approach, both for
university improvement and to assist students in becoming more active,
thoughtful learners, though it is recognized that universities are not
the same as businesses.
In the interest of assessing current university
status in relation to principles of a Learning Organization, this study
assessed faculty members’ perspectives about the status of their
university in relation to such principles. A study was conducted in 2003-04,
in which the fundamental theory and research were articulated, and a
survey was disseminated to all faculty members of a university in the
United States.
Findings suggested university faculty members had extensive
knowledge of their disciplines and were extremely committed to students
and to their university. They believed the university still lacked certain
characteristics related to functioning as a Learning Organization and
that faculty needed certain knowledge and skills to be more effective.
The study revealed an opportunity for both the university and faculty
to move forward in becoming a Learning Organization and elevating faculty
member’s
status and professional growth. Recommendations are provided both for
the direction the university, and universities in general, might want
to take, and methods for proceeding.
Who Could be Opposed to a University of Excellence? On the
Idea of a World University Concentrated around Pools of Attention
Jan Masschelein & Maarten
Simons
Centre for Philosophy of Education, University of Leuven, Belgium
Who could be against excellence? If we follow the former director general of UNESCO Federico Mayor who said that “it is impossible to guarantee the quality of education without having the aim of excellence resting on the domain of research, teaching, preparation and learning … “, and that “the search for excellence reaffirms its pertinence and closely links it to quality”, then this question seems to come down to: ‘who’ could be against quality? This question is usually heard by ‘us’ (and it is this ‘us’ that we discuss in this paper) as a rhetorical question, since it sounds not like a real question. It seems nobody reasonably could oppose to quality. However, in our paper we exactly want to make plausible that there is a ‘we’ for whom the refusal of quality does make sense. We start by indicating for ‘who’ excellence and quality is needed. This is not about defining the interest groups or power groups which would want this or would be behind it, but it is asking for the kind of person, the kind of human being (and the kind of attitude which characterizes this being) that strives for excellence and wants quality. We will try to show that the search for quality is needed for persons (students, teachers, parents, …) who look in a very particular way at themselves and others (and at what they do) i.e. who problematize themselves in a very particular way. In the second part of the paper then, we sketch ‘who’ would want to question the university of excellence and refuse the demand for quality. This refusal will bring us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its scene of teaching and research in a different way, in a way which transforms the ‘global university’ in a ‘world university’ which is not concentrated around pools of excellence but around pools of ‘attention’.
Information Overload: The Case for E-learning within Gaia
Digital
Luis Borges Gouveia
UFP/CEREM, Porto, Portugal
The paper addresses the issues raised by an ongoing digital cities project,
coined Gaia Digital. Its main concern is to introduce a 288.000 inhabitant’s
city in Portugal – Gaia – to the information and knowledge
society. The project named Gaia Digital intends to provide the city with
a digital counterpart that represents the region in digital format. This
digital representation is not only the World Wide Web but mainly the digital
interaction between people and local institutions using any possible channel
to solve peoples problems and needs.
Among the issues related with this digital cities project, one of the most
challenging is to bring people together to use and take advantage of such
an infrastructure to deal with information and provide them with the knowledge
to know what and how to use it.
As just around 34.000 of the 288.000 inhabitants of Gaia have some higher
education degree, a true effort must be on place to introduce the digital
cities facilities to the main population. E-learning is seen as a strategic
concept as it provides the digital tools, methods and technology to help
each individual to learn and support the massive effort anytime, anywhere
and any user profile that is required to introduce the Gaia Digital to
all their potential users.
In order to Gaia Digital becomes a successful environment to the region
it belongs, there is a need to include the greater number of people possible.
It is necessary to consider both the required skill that each individual
must have and the huge amount of information generated by such an environment.
As a result, the paper also discuss information literacy issues that Gaia
Digital users must acquired and the requirements that Gaia Digital must
obey in order to deal with information overload problems.
The authors argue that such an environment can be developed where there
is a balanced between the offer of digital services and the people’s
ability to work with it, both the region and their inhabitants benefit
from information and knowledge society impact both in economical and social
issues. Such a digital cities facility that comprises the need to consider
people and try to provide the support for people needs and problems can
foster the region and their potential as in the same way as highways can
act as a competitive advantage to enhance a region’ logistics.