Keynote Speaker Associate Professor Leesa Wheelahan

Keen to hear thoughts on vocational education training (VET)?

If so, come down to the symposium and hear another speaker, Leesa Wheelahan.  She is an Associate Professor from the LH Martin Institute, University of Melbourne who likes to rethink the skills in vocational education training (VET).

Wheelahan strongly believes this can be done by moving away from competencies to capabilities because a capabilities approach emphasises building underlying capacity so students can realize a number of different outcomes.

Innovative workplaces of today and tomorrow are characterised by high levels of discretionary learning, and VET needs to support the development of autonomous workers who can exercise judgment.

The capabilities approach also emphasises the social mediated nature of skill.

Capabilities are not just individual attributes; rather they require educational, social, economic and

workplace arrangements that facilitate the realisation of capabilities.

So come on down to the symposium and hear them out and take away some key learning points. With those in hand, you can continue to take meaningful action to address the needs in your organization or institution.

Drop us a comment if you have thoughts to share on the above.

Keynote Speaker Professor Diana Laurillard

Teaching as a design science? Really? Who would have thought of that?

Well, Professor Diana Laurillard who is the Chair of Learning and Digital Technologies at the London Knowledge Lab would have you know teaching is NOW a design science.

Being an avid observer of how teaching has evolved through the years, she says that teaching is still not yet treated (and let’s not even talk about respect!!) as a design profession. Like other design professionals – architects, engineers, programmers – teachers have to work out creative and evidence-based ways of improving what they do.

Throw in the rapid advances in the Internet, digital and mobile technologies. All these means that the learning community and educators today have unprecedented opportunities and tools to create web content, access games, learning and entertainment, network with their peers, and advance their quality of life.

Today more media-rich and media-centric content is available. Technology has the POTENTIAL to make the act/art/science of teaching RICHER and more ENGAGING for learners.

She says that we need technology to achieve the education reform we dream of. But it has to be done through the teaching community. An essential part of the open education movement will be “open teaching.” Learning-design tools and environments that enable them to develop new ways of teaching and learning afforded by digital technologies will help to achieve high quality teaching on a larger scale and harness it to a higher cause.

The key mission in teaching and learning is this: old ways may NOT be the best ways. Change is good and necessary.  The teaching profession does not have much of a choice; students expect technology to be used in the classroom, in learning. In fact, technology is the perquisite to learning and it can be used to gain and maintain attention.

Today’s (and tomorrow’s) student learners are more comfortable and confident with technology – she ways and we must CAPITALIZE on this. We must find ways to use, integrate, adapt, adopt technology, effectively, efficiently and instructionally. The academic profession must develop the capability to learn collaboratively and how to smartly exploit technology while simultaneously exploring and developing the pedagogies for the 21^st century!

So come on down to the symposium and hear them out and take away some key learning points. With those in hand, you can continue to take meaningful action to address the needs in your organization or institution.

Drop us a comment if you have thoughts to share on the above.

Keynote Speaker Professor Alan Felstead

Often the most powerful learning takes place through participation in everyday activities: by doing, we learn.

Such a truism – but often blithely ignored.

As such, I subscribe to Professor Alan Felstead’s* pioneering research work on the new frontiers of learning and work in times of crisis. This includes mapping and explaining patterns of skill development. He also looks at the changing quality and nature of work and explores the limits and opportunities for workplace learning.

His area of focus is spot-on. He investigates how work and learning are collaborative forces for good. The work environment has largely changed in the 20^th century. To succeed in this brave new world, we must be able to participate in a growing array of knowledge flows in order to rapidly refresh our knowledge stocks.

What is remarkable in his papers is his argument that the “learning as acquisition” and “learning as participation” metaphors nicely captures the importance of social relationships and mutual support in enhancing individual performance at work. The significance of good job design also helps to promote and facilitate learning at work.

 Felstead also champions the notion that learning is not something that only happens when we plan it; it is not restricted to the classroom. Nor is it a ‘one-off’ event that will, in isolation, transform an individual or workplace’s productivity.

Through the Working as Learning Framework (WALF), his view is that learning is a silver bullet to be fired when things are going badly in the workplace is passé .

To Felstead, learning is truly an integral part of the work process. The wider context of the productive systems and processes that shape the workplace as either an expansive or restrictive learning environment needs to be diligently considered.

The future is where it is at.  Good learning needs to be there as well.

So come on down to the symposium and hear them out and take away some key learning points. With those in hand, you can continue to take meaningful action to address the needs in your organization or institution.

Drop us a comment if you have thoughts to share on the above.

Keynote Speaker Professor Diana Laurillard

In a recent paper (2011) titled 'Evaluating learning designs through the formal representation of pedagogical patterns' (with Dejan Ljubojevic), Professor Laurillard argues for revisiting models of support for teachers embarking on learning design projects that include digital tools and resources. Her joint paper suggests that a generic model for technology in teaching practice is required focusing on basic pedagogy and student learning. This may be derived from a review of the extant pedagogic literature and a range of practice-based learning design projects. The challenge is to combine the two as learning theory tends to be too generic and learning designs too specific. Professor Laurillard's paper suggests that Conversational Framework theory provides such a bridge through systematically defining pedagogy and underpinning the interpretation of learning design and the outcomes it intends to promote while supporting on-the-ground learning design development.

For valuable insights into the relationship between advances in information technology and their connections with curriculum and courseware development, please come along to ALS12 where Professor Laurillard will explore a range of ideas related to the topic. Further information on the concepts outlined may be found on the Learning Design Support Environment (LDSE) project website – www.ldse.org.uk.