C. Delgado Kloos et al. (Eds.): EC-TEL 2011, LNCS 6964, pp. 1–8, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

Emerging Technologies, Ubiquitous Learning, and Educational Transformation

Chris Dede

Harvard Graduate School of Education, 323 Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States of America

Chris_Dede@Harvard.edu

Abstract. Emerging technologies are enabling ubiquitous learning. This can empower a structural change away from classrooms as the primary place of learning, the school day as the primary educational time, and the teacher as the primary source of information. Mobile devices can allow teachers to link to tutors, coaches, and mentors outside of school in a seamless web of support for each student. My colleagues and I are conducting research on sophisticated analytics to mine rich datastreams collected on students’ devices, using each learner’s interactions to help in developing personalized educational experiences. We also are studying “augmented realities” that infuse virtual data and authentic, simulated experiences into real world settings, facilitating transfer of learning from classrooms to life. However, to realize the full power of ubiquitous learning for educational transformation, educators must overcome numerous challenges related to devices and infrastructure, safety and privacy, digital assets and assessments, and human capital.

Keywords: mobile devices, ubiquitous learning, broadband, educational transformation, augmented reality, emerging technologies.

1 Introduction

We live in a time when the industrial era school system is on the verge of collapse. Our society can no longer afford a labor-intensive model of education that uses expensive human resources inefficiently. In the United States, we now see student-teacher ratios in some urban settings climbing to unworkable levels of 40 plus, even 60 pupils per class (Dolan, 2011; Dillon, 2011). This is not a temporary financial dislocation due to an economic downturn, but a permanent sea-change that has already happened in every other service sector of developed countries’ economies.

Further, in K-12 schooling, our stellar illustrations of success are based on personal heroism, educators who make sacrifices in every other part of their lives in order to help their students. These are wonderful stories of saint-like dedication, but such a model for educational improvement is unscalable to typical teachers. We have not found a way to be effective and affordable at scale, and our financial resources are inexorably dwindling.

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All other professions are successfully transforming to affordable models that use technology to empower typical practitioners to be effective. The United States Department of Education’s 2010 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) presents a transformational vision for 21st century education that builds on insights about modern interactive media gained from other sectors of society, but also depicts new processes and structures that recognize the unique challenges of helping students learn life-long and life-wide. This paper centers on the ways emerging technologies enable ubiquitous learning anyplace and anytime, to aid in achieving a structural change away from the industrial-era model of classrooms as the primary place of learning, the school day as the primary educational time, and the teacher as the primary source of information.

2 A Framework for 21st Century Education

The NETP (U.S. Department of Education, 2010) is a rich document that readers can interpret from a variety of perspectives. In this paper, the lens I will use is that of redesigning industrial-era schooling. I believe that our society should transform its current educational system into a different model better suited to prepare students for the opportunities and challenges of an emerging global, knowledge-based civilization (Dede, 2007). What elements in the Plan are suggestive about foundations for this redesign (Dede, 2010)?

Learning

• Learning can no longer be confined to the years we spend in school or the hours we spend in the classroom: It must be life-long, life-wide, and available on demand. (page 9)

• Technology provides access to a much wider and more flexible set of learning resources than is available in classrooms and connections to a wider and more flexible set of “educators,” including teachers, parents, experts, and mentors outside the classroom. (pp. 11-12)

• Engaging and effective learning experiences can be individualized or differentiated for particular learners (either paced or tailored to fit their learning needs) or personalized, which combines paced and tailored learning with flexibility in content or theme designed to fit the interests and prior experience of each learner. (page 12)

Assessment

• Through multimedia, interactivity, and connectivity it is possible to assess competencies that we believe are important and that are aspects of thinking highlighted in cognitive research. It also is possible to directly assess problem-solving skills; make visible sequences of actions taken by learners in simulated environments; model complex reasoning tasks; and do it all within the contexts of relevant societal issues and problems that people care about in everyday life. (page 27)

• When students are learning online, there are multiple opportunities to exploit the power of technology for formative assessment. The same technology that supports learning activities gathers data in the course of learning that can be

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used for assessment… As students work, the system can capture their inputs and collect evidence of their problem-solving sequences, knowledge, and strategy use, as reflected by the information each student selects or inputs, the number of attempts they make, the number of hints and feedback given, and the time allocation across parts of the problem. (pp. 29-30)

Teaching

• Connected teaching offers a vast array of opportunities to personalize learning. Many simulations and models for use in science, history, and other subject areas are now available online, including immersive virtual and augmented reality environments that encourage students to explore and make meaning in complex simulated situations (Dede 2009). To deeply engage their students, educators need to know about their students’ goals and interests and have knowledge of learning resources and systems that can help students plan sets of learning experiences that are personally meaningful… Although using technology to personalize learning is a boost to effective teaching, teaching is fundamentally a social and emotional enterprise. The most effective educators connect to young people’s developing social and emotional core (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Villegas & Lucas, 2002) by offering opportunities for creativity and self-expression. Technology provides an assist here as well… Digital authoring tools for creating multimedia projects and online communities for sharing them with the world offer students outlets for social and emotional connections with educators, peers, communities, and the world at large. Educators can encourage students to do this within the context of learning activities, gaining further insights into what motivates and engages students—information they can use to encourage students to stay in school (pp. 41-42).

• All institutions involved in preparing educators should provide technology-supported learning experiences that promote and enable the use of technology to improve learning, assessment, and instructional practices. This will require teacher educators to draw from advances in learning science and technology to change what and how they teach, keeping in mind that everything we now know about how people learn applies to new teachers as well. The same imperatives for teacher preparation apply to ongoing professional learning. Professional learning should support and develop educators’ identities as fluent users of advanced technology, creative and collaborative problem solvers, and adaptive, socially aware experts throughout their careers. (page 44)

Productivity

• One of the most basic assumptions in our education system is time-based or “seat-time” measures of educational attainment…Time-based measures were appropriate in their day, but they are not now when we know more about how people learn and we have access to technology that can help us accommodate different styles and paces of learning. As we move to online learning and learning that combines classroom and online learning, time-based measures will increasingly frustrate our attempts to provide learning experiences that lead to achievement and the pursuit of postsecondary education that our modern world requires. (page 68)

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• Another basic assumption is the inflexible way we organize students into age-determined groups, structure separate academic disciplines, organize learning into classes of roughly equal size with all the students in a particular class receiving the same content at the same pace, and keep these groups in place all year. The last decade has seen the emergence of some radically redesigned schools, demonstrating the range of possibilities for structuring education. For example, organizing education around the demonstration of competence rather than seat time opens up a wide range of possibilities. The first school district to win the Baldridge Quality Award, Chugach School District in Alaska, achieved remarkable gains in student outcomes after mobilizing its community to identify the competencies it wanted to see in high school graduates and shifting to a performance-based system in which diplomas were awarded on the basis of performance on the district’s assessment of those competencies. (pp. 68-69)

• As we seek ways to extend learning time, in addition to considering the amount of time students spend in school, we should also look at whether we can provide engaging and powerful learning experiences through other means. For example, we know that students’ lives outside school are filled with technology that gives them 24/7 mobile access to information and resources and allows them to participate in online social networks and communities where people from all over the world share ideas, collaborate, and learn new things. Our education system should leverage students’ interest in technology and the time they currently spend learning informally outside the regular school hours to extend learning time in a way that motivates them even more. (pp. 70-71)

I believe these NETP ideas about learning, assessment, teaching, and productivity are most powerful when implemented via a “distributed” model of formal education, in which parents trained and licensed as tutors, informal educators (e.g., museum staff, librarians) certified as coaches, and community members prepared and licensed as mentors are also paid “professional educators” (Dede, 2010). In such a 21st century educational system, schools of education would prepare, license, and provide professional support for teachers, tutors, coaches, and mentors who were trained to orchestrate their coordinated activities through the use of a sophisticated technology infrastructure.

3 Mobile Broadband Devices and Ubiquitous Learning

What technology infrastructure can enable this ambitious vision of distributed formal education? Mobile broadband devices now have “six senses” (Dede & Bjerede, 2011): (1) knowing where you are, (2) interacting with networks, (3) sensing local content and services, (4) discovering relevant things, (5) enhancing your surroundings with information and simulation, and (6) learning your interests as well as how and with whom you like to learn. This new capacity for learning infused throughout the world is a powerful way of moving beyond the traditional model of learning isolated from the world in classroom settings.

Mobile broadband devices can enable customized learning life-long and life-wide, as well as providing tools and applications that allow teachers, tutors, coaches, and mentors to orchestrate their efforts into a seamless web of support. Our research on

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virtual performance assessments (http://vpa.gse.harvard.edu) is developing insights about how sophisticated analytics can mine rich datastreams collected from learners’ digital interactions to help with diagnosing what types of personalized educational experiences are good next steps (Clarke-Midura, Dede, & Norton, 2011). In conjunction with this work, we are designing and studying engaging augmented realities that infuse virtual data and authentic, simulated experiences into real world settings, facilitating transfer of learning from classrooms to life situations.

3.1 EcoMOBILE as an Example of Research on Augmented Reality

My colleagues and I are just beginning a Qualcomm-funded research project, EcoMobile, to determine the strengths and limits of augmented reality as a complement to classroom learning in science. Knowledge about ecosystems and populations is an important strand of the life science content standards, and the processes underlying ecosystems exemplify sophisticated causal mechanisms (e.g., systems dynamics) foundational for advanced science and mathematics. However, even after instruction, students often hold inaccurate interpretations about ecosystems’ structural patterns and inherent causal complexity (Grotzer & Basca, 2003). Teachers struggle to convey in hands-on, engaging ways difficult concepts with causality such as time delays, spatial distance, non-obvious causes, and population-level effects.

To meet this shortfall in current, largely textbook-based curricula, with U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences’ funding we have developed and are studying EcoMUVE: a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE)-based curriculum that addresses grades 6 through 8 life science National Science Education Standards (www.ecomuve.org). EcoMUVE is an inquiry-based, four-week curriculum that incorporates student experiences in immersive, simulated virtual ecosystems to enhance student understanding of ecosystems science, the inquiry process, and the complex causality inherent in ecosystems dynamics. Our research findings show promising results on its perceived value, usability, and implementation feasibility, along with gains in student learning and motivation (Metcalf et al, 2011).

We hypothesize that student engagement, understanding, and self-efficacy in science would be enhanced if students experiencing EcoMUVE could also use mobile broadband devices (MBDs) to explore the real world ecosystems in their own locality. To study these hypotheses, we have begun work on EcoMOBILE: a complementary set of learning experiences using MBDs to access virtual information and simulated experiences while immersed in real world ecosystems. MBDs allow students to collect and share data using probeware, cameras, and microphones; access on-site information about ecosystem components; and visit geo-referenced locations to observe critical components of the ecosystem and to experience virtual simulations related to causality.

Some aspects of ecosystem ecology are difficult to translate into a virtual environment, such as virtually representing the true diversity in forms and behaviors of organisms in a real environment. Also, the feel and smell of an ecosystem after a recent rain cannot be digitally replicated. Further, real world experiences that mirror aspects of the virtual world may aid in transfer and generalization of learning. Students have a need to connect the abstract ideas they are learning in science class to

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experiences they have in the real world. This process can be mediated by the affordances offered by mobile broadband devices. The EcoMOBILE project is studying the extent to which current technologies can accomplish this goal in an affordable, practical manner, as well as what implementation challenges are involved in going to scale.

4 Enabling Transformation

The transition from industrial-era schooling to 21st century distributed education can involve evolutionary, revolutionary, or disruptive transformation (Dede & Bjerede, 2011). Evolutionary transformation centers on using mobile devices within and outside of classrooms to enable 1:1 access to computing, digital textbooks, and facile collaboration among teams of students. Revolutionary transformation, in contrast, focuses on using mobile broadband to expand human support for learning beyond the classroom and school day to invent new structures for formal education, such as the “distributed learning” model sketched above. As an alternative to these types of internal, deliberate change for current institutions, disruptive transformation builds on Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen’s concept of new forms of educational institutions, such as virtual schools and online universities, using mobile devices as part of a strategy for externally undercutting and eliminating inflexible, traditional models of education (Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2008). The emergence of 21st century learning will likely involve various groups implementing all three of these transformative approaches.

Any of these transformative strategies faces many challenges. The most difficult problems are “knots” because they required coordination across stakeholders to resolve. As an example of such a knot, educators and parents do not want to invest in mobile infrastructure unless they are certain high quality educational experiences are available – yet content providers and technology vendors do not want to invest in developing these experiences unless they are sure a strong market for those services exists. Investment by public and private stakeholders is necessary to untie this knot.

Four key areas that must be “unknotted” to realize the power of mobile broadband for ubiquitous learning are:

• Devices and Infrastructure: How can we best balance educational investments between the classic infrastructure of wired computers and the emerging infrastructure of wireless mobile devices?

• Safety and Privacy: How can we use Internet access and digital student data to enhance education, while preventing various forms of abuse?

• Digital Assets and Assessments: How can we drive innovation in digital learning materials and services when the education market is notoriously fragmented and slow to adopt, and when the strengths and limits of mobile devices for learning are not well understood?

• Human Capital: How can we empower educators and other stakeholders to realize the potential of anytime, anyplace mobile learning through evolutionary, revolutionary, and disruptive transformations that move beyond the model of industrial-era schooling?

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Complicating the challenge is that barriers in each area create difficulties for progress in the others.

5 Conclusion

A ubiquitous technology infrastructure that supports anytime, anyplace learning as central to 21st century education. I believe that every student and educator should have a mobile broadband device, with training and support for its optimal usage to empower learning. Policy makers should systematically explore mechanisms to fund such an infrastructure for every district, school, and student, regardless of economic status.

The opportunity of mobile learning is best set within a larger framework of education empowered by technology, as illustrated by the 2010 U.S. National Educational Technology Plan. Recommendations from the Plan that particularly speak to the issues discussed in this paper include:

1.3 States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that exploit the flexibility and power of technology to reach all learners anytime and anywhere.

2.3 Conduct research and development that explores how embedded assessment technologies, such as simulations, collaboration environments, virtual worlds, games, and cognitive tutors, can be used to engage and motivate learners while assessing complex skills.

3.2 Leverage social networking technologies and platforms to create communities of practice that provide career-long personal learning opportunities for educators within and across schools, preservice preparation and in-service education institutions, and professional organizations.

4.2 Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school.

Working to advance these objectives is a path forward to achieve the potential of emerging technologies to enable transformation from industrial-era schooling to 21st century education.

Acknowledgments. Research on the EcoMUVE and Virtual Performance Assessment projects is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. The EcoMOBILE project is funded by Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach Initiative. All conclusions in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.

References

1. Clarke-Midura, J., Dede, C., Norton, J.: Next Generation Assessments for Measuring Complex Learning in Science. In: The Road Ahead for State Assessments, pp. 27–40. Rennie Center for Education and Public Policy, Cambridge (2011), http://renniecenter.issuelab.org/research

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2. Christensen, C.M., Horn, M.B., Johnson, C.W.: Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns. McGraw-Hill, New York (2008)

3. Dede, C., Bjerede, M.: Mobile Learning for the 21st Century: Insights from the 2010 Wireless EdTech Conference. Qualcomm, San Diego (2011), http://wirelessedtech.com

4. Dede, C.: Reflections on the Draft National Educational Technology Plan 2010: Foundations for Transformation. Educational Technology 50(6), 18–22 (2010)

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6. Dede, C.: Reinventing the Role of Information and Communications Technologies in Education. In: Smolin, L., Lawless, K., Burbules, N. (eds.) Information and Communication Technologies: Considerations of Current Practice for Teachers and Teacher Educators (NSSE Yearbook 2007), vol. 106(2), pp. 11–38. Blackwell Publishing, Malden (2007)

7. Dillon, S.: Tight budgets Mean Squeeze in Classrooms. New York Times, March 6 (2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07classrooms.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

8. Dolan, M.: Detroit Schools Cuts Plan Approved. Wall Street Journal, February 22 (2011), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703610604576158783513445212.html

9. Grotzer, T.A., Basca, B.B.: How Does Grasping the Underlying Causal Structures of Ecosystems Impact Students’ Understanding? Journal of Biological Education 38(1), 16–29 (2003)

10. Ladson-Billings, G.: The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. Wiley, San Francisco (2009)

11. Metcalf, S., Kamarainen, A., Tutwiler, M.S., Grotzer, T., Dede, C.: Ecosystem Science Learning via Multi-User Virtual Environments. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations 3(1), 86–90 (2011)

12. U.S. Department of Education: Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology (2010), http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010

13. Villegas, A.M., Lucas, T.: Preparing culturally responsive teachers. Journal of Teacher Education 53(1), 20–32 (2002)