Who are the students of the future?

Welcome to The Online Educator: people and pedagogy. I’m Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman – an academic with The Open University (OU). In the first three weeks of this course I’ll be drawing on my experience as an educator and a researcher as I introduce some of the hype around online education, some of the ways in which educators can navigate that hype, and some strategies for designing engaging online learning experiences.

Over the coming weeks you’ll closely examine several myths connected with online education as the basis for making your own decisions about how to employ innovation in your teaching.

This week, you’ll start by investigating the notion that online education is a ‘disruptive’ solution to a broken education system. Then, you’ll explore ways to create engaging and relevant learning experiences that best utilise innovative technologies and pedagogies to meet learners’ needs. You’ll be introduced to the use of personas in learning design and will examine two frameworks intended to help educators choose appropriate technologies to meet learners’ needs.

In Week 2, you’ll discover ways to make innovative learning accessible to all and at the relationship between accessibility and innovation.

In Week 3, you’ll explore strategies to evaluate claims about the transformative impact of online education, for example those made in research reports. You’ll also investigate ways to reflect on your own teaching in order to assess the impact of educational innovation, including considering the ethical issues involved in researching online learning.

In Week 4 I’ll hand over to ed-tech celebrity and OU academic Professor Martin Weller. He’ll take you through a study of the benefits and complexities of constructing an online identity as an educator.

First though, watch the video above and step into the future of education… It’s full of technological innovation. Teaching and learning has improved immeasurably. Everybody is included. Does this sound too good to be true?

The video is made by Educause – a nonprofit association whose mission is ‘to advance higher education through the use of information technology’. It gives you a flavour of some of the claims being made about the online education of the future.

As you watch, consider the following:

• Do you believe the predictions being made will come true? If so, why? If not, why not?
• Have the video creators missed anything out?
• Does the video make you feel differently about your own teaching?
• Do you feel excited about any of the possibilities?

Use the comments area below to share your thoughts with your fellow learners.