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EduTECH snapshot
Professor Guy Claxton
Some of higher education’ s heavy hitters presented at this year’ s EduTECH.
By Richard Garfield
With the 2018 EduTECH juggernaut taking over Sydney’ s International Convention Centre in June, Campus Review was on hand to bring you a snapshot of two of the key presentations on the opening day of the event.
COGNITION CRISIS Adam Gazzaley, director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of California, opened his presentation on‘ A vision of the future of classroom learning and assessment’ in upbeat fashion.
“ As a species we’ re doing quite well on this planet,” Gazzaley said.“ Our lives have improved in many amazing ways.”
However, he argued, one glaring deficiency in modern society, driven by technology, is that we are“ tragically lacking” in terms of our“ cognition, our memory perception, reasoning, decision-making, imagination, creativity, and our emotional and aggression regulation”.
We should therefore be aiming for a“ high-level goal” of enhancing our cognition, and Gazzaley argued that fixing this problem should be placed alongside other major global priorities.
For him, the reason why our education system is failing to adequately develop our minds comes down to a number of factors. One of these is assessments.
“ We don’ t take advantage of all the advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging to actually understand what’ s happening with our brain,” he said.
Most of our education tests are really assessing how much information has been transferred, and we have very poor targeted tools to improve cognition, he argued.
“ We are building skills but not actually enhancing the underlying processing abilities of our minds that enable learning.”
Gazzaley argued that around the world we have fallen into non-personalised,‘ one size fits all’ education systems. Instead, he believes learning should be“ targeted to each individual brain” via a“ personalised, multimodal and closed loop system”.
“ Technology has challenged our brains in some very fundamental ways,” he continued. The prime culprit for him is the modern scourge of multitasking, which“ creates interference in the brain” and“ impacts our cognition, our ability to perceive and make decisions, our short and long-term memory and how we regulate our emotions”.
These problems flow into everyday life, he argued – affecting our safety( for example, using our smartphones while driving), sleep, relationships and how we learn and act in the workplace.
However, it’ s not all negative.“ There is a great promise here.” New technology can also help to improve cognition, as technology can be used to create experiences, which are“ the gateway to our brains’ plasticity”.
By enacting a‘ closed loop’ system, we can help create experiences that are beneficial to our learning and improve our cognition. Gazzaley said that teachers, for example, can“ intervene, record the impact – ideally in real time – and then use that data to update and refine [ their ] intervention”.“ Adjust as you go, refine as you go.“ With each pass through the closed loop, you are becoming more targeted and more personalised to the outcome you’ re trying to achieve,” he said.
Gazzaley suggested one way to harness the available technology to create this closed loop is through gaming.
“ The behaviour of the brain while playing can be recorded in real time. Data is fed into a software engine then fed back in a closed loop that is personalised to you,” he said. This happens in two ways: the difficulty level can be adjusted to your abilities in real time, and rewards and feedback can be provided, leading to a“ deep immersion” and satisfaction.
While this integrated, multimodal closed loop system doesn’ t exist as yet, the technology needed to do it is there. For Gazzaley, this is the path to improving cognitive ability. As he put it,“ using artificial intelligence to improve human intelligence”.
THE NEW LEARNING DESIGNERS Erasers are“ instruments of the devil”.“ They are infected with a virus.” So began Professor Guy Claxton from King’ s College London in his presentation on‘ Designing the learning power classroom’.
The‘ virus’ he was referring to is the belief that, if a student is naturally bright or gifted, they will always get things right the first time.“ It’ s a lie,” he emphatically stated.“ Learning – real learning – isn’ t about getting things right the first time … It’ s about discovering and being given worthwhile challenges.
“ It’ s about meeting them with hard work and imagination and accepting critique.”
It is only through making drafts and refining until you get the finished product that you can“ come out with something you feel proud of, and young people all need to have that experience, that rush of deep pride and satisfaction” gained by achieving something they didn’ t think they were capable of.
He argued that, in the face of new technology, it is actually experience that is transformative.“ Young people need the personal qualities that underpin the ability to put in that hard work and to use your imagination, revise and self-evaluate.”
These desirable‘ habits of mind’ can’ t be“ taught but can be cultivated” in a unique environment, one that can only be created by teachers.“ No machine can give you that.” In making his point, Claxton admitted he was almost tempted to abandon the word teacher.“ We are learning designers now,” he offered.
Claxton finished by imploring teachers not to feel mesmerised or intimidated by technology. Technology shouldn’ t be feared but can help us,“ provided we use it in ways that support a clear, explicit intention to produce the kinds of people with the kinds of minds that will equip them for the challenges of the 21st century”. ■
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