Introductory Reading 1

Laurillard, D. (2002). Rethinking teaching for the knowledge society

Diana Laurillard is Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Learning Technologies & Teaching, at the Open University in the United Kingdom.

"By taking a more professional approach to teaching, higher education institutions can exploit the new information technologies to meet the challenge of mass higher education and lifelong learning for the knowledge society." Educause abstract

Our knowledge society is creating more knowledge industries, which in turn offer their own sources of skills and knowledge - so what then is the value of a university education?

In the endnotes, the reading generically appropriates the term university as encompassing colleges, universities, and other traditional, nonprofit forms of higher education. In doing so, Laurillard (p. 18) claims that universities teach specialist knowledge but not practitioner knowledge required by knowledge industries and further suggests that such practitioner knowledge and the skill to develop it is otherwise currently served from the private sector.

I contend that publicly funded Vocational Employment Training (VET) colleges such as state Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges are primarily focused on the development of practitioner (as opposed to specialist) knowledge and the skills to develop it, and therefore the generalisation of post-secondary publicly-funded education in such a manner is not entirely accurate.

Laurillard (p. 18) highlights of how little value graduates find the knowledge gained in their university education once they enter their career, stating that the qualities of skills, attitudes and ways of thinking are not currently delivered by university curricula, and questions whether universities should engage with this issue or leave graduates to gain these qualities once they enter the knowledge industries.

As a lesser argument I suggest literature that portrays human development as a linear progression of 'secondary education > undergraduate studies > graduation > career' is widely missing the mark of life-long learning, as it continues to suggest that post-secondary education is the semi-exclusive domain of the so-called net generations. My experience of study in Bachelor of Science, and now in Master of Education, and as a TAFE lecturer for more than 20 years, is of a far greater number of mature adults in post-secondary education than net generation students. These older learners are typically attempting post-secondary education for the first time after first establishing a career, or are continuing to improve their skills and knowledge both in and out of the workplace within individual life-long learning progressions.

The reading proposes (p. 18) that universities have a competitive edge 'against' knowledge industries, and that this advantage will be maintained through maintaining core values (research-based teaching / addressing the long-term cognitive needs of students). However Laurillard immediately challenges her own proposition by suggesting a very different reality, in which universities believe they can protect their franchise from honest competition merely through the right to issue recognised qualifications. She later proposes (p. 20) that universities display an inbalance in attitude toward research and education, claiming that curriculum is not geared toward long-term high-level learning and skills.

Based on my experience of the Information & Communication Technology industry, I find some resonance with the author:

• that the skills and knowledge gained in undergraduate ICT programs have very little if any practical value in the workplace;
• more specifically, that specialist knowledge transmitted in undergraduate ICT programs is of little if any value in knowledge industries that require practitioner knowledge, and more importantly, the ability to acquire such knowledge; and
• that the marketability held by universities specifically in undergraduate ICT programs is that of unique qualification brand-acknowledgement.

What should be sounding the clarion for universities is the phenomenon over the past decade in which more students are abandoning university undergraduate ICT courses and opting to study TAFE qualifications, than are articulating from TAFE to university. Additionally, knowledge industry employers are increasingly sceptical of the true value of university ICT degrees, and are more attracted by vendor certification and higher VET qualifications.

Laurillard (p. 20) rightfully presupposes the need for "a very different kind of university teaching" in which students learn by doing, that the best teaching is typically more coaching than teaching, that students 'do not so much attend learning events' but rather live them. According to Laurillard,

Knowledge ... is not adequately represented as propositional statements but as a historicity that incorporates individuals' experiences, their perceptions of the immediate situation, their intentions, and their experiences of discovery, of recognised tensions, of uncertainties, of ambiguities still unresolved. This is not situated learning only, nor discovery learning, nor meta-learning. It comes closer to scholarship as learning (p. 20)

Why, then, is so much university academic delivery content text that has been digitised and uploaded for transmission for the purposes of mental regurgitation?

While I can recount an endless stream of TAFE colleagues who offer PowerPoint presentations or digitised versions of printed texts online and erroneoulsy believe they offer this new kind of teaching, it is also my experience that this new teaching does occur - probably more frequently - in the VET sector and that it offers new and very exciting outcomes.

The reading (p. 20) discusses the imperatives on universities - research success and wider participation in higher education - as opposing forces, as research is held in higher regard and therefore funded better, and education is not measured with any meaningful quality indicators. It has certainly been my experience in undergraduate and postgraduate studies that many lecturers conducting research openly view their student cohort as a nuisance and a distraction to their 'real' work - with some lecturers openly instructing classes to withdraw and not waste the lecturer's valuable effort if there is any risk of non-completion.

Laurillard (p. 20) states the need for a new breed of academics who are reflective practitioners not only in their research (which is the expected 'norm') but also in their teaching, professionals who are: 

1. fully trained through a [journeyman] program, giving them access to competence and personal engagement with the skills of scholarship in their field;
2. highly knowledgeable in some specialist area;
3. licensed to practice as both practitioner and mentor to others in the field;
4. building on the work of others in their field whenever they begin new work;
5. conducting practical work using the agreed-upon protocols and standards of evidence of their field;
6. working in collaborative teams of respected peers;
7. seeking new insights and ways of rethinking their field; and
8. disseminating findings for peer review and use by others. (p. 20-21)

Laurillard (p. 21) argues that none of these characteristics of the reflective practitioner are attributable to current university academics, and proposes that acadmics must become researchers in teaching to address this: "University teaching must aspire to a realignment of research and teaching and to teaching methods that support students in the generic skills of scholarship, not the mere acquisition of knowledge". I suggest that many (not all, but man) of my VET colleagues demonstrate many or all of these attributes - perhaps with the exception of the fourth and eight points.

The reading (p. 22) presents Laurillard's Conversational Framework as a more progressive education model than the transmission model, situating the framework within available digital technologies. Laurillard (p. 22-23) discusses reusable digital learning objects as an appropriate replacement to digitised text and PowerPoint presentations offered via the Internet - however she (p. 24) highlights that academia does not typically invent its tools, it adapts those invented by others to its own uses, and therefore academics require a collective R&D program that builds these learning objects.

Exhibiting shades of the prophetic, perhaps Laurillard's most telling comment (p. 25) is her closing statement that, "The digital age will find its own ways of managing without us".