[This is for the Change11 MOOC]
Digital Scholarship and Teaching
You can choose to complete this section, or the alternative one on Digital Scholarship and Teaching (or both).
Arguably, teaching is the area where we will see the biggest, and most visible, change as a result of digital scholarship. Even in a conventional lecture setting, students now have access to a vast range of information sources, so the notion of the lecturer as the font of knowledge has disappeared. During any given lecture a student may well be watching a world expert talk on the same subject via iTunesU. Even this small change has profound implications for what it means to be a lecturer and the role of universities. If we add in factors such as open education, the impact of social networks, the easy distribution of digital content, the blurring of formal and informal education, learner analytics, etc then the nature of teaching begins to look very different than it did even ten years ago.
This is a broad topic, and in my book I only focus on one particular aspect, namely what is the impact of abundant content on the nature of teaching. I think this provides a reasonable model for considering other factors however.
Action
Read Weller Chapter 8:http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/DigitalScholar_9781849666275/chapter-ba-9781849666275-chapter-008.xml;jsessionid=543AAE770E2327FAFF05AA94554E28FE
View the contributions to Dave and George’s course on the Future of Education:http://edfutures.com/contributions
Consider:
- How might abundance impact upon teaching you are aware of?
- This focused only on abundance as one implication of digital scholarship, what other impacts can you think of?
- If we were to consider the impact of social networks on teaching, suggest four ways in which it might (or is already) influence current approaches as it becomes more embedded in practice.
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