Silver Lining for Learning

This is the third of three episodes that we are devoting to education in India. As we had said in the introduction to the first of this series (#123 and #129), with 1.4 billion people, 27% of whom are under 15, India has significant educational needs. Its multilingual, multi-ethnic culture throws in further challenges. Scale, complexity, and diversity — it is all here. Today we will meet with representatives of two organizations focusing on student-centered learning. Priyanka Krishna at Quest Alliance  and Joseph Phillip at Reap Benefit.

This is the second of three episodes that we are devoting to education in India. As we had said in the introduction to the first of this series (#123), with 1.4 billion people, 27% of whom are under 15, India has significant educational needs. Its multilingual, multi-ethnic culture throw in further challenges. Scale, complexity and diversity — it is all here.Today we will meet with representatives of two organizations focusing on student centered learning. Sandhya Gupta at Aavishkaar Foundation and Eshwar Bandi with Inqui-Lab Foundation.Transforming math and science education for students and teachers is an important advance for all countries to achieve. STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) knowledge and skills are best acquired through various forms of active, experiential learning rather than passive assimilation. Exciting models for accomplishing this goal are in place in India. The Aavishkaar initiative, led by Sandhya Gupta, builds students’ and teachers’ engagement, achievement, and confidence in research and development through math & science camps as well as training workshops. The Inqui-Lab Foundation, co-founded by Eshwar Bandi, provides both Think & Make in-person programs and online School Innovation Challenges that are very effective in helping children and youth to innovate for problems around them and in supporting them in acting on their ideas. The episode will describe ways that parts of these transformational models can generalize to other settings across the world. More info on our guests below the video.

Roy Amara of the Institute for the Future is quoted as saying: “We overestimate technology short-term, and underestimate it long-term.”  How does this apply to AI?  First, we now know that fears of rapid impact on employment were vastly overblown, as they were based on extrapolations of capabilities continuing in an exponential fashion, rather than plateauing.  Furthermore, the progress has been for narrow applications which were, in engineering-speak, “bounded problems” like protein folding most famously.During this session, we will examine the true abilities and gaps of AI, as delineated in Charles’ co-authored book on Artificial Intelligence in Education, and discuss whether and when these might be resolved in ethical ways.  Armed with that view, we will then address how advances in AI impact education at three levels:Curriculum – What we teach for employabilityInstruction – Intelligent Tutoring Systems may be overblown, but narrow slices are possible (e.g., foreign language acquisition)Assessments – analytics are a clear fit, but it is mostly data science techniques; we need to define what AI is in this context, above and beyond algorithmic techniques and basic adaptiveness.Another impact of AI on education is changing what capabilities educators should cultivate and what students need to learn for their future occupation. Over the next two decades, our partnership with computers in accomplishing work roles will typically involve intelligence augmentation—an interweaving of human judgment with machine reckoning— even though a few human jobs will instead be done completely by AI. For instance, AI designed to support the work of teachers might use metrics like how much time students spent on an activity, the number of questions they answered correctly, and the number of attempts in order to evaluate whether particular students need additional instruction in a topic; AI would provide a recommendation to the teacher. The educator then assesses the validity of this suggestion using a host of data points (e.g., students’ levels of engagement overall, personality, performance in adjacent subjects, well-being) and decides how to best craft additional, engaging instruction for the student. Much as how the word processor enhanced human efficiency, productivity, and capabilities, AI can augment human abilities through reckoning—with potentially a great benefit in which the human-AI partnership is capable of more than either person or machine in isolation. 

Silver Lining for Learning is an ongoing conversation on the future of learning with educators and education leaders from across the globe. Hosted by Chris Dede, Curt Bonk, Punya Mishra & Yong Zhao, these conversations began under the “dark cloud” of the COVID19 crisis and continue today. We see these conversations as space to discuss the creation of equitable, humanistic and sustainable learning ecosystems that meet the needs of all learners. These  conversations are hosted live on YouTube every Saturday (typically 5:30 PM Eastern US time) and are archived on https://silverliningforlearning.org

In this episode of Silver Lining for Learning, we will meet with Vicky Colbert, a sociologist from Colombia. She is co-creator of the world-renowned Escuela Nueva model. Escuela Nueva, Spanish for “new school”, is a progressive education model that emphasizes learner understanding over memorization, and strives to foster the development of interpersonal skills. Importantly, instead of a lecture-based approach, it employs a child-centered pedagogy with extensive collaborative learning. Studies show that it improves literacy and numeracy among disadvantaged youth while encouraging the development of active and reflexive learning as well as self-esteem, creativity, and civic and democratic values. The skills fostered by an Escuela Nueva school are meant to help graduates flourish and quickly adapt to the challenges and possibilities brought by the increasing technological world around them. Attend this session to learn about this method and perhaps rethink aspects of your vision of effective schools and schooling.

What is creativity? How can we cultivate creativity in education? Can it be assessed? If so, then how? These are all significant and unsettled questions in creativity education. Professors Ron Beghetto and Yong Zhao edited an issue of Review of Research in Education (RRE) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to explore these issues around creativity in 2021-2022. The issue has been published and can be accessed here.They are editing another issue of RRE for 2024. The theme is side effects in education. Educational side effects are effects that accompany the intended outcomes of educational policies, initiatives, and practices. While some side effects can be beneficial, they can also be adverse, negative, and damaging. In this episode, we have invited the two editors, Professor Ron Beghetto and Professor Yong Zhao, who is a co-host of Silver Lining for Learning, to discuss creativity education and side effects in education. Learn more about our guests below the video.

Today, learners face an unprecedented challenge: adapting to a world that is changing more quickly than ever before. The skills, tools, and knowledge needed to thrive in a global knowledge economy are evolving at breakneck pace, and the artifacts we’ve traditionally relied on to capture these skills (e.g., the four-year degree) aren’t well-suited for the task. Learners and employers need a more agile, accessible, and specific way of recognizing what people know and can do.We will hear from a lifelong learner (Brittany Storie, Director of Workforce Skills at Pearsons) who has experienced career benefits since earning alternative credentials, and we’ll discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the credentialing ecosystem more broadly.

India is home to 1.4 billion people, 52% of whom are younger than 30 years of age and 27% are under 15! India is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society with 22 officially recognized languages. We have had experts from India in the past (Episodes 43, 87 & 91) but we now want to provide a broader lens on India over a series of episodes. Over the next few weeks Silver Lining for Learning will focus three episodes on India (Episodes #123, #129 & #130), and we will meet with some amazing organizations and people working in educational contexts across the country.This episode (#123) centers on two non-profit organizations working in rural India around teacher development and women’s empowerment: Ashvattha Learning Communities  (represented by Arushi Mittal); and Sajhe Sapne (represented by Surabhi Yadav). Learn more about the organizations and our guests below the video.

Hosts reflect on the development of SLL with special guest Lin Lin Lipsmeyer and celebrate SLL receiving the AECT Distinguished Development Award!

In this session of Silver Lining for Learning (SLL) will discuss innovative learning spaces that are being created, augmented, evaluated, and reimagined in higher education to better understand human learning as bounded by the confines of our gravitational structure. For more than a decade, Indiana University (IU), has been forefront of the learning space field with dozens of experimentations with different formal and informal learning space arrangements for interactive, hands-on, digitally-rich, and highly engaging active learning as part of the Mosaic initiative that began under the leadership of Stacy Morrone and is now led by Tracey Birdwell. Countless innovative pedagogies for flexible learning environments have been experimented with and researched at Indiana University, and IU faculty and staff have held unique brainstorming sessions, captivating immersive experiences, and much more with the goal of enhancing teaching and learning with technology.