Old Industrial Revolution Paradigm of Education Needs to End: How Scientific Curation Can Transform Education
Curator: Stephen J. Williams, PhD.
Dr. Cathy N. Davidson from Duke University gives a talk entitled: Now You See It. Why the Future of Learning Demands a Paradigm Shift
In this talk, shown below, Dr. Davidson shows how our current education system has been designed for educating students for the industrial age type careers and skills needed for success in the Industrial Age and how this educational paradigm is failing to prepare students for the challenges they will face in their future careers.
Or as Dr. Davidson summarizes
Designing education not for your past but for their future
As the video is almost an hour I will summarize some of the main points below
PLEASE WATCH VIDEO
Summary of talk
Dr. Davidson starts the talk with a thesis: that Institutions tend to preserve the problems they were created to solve.
All the current work, teaching paradigms that we use today were created for the last information age (19th century)
Our job to to remake the institutions of education work for the future not the one we inherited
Four information ages or technologies that radically changed communication
- advent of writing: B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia allowed us to record and transfer knowledge and ideas
- movable type – first seen in 10th century China
- steam powered press – allowed books to be mass produced and available to the middle class. First time middle class was able to have unlimited access to literature
- internet- ability to publish and share ideas worldwide
Interestingly, in the early phases of each of these information ages, the same four complaints about the new technology/methodology of disseminating information was heard
- ruins memory
- creates a distraction
- ruins interpersonal dialogue and authority
- reduces complexity of thought
She gives an example of Socrates who hated writing and frequently stated that writing ruins memory, creates a distraction, and worst commits ideas to what one writes down which could not be changed or altered and so destroys ‘free thinking’.
She discusses how our educational institutions are designed for the industrial age.
The need for collaborative (group) learning AND teaching
Designing education not for your past but for the future
In other words preparing students for THEIR future not your past and the future careers that do not exist today.
In the West we were all taught to answer silently and alone. However in Japan, education is arranged in the han or group think utilizing the best talents of each member in the group. In Japan you are arranged in such groups at an early age. The concept is that each member of the group contributes their unique talent and skill for the betterment of the whole group. The goal is to demonstrate that the group worked well together.
see https://educationinjapan.wordpress.com/education-system-in-japan-general/the-han-at-work-community-spirit-begins-in-elementary-school/ for a description of “in the han”
In the 19th century in institutions had to solve a problem: how to get people out of the farm and into the factory and/or out of the shop and into the firm
Takes a lot of regulation and institutionalization to convince people that independent thought is not the best way in the corporation
keywords for an industrial age
- timeliness
- attention to task
- standards, standardization
- hierarchy
- specialization, expertise
- metrics (measures, management)
- two cultures: separating curriculum into STEM versus artistic tracts or dividing the world of science and world of art
This effort led to a concept used in scientific labor management derived from this old paradigm in education, an educational system controlled and success measured using
- grades (A,B,C,D)
- multiple choice tests
keywords for our age
- workflow
- multitasking attention
- interactive process (Prototype, Feedback)
- data mining
- collaboration by difference
Can using a methodology such as scientific curation affect higher education to achieve this goal of teaching students to collaborate in an interactive process using data mining to create a new workflow for any given problem? Can a methodology of scientific curation be able to affect such changes needed in academic departments to achieve the above goal?
This will be the subject of future curations tested using real-world in class examples.
However, it is important to first discern that scientific content curation takes material from Peer reviewed sources and other expert-vetted sources. This is unique from other types of content curation in which take from varied sources, some of which are not expert-reviewed, vetted, or possibly ‘fake news’ or highly edited materials such as altered video and audio. In this respect, the expert acts not only as curator but as referee. In addition, collaboration is necessary and even compulsory for the methodology of scientific content curation, portending the curator not as the sole expert but revealing the CONTENT from experts as the main focus for learning and edification.
Other article of note on this subject in this Open Access Online Scientific Journal include:
- eScientific Publishing a Case in Point: Evolution of Platform Architecture Methodologies and of Intellectual Property Development (Content Creation by Curation) Business Model
- Analysis of Utilizing LPBI Group’s Scientific Curation Platform as an Educational Tool: New Paradigm for Student Engagement
- Curation Methodology – Digital Communication Technology to mitigate Published Information Explosion and Obsolescence in Medicine and Life Sciences
- The Methodology of Curation for Scientific Research Findings
- conceived: NEW Definition for Co-Curation in Medical Research
- Democratizing Data Science Education (Video)
- e-Scientific Publishing: The Competitive Advantage of a Powerhouse for Curation of Scientific Findings and Methodology Development for e-Scientific Publishing – LPBI Group, A Case in Point
- Innovations in electronic Scientific Publishing (eSP): Case Studies in Marketing eContent, Curation Methodology, Categories of Research Functions, Interdisciplinary conceptual innovations by Cross Section of Categories, Exposure to Frontiers of Science by Real Time Press coverage of Scientific Conferences
- Curation is Uniquely Distinguished by the Historical Exploratory Ties that Bind
The above articles will give a good background on this NEW Conceived Methodology of Scientific Curation and its Applicability in various areas such as Medical Publishing, and as discussed below Medical Education.
To understand the new paradigm in medical communication and the impact curative networks have or will play in this arena please read the following:
This article discusses a history of medical communication and how science and medical communication initially moved from discussions from select individuals to the current open accessible and cooperative structure using Web 2.0 as a platform.