Learning by practice: The next frontier
The idea underlying all my work is this: At the time of great technological and social change, learning by practice gets better results than academic study.
Having invested myself in finding better ways to organise learning by practice and in designing better measurements to assess its impact, I am aware of the objections this position might give rise to.
At a time of great change - and the resulting uncertainty - it is better to focus on what does not change, human universals, as practice focus may lead to superficiality. The real change, it is true, happens at the fringes. If one really wants to get a sense of what's happening in AI, they are better off at a Research University today than interning at a random company somewhere, which may just be taking advantage of AI as a buzzword (remember builder.ai?).
Besides, the world of practice, as it must, focuses on here and now. It is better to learn how to use a tool through practical application - and this is what most learning by practice experiences end up becoming, learning to use tools. However, at a time of great change, education needs to provide a longer view. More than just skills, as skills get obsolete even faster at moments like these!
Having come from a professional training background - and I have spent years designing in-company learning programmes to meet specific skill requirements - this question dominates my thinking about learning by practice. How does one balance the art of the long view with the urgency of learning emerging tech and tools? How does one continuously question one's experience while immersing oneself in it?
Scaling project-based learning has been the focus of my work recently. I employed standard tool-kits - Agile methodology, a system of continuous measurement of progress - to drive down cost and make it meaningful for all concerned. These experimentations uncovered new challenges: Institutional inertia, student expectations, their preparedness etc. Yet, none of these addressed the key issue - how does one design projects that are 'eye-opening'? As 'eye-opening' as travelling to a new country, first days in a great company or attending lectures from an inspiring professor would be?
One can argue that working on a meaningful project should be life-changing by itself. But I would see, after Jack Mezirow, learning at three levels: Instrumental (learning to control and manipulate tools and environments), Communicative (learning to understand meaning of what's being communicated) and Emancipatory (learning one's own perspectives). While projects can result in better instrumental learning than theoretical expositions, particularly at the time of a change, without proper care being taken, they can have the opposite effect on emancipatory learning. And, at a time of change, emancipatory learning is not an optional extra, but should be at the front and centre of any higher learning endeavour.
I have also heard the view that most people only need how-to learning. But I believe I am short-changing my students if I give up on them even before I started. Who am I - are we - to judge whether a particular student can be a leader, a path-maker, or not? Our societies operate with a sorting mechanism for who gets to shape the agenda and the rest are consigned to following it, but this is being upended right now. The change demands emancipatory learning: An education shouldn't close the possibilities for the students, but open them.
Therefore, my focus is currently shifting from scale to complexity of project-based learning. Scale is important, as millions of people are going to college now, but without appropriate care and considerations about the outcome, our efforts may fail our students. I am eschewing the temptations of making project-based learning easier and more affordable, before I have spent enough time building the guardrails that would make it bring real change.
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