On Education and Digital Culture (#edcmooc)

I am about to end my first MOOC course, one given by the University of Edimburgh on "e-Learning and Digital Culture". 

It has been quite an experience, being in a course with more than 40,000 students - most of them, lurkers. The EDCMOOC team clearly wanted the course to be one of discussion rather than comprehension of a knowledge capsule. We had to go through videos of short movies, adds, and lectures, plus Online article readings, and participate - if we wanted to - in one or several discussion forums. Twice during the Course there has been a hangout, where we have been able to see and hear all the members of the team give their viewpoints on the issues put into discussion on the previous weeks. 

My experience is that MOOCs are great but still in the making. Yet, I believe they will evolve very fast, as the need to access lifelong learning becomes more apparent as a feature for the 21st century professional. The business models will appear. All common sense indicates there will be a fee for accreditation, and that fee at a very accesible price. If the accreditation is done presentially it will be more expensive than if done online. People will be able therefore to create a personalized curriculum according to what each one wants and needs to further one´s career. The market for this need will be huge; hence the offer will be varied, and the competence, hard; and the prices, fair... hopefully! 

As in all experiences, this MOOC in particular had good things, bad things and ugly things

First, the good: the curation of the contents was provocative, the discussion forums were thrilling, the assigment, demanding. If you wanted to be in the course, you had to be there, read a lot, watch a lot and make yourself "heard" a lot. As in all big groups, there were some students who were very proactive, and that - given the big numbers involved - did provide a very good diversity of opinions. Twitter proved to be a great tool for engaging (I wouldn't have thought it could). And the student-to-student interaction proved a really enriching (and human) relation. 

The bad: it is extremely difficult to have a one-to-one relation with anyone of the MOOC team. They were available to help in doing the job needed, but when it came to adressing particular matters, you felt  a bit on your own. Also, when discussion threads became a bit long (and I am talking of more than 50 posts) people would not read all that had been posted, and would put their opinions on the latest matters exposed, or directly what they thought on the discussion. This made that the same opinion for the same idea would be written several times. If it had been a presential class, it gives the feeling of students who have not been paying attention and suddenly come up with things that have been long discussed. 

The ugly: the EDCMOOC team clearly had a point. Those dissenting with their point - as is my case - were not addressed, neither in the forums nor in the hangouts. As if we didn´t exist. 

The point of the team at EDCMOOC is that technology affects the human being, and in doing so, affects the ways of education. We were prompted to lectures about post-humanism and transhumanism. Week three was devoted to "reasserting the human" and week four, to "redefining the human". We were induced to think that technology produces a new way of being human. We were challenged to the idea that massive courses could be human at all. We were asked if this is the right way to educate people. I cannot say that was the idea of the Team, but the curation of the contents at least for me clearly indicated they had a position on the issue, which I disagree in. Let me explain my point of view:

Technology is a human invention, and its use may or may not be human, depending solely on the human who uses it. The terms "post" or "trans" humanism forget that humans are, above all, humans. Have always been and will always be. They evolve, they get smarter, but they still are deeply humans. No machine can be human, no matter what arguments science fiction may bring. These are always assumptions, not realities, nor data. Humanity has always indulged in "playing God" and creating living creatures who at some point of their evolution rise against their creator - perhaps because that was what we did? Yet, humans are humans, not God. 

The real issue in the matter of learning and digital cultures should not be therefore, if we are in front of a new paradigm on humanity (utopian, dystopian, post-humanist or transhumanist... who cares?). The real issue should be,  how to use technology so that our students can be the best version of themselves in a world where technology HAS become omnipresent  

Alfredo Barriga

The world has what it needs to give a better life to all

I believe the World has enough resources as to make it possible for every human being to have a decent life with their work. I believe wealth creation would be orders of magnitude higher than it is now if all those resources were used wisely. And I believe the most important resource in the World is the one most neglected and wasted, which is the reason there is so much poverty and injustice.

Ever since the dawn of humanity until our days, we have focused on the tangible resources: land, natural resources, work, and money. And we have been able to understand how value creation and wealth is made by the combination of these resources. But let me ask you a question: what would the GDP of the World be if every human being on Earth would work where most talented and where they liked best working?

I don´t have a number. But I have asked this question to economists (including the President of my nation, who is an economist), and the answer has been invariably: orders of magnitude higher than actually. It only happens they consider it impossible for that to happen. Yet, they agree it would be orders of magnitude higher if it was possible. I believe it can be done, and that it is not a utopian dream. Because the most neglected and wasted resource of humanity is inside human beings: talent. Take the talent lost because of billions of people in the world who are living in poverty, add the billions of people who work where they can to make a living instead of working where they are talented, and you have an idea of the waste of resources we are speaking of. We have developed good tools for tangible resources allocation, but we have not developed tools for intangible resources allocation (talent and knowledge). Hence, these resources are ill used and neglected.

What about quality of living in such a scenario? If we added this to measure the “rate of happiness”, I also believe – common sense tells me so – that the rate of happiness in the whole World would be a lot higher than it actually is. Social unrest would diminish – and the cost of social unrest would diminish as well. People would not only be happier because they work in what they are naturally gifted, but also because they fulfill a sense of contribution, of giving to the World something unique that their singular talents and affinities can provide. And for those whose sole target is money making – well, there is a huge, huge amount of money to be made by making this happen: orders of magnitude higher than now.

So, what must be done? How it must be done?

All humans have natural talents with which they have been born. And I speak of “talents” in its broadest meaning, not limited to “intellectual” talents. We must learn how to discover the inherent talents of each person. We must help develop those talents to their full potential. We must learn to allocate those talents where they will be able to create the biggest contribution. That is what must be done. But how do we do this?

The key transformation is the transformation of education. From a “one size fits all” to a personalized learning paradigm, where the role of the teacher – I’d rather use the name “mentor” – would be to discover the talents of the student and guide the student towards the full development of those talents. Where the role of the learning institutions is also connecting talents in the making with talents needed, so that future employers of those talents may participate in the process as well and co finance it, just as the big soccer teams invest in very young talented soccer players as soon as their potential talent is discovered. And, the learning process should have a big online component, where smart systems help discovering talents and give personalized learning tools and activities to develop those talents.

A second transformation is in the minds and mentality of organizations who hire people for a position, based on a resume of what they have studied, where they have worked and what they have accomplished. People should be hired based on talents and affinities, yet few people have worked where they are most talented and like best. Most people work where they are given a work to do in exchange for money. Head hunters and hiring agencies don´t ask for talents, they ask for working experience. All organizations should also make themselves the question I made at the beginning: how would it be like if everyone working here was working where most talented and where they liked best?

Finally, governments should focus in public policies that help discovering, developing and allocating national talent. It is the best effort and investment they can do to the well being of the country. It is the single action that will yield more wealth, social justice and happiness to the nation. Public policies all around the world have to do with working with what is visible, tangible. Essentially, public policies deal with a redistribution of income to help the less privileged have access to what they need for a dignified quality of living. I am not saying this should not be the case. My point is that focusing on talent discovery, development and allocation will be a more efficient way to meet the same goals. Benchmarking all public policies with the filter of how much they contribute to talent development and allocation would let to a shift in public policies more akin to the Knowledge Society where we are being immersed.

Those three actions would make possible a huge leapfrog in the generation and distribution of wealth in the whole world, as much as they would create a much happier society, where everyone could have the opportunity to make a valuable contribution and be rewarded in 

accordance.

Alfredo Barriga