The New Education Ecology
Lee Rainie (Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, US)

Description: Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, will discuss the Project’s most recent findings about Americans use the internet and their mobile devices to learn, share, and create information He will discuss how the changed media environment is affecting learners’ expectations about the availability of information and the ways in which learning takes place In this new environment, the traditional boundaries between home and school, teacher and pupil, public and private are breaking down and that is affecting the way learning occurs Lee will describe how Pew Internet has looked at these subjects and the ways in which schools and families are responding to them

Notes:

• Broadband facilitates network information
  • Volume and variety of information is growing at 20-30% a year
  • Pervasive media
  • Links and multimedia provide extension of data
  • Self-paced learning
  • Analytics - the age of "big data" / data by humans but by machines and other artifacts / what is our effectiveness - becoming more important
• Social media aids peer-to-peer learning by doing
  • Social networking 50% of adults are using
    
    • 83% of 18-29 year olds
    • 70% from 30-49 year olds
    • 51% 50-64 year olds
    • 33% 65+ year olds
  • 83% are millenials
  • Mean size of Facebook Friends - millenials have 318.5 friends
  • Changes character of soc.nets / more people are in social networks than there used to be - this includes small groups, churches, or other unique segments
  • Increases the role of social networks in learning - 1) signal systems / alerts and early warning - what is happening, 2) information evaluators - making sense of information and connect with others in their network, is this true?, how much weight should I give it? 3) audiences - provides a way to show and share 4) Do-it-yourself learning (the rise of the amateur experts).

82% of teens take their phone to bed with them...

• Mobile connectivity alters learning venues and expectations
  • 302.9 million mobile subscriber connections in America in 2010 and now 327.6 million (315.5 million is the total population in America).  So... there are more phones than people.
  • 35% of adults own smartphones
  • 94% of millennials have a cell phone
  • 71% of millennials have a laptop (only 52% have a desktop)
  • Mobile internet connectors - 63% of adults have access to the net (2/3's of Americans connect)  In 2008 it was 37%.
  • New access points rise (anytime/anywhere)
  • Attention zones morph (while watching TV have their mobile device with them) 
  • Real-time sharing and just-in-time searching - we need to be expert searchers
  • Augmented reality - packing more data into the physical world
  • Pervasive and perpetual awareness of social networks (conversations never end)

 We live our lives in continuous partial attention...

• New kinds of learners emerge
  • More self-directed than they used to be (not necessarily preferred but they are confident that they can)
  • Better arrayed to capture new information
  • More reliant on feedback and response
  • More inclined to collaboration - they expect to work in groups
  • Nodes of production, more oriented towards
• Digital Revolution
  • 95% teens use internet
  • 78% adults use internet
  • 82% teens have broadband
  • 62% adults have broadband
  • 74% are millennials (18-34) / 71% Gen X (35-46) / 60% Younger Boomers...
• Networked creator among internet users
  • 65% are social networking site users
  • 55% share photos
  • 37% contribute rankings and ratings
  • 33% create content tags
  • 30% share personal creations
  • 26% post comments
  • 15% have a personal website
  • 15% are content remixers
  • 14% are bloggers
  • 13% use Twitter
  • 6% are using location services with 9% allowing location awareness, and 23% mapping services
• Good news for online learning
  • Presidents predict the future of online learning.  More than half of their students in 10 years will be taking an online course.  At 2 year private/public now 16% and in 10 years 65% expected.
• Quality of online learning - not so good news
  
  • Presidents say: 39% said it is equal, and 57% said no
  • At 2 year private/public instiuttions 66% yes, and 34% no
• Changed socio-economic context
  • Back in history primary apprentice philosophy - a fixed platform
  • Horace mann version of education - universal access, industrial era
  • Lifelong learning - never stop learning, learning extends and goes beyond formal schooling - world moves faster and we have new environment we need to constantly add to our stores of knowledge
  • Learning as Transaction - OLD (Shana Ratner, 1997)
  • Learning as a Process - NEW
  • Learners receive knowledge - OLD
  • Learners create knowledge - NEW
  • Knowledge is hierarchical (individual) - OLD
  • Knowledge is ecological (new taxonomies and communities) - NEW
• The future of universities
  • In 2020 higher education will not be much different from the way it is today. (Agree or Disagree)
  • Or in 2020 higher education will be quite different from the way it is today. (Agree or Disagree)
    • Themes:
      
      • Push back on the timeline
      • Tiering of responses, some universities will not change other will change drastically.
      • A critical variable was administration.  They would either push hard or hold back.
      • We have an uncharted map - we haven't yet seen the innovations that are going to blow us all away - we are at the infancy of grand cleverness and innovation. 

Online education is building on the frontiers.