1
Professor Steve Wheeler
Professor Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor of Learning Technologies at the University of Plymouth, delivered one of the keynote addresses at the Inspire conference.
On 3-4 December I’ll be in Manchester to present a keynote speech at the Inspire Conference, sponsored by the Higher Education Academy. The conference is themed around excellence in teaching of the social sciences, which reflects my own professional and academic background. During my undergraduate degree I specialised in psychology, but also studied a number of other social sciences, including politics, economics, sociology and human geography. I’m quite at home in this area of academia, and my thinking is shaped and informed by these disciplines, so I was delighted to be invited to speak. As a prelude to the event, the organisers have asked me to write a short blog post which takes the form of my responses to four questions:
Q1. What will you be speaking about at the Inspire conference in December? The title of my keynote is ‘Learning in the Digital Age: Theoretical Perspectives.‘ My key premise is that learning technology is just about everywhere in education. Universities are replete with lecture capture tools, interactive media, web based content and personal response technologies; students arrive equipped with social media and mobile devices; technology supported distance education has been long established; universities are experimenting with flipped classrooms, gaming and MOOCs. I plan to discuss our possible responses to this. What should we make it all, and do we consider these new trends threats or opportunities? How might we harness the powerful potential of these tools and technologies to engage students more, and enhance learning in higher education? What theories could be used to explain these phenomena, and how can social/psychological models better our understanding of how people learn when their communication, relationships and learning are mediated through technology? I plan to explore several of the older social science theories, and compare and contrast these with some of the newer, emerging theories to determine what they offer. Can the established theories still offer useful explanations of new practices and experiences, or can we gain some illumination for a better understanding of learning in the digital age from the newer theories?
Q2. What issues in HE teaching and learning are you passionate about? My passion is learning – in all its possible forms. In fact, as a lecturer working in higher education, I consider myself to be a professional learner. I have gone on record as saying that although I don’t need to work any more, I continue to work at Plymouth University, mainly because it is a great place to learn and to continue developing my research interests around digital pedagogy. I will hopefully continue to work in higher education for as long as I’m interested. I will quit when I get bored, which at the moment isn’t that likely