Aprendizagem ao longo da vida

Competências-chave para a Aprendizagem ao Longo da Vida – Quadro de Referência Europeu

O Quadro de Referência estabelece oito competências essenciais para viver e trabalhar numa sociedade moderna orientada para a inovação:

1. Comunicação na língua materna;
   é a capacidade de expressar e interpretar conceitos, pensamentos, sentimentos, factos e opiniões, tanto oralmente como por escrito (escutar, falar, ler e escrever), e de interagir linguisticamente de forma apropriada e criativa em todas as situações da vida social e cultural: na educação e formação, no trabalho, em casa e nos tempos livres.
   
   
2. Comunicação em línguas estrangeiras;
   as competências de base são globalmente as mesmas que para a comunicação na língua materna (...) A comunicação em línguas estrangeiras requer também aptidões como a mediação e a compreensão intercultural.
   
   
3. Competência matemática e competências básicas em ciências e tecnologia;
   é a capacidade de desenvolver e aplicar um raciocínio matemático para resolver problemas diversos da vida quotidiana. Partindo de um domínio sólido da numeracia, o acento recai nos processos e na actividade, assim como no conhecimento. A competência matemática envolve, em graus diferentes, a capacidade e a vontade de empregar os modos matemáticos de pensamento (raciocínio lógico e espacial) e de representação (fórmulas, modelos, construções, gráficos, diagramas).
   
   
4. Competência digital;
   envolve a utilização segura e crítica das tecnologias da sociedade da informação (TSI) no trabalho, nos tempos livres e na comunicação. É sustentada pelas competências em TIC: o uso do computador para obter, avaliar, armazenar, produzir, apresentar e trocar informações e para comunicar e participar em redes de cooperação via Internet.
   
   
5. Aprender a aprender;
   Aprender a aprender é a capacidade de iniciar e prosseguir uma aprendizagem, de organizar a sua própria aprendizagem, inclusive através de uma gestão eficaz do tempo e da informação, tanto individualmente como em grupo. Esta competência implica também que o indivíduo tenha consciência do seu próprio método de aprendizagem e das suas próprias necessidades, identificando as oportunidades disponíveis, e que tenha a capacidade de ultrapassar os obstáculos para uma aprendizagem bem sucedida. Esta competência significa adquirir, processar e assimilar novos conhecimentos e aptidões e saber procurar e fazer uso de aconselhamento. (...) A motivação e a confiança são elementos fundamentais para a aquisição desta competência.
   
   
6. Competências sociais e cívicas;
   incluem as competências pessoais, interpessoais e interculturais, e abrangem todas as formas de comportamento que permitem ao indivíduo participar de forma eficaz e construtiva na vida social e laboral, em particular em sociedades cada vez mais heterogéneas, e resolver confl itos quando necessário. As competências cívicas permitem ao indivíduo participar plenamente na vida cívica, com base no conhecimento dos conceitos e das estruturas sociais e políticas e numa participação cívica activa e democrática.
   
   
7. Espírito de iniciativa e espírito empresarial;
   capacidade de os indivíduos passarem das ideias aos actos. Compreendem a criatividade, a inovação e a assunção de riscos, bem como, a capacidade de planear e gerir projectos para alcançar objectivos. Esta competência é útil aos indivíduos, não só na vida de todos os dias, em casa e na sociedade, mas também no local de trabalho, porque os torna conscientes do contexto do seu trabalho e capazes de aproveitar as oportunidades, e serve de base à aquisição de outras aptidões e conhecimentos mais específicos de que necessitam os que estabelecem uma actividade social ou comercial ou para ela contribuem. Tal deveria incluir a sensibilização para os valores éticos e o fomento da boa governação.
   
   
8. Sensibilidade e expressão culturais.
   Apreciação da importância da expressão criativa de ideias, das experiências e das emoções num vasto leque de suportes de comunicação, incluindo a música, as artes do espectáculo, a literatura e as artes visuais.

Teaching: Superficiality breeds contempt

Tim Birkhead

Times Higher Education

Undergraduate teaching is in crisis for one simple reason: we reward superficiality. We give away first-class and upper-second-class degrees like confetti, rewarding undergraduates whose knowledge is so limited that only a few years ago they would have done no better than a lower second. For those who have been lecturers for long enough to have witnessed this devaluation of education, it is a disturbing trend.
(...)
Yet synthesis is something we don't reward. The research assessment exercise has not rewarded researchers for writing books or reviews, nor does the current system encourage us to teach undergraduates to be synthesisers. Synthesis requires a broad view and, of course, part of that broad view requires basic building blocks, but if we exclude synthesis from the way we educate undergraduates, they aren't going to do it or value it. In fact, in general, we do exactly the opposite: we reward superficial, short-term recall.
(...)
There are several reasons why undergraduate education seems superficial.

• First, superficiality is what happens at school - and is rewarded. Teaching to the curriculum in school has a powerful effect on what happens at university. At school, and increasingly at university, the emphasis is primarily on facts and communication ability - the ability to recall information - and, to a lesser extent, on how to write and speak. There is hardly any weight at all given to how to think.(...)

• Second, there are too few rewards for teaching in universities.(...) Research and teaching have always been in conflict. Most people go into an academic career because they enjoy research: few do it because they enjoy teaching more than research. As a result, most academics tend to begrudge the time they have to "give up" to teaching. This is made worse by the fact that most rewards - job satisfaction and promotion - come through research success, that is, success in securing funds (and those essential overheads for the institution) from an ever-diminishing pot.(...)

• Third, the internet fosters superficiality.(...) Of course, it is not the internet per se that's the problem; it is that we have failed to train undergraduates to use it in a scholarly way.(...)

Changing the way we educate under-graduates within these constraints requires a few bold steps. Here are some suggestions.

• The first may sound a bit Orwellian - in the first year we need a strong re-education programme. We need to (gently) shake undergraduates out of their school-curriculum complacency and introduce a new set of rules.(...)

• Second, we should give fewer lectures and provide more interaction in the form of projects and tutorials. Learning to think in a critical and scholarly way requires dialogue between teacher and student. We should abandon or greatly reduce coursework, or not assess it, so that it doesn't count towards a degree, and we should introduce many more synoptic and general papers.

• Third, we need fewer forms of assessment. A high diversity of assessment is deemed to be fairer, providing opportunities for students with different abilities to excel. But too many assessments simply make it harder to discriminate. Worse, many of our assessments are meaningless - especially coursework, where we have no control over who has actually done it or how long it has taken.

• Fourth, we need a better system of rewards for academics who are good researchers and effective teachers. And the best reward would be research opportunities from the institution itself - such as studentships or postdoctoral posts or simply some no-strings research funding. Rewards of this kind would be a tremendous incentive.

(continuar a ler)

End the University as We Know It

"GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
(...)
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
(...)
If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured. The long process to make higher learning more agile, adaptive and imaginative can begin with six major steps:

1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs.

2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs.

3. Increase collaboration among institutions.

4. Transform the traditional dissertation.

5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students.

6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure.
(...)
For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency and will open academia to a future we cannot conceive."

By MARK C. TAYLOR
Published: April 26, 2009
The New York Times

Vale a pena ler o artigo inteiro, e os comentários.

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, Washington, D.C., 2009.

Artes e ciências: acabar o divórcio

Exames por video-conferência: o caso da Dinamarca

Examination in Denmark is regulated by Ministerial Order. Up to 2001 video examination was not allowed. (...) A change of the Ministerial Order in 2004 allowed institutions to arrange exams as videoconferences on or off campus within Denmark. The students should be watched during the exam by a person appointed or accepted by the institution and no further preconditions were given. In 2006 it was added that the institution should assure that the security arrangements was the same as if the exam was ordinary - on campus. Besides that it was possible to get exemption from the order (BEK nr 867; BEK nr 231).
As a consequence Aalborg University applied on behalf of the master program in Problem Based Learning in Engineering and Science for exemption so that it was possible to arrange video examinations.
(...) exams have been mediated with the help of Skype and have for all the students, examiners and external examiners been a challenge and opportunity and has brought new knowledge and experience.
(...)
The more experience the respondents have with video exams, the more satisfied they are with the exams and the more positive in their evaluation. Almost all of them think that video exams give the facilitator the possibility to test the outcomes and the external examiner the possibility to watch that the demands are in accordance with the outcomes defined and see to that the exams are completed in accordance with the rules. While all experienced responders found that dialogue between the examinee and the facilitator was possible to a high degree or a satisfaction degree there were responders which found that it was only to some degree.

Qvist, 2008. Online video examination. Video exams from the student’s point of view. Results from a questionnaire. Paper presented at Diverse Conference 2008 Haarlem, INHOLLAND University, The Netherlands, July 1 - July 3 2008

The book everyone wishes they'd written

O THE começa hoje a publicar uma série semanal em que pedem a autoridades em diferentes áreas que escolham e apresentem aquele que consideram ser o livro mais importante do seu campo de estudo.

Dos primeiros resultados, publicados esta semana, conheço dois e já li um. Podia ser pior...

Ensino por video-conferência

Uma nota breve:

Now that videoconferencing is being widely used for the delivery of mass lectures between sites, there is concern that the quality of teaching and learning experienced, using this method of delivery, is not as good as that experienced in a traditional classroom situation. The study aimed to investigate this concern by using a research diary to collect information on classroom activities and cognitive outcomes which students at local and remote sites experienced over a ten-week period. The results indicated that remote site students did not experience the same quality of teaching and learning as local site students.

Knipe & Lee (2002), The quality of teaching and learning via videoconferencing. British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 33 (3): 301–311.

Para que serve a universidade?

Das cruciais reflexões de Ivan Leban, "Today's academic values", passei pelo artigo de Ulrich Littmann, "Bologna: fake or promise?", para chegar ao texto de James Frey sobre "Questions and concerns about tertiary education in the 21st century".

Este último autor reflecte sobre as diferentes missões atribuídas historicamente às universidades,

When the ancient universities were established (Alexandria in Egypt, Bologna in what is now Italy,Mustansiriyah in what is now Iraq, Taxila in what is now India), the purpose of university education was clear. It was to pass on to future generations the accumulated wisdom of society.
In the 1860s, the Morrill Land Grant Act transferred valuable tracts of land owned by the federal government of the United States to state governments in exchange for university instruction in agriculture, home science, and the mechanical arts. This marks the addition of applied professional (some called it vocational) training to university curricula. Most other countries have followed this example, with perhaps the last being England, which made engineering a university-based subject 100 years later. Universities now had a dual purpose: to pass on the accumulated wisdom of society, and to train students for technical occupations.
In the 19th century, German educators developed a different philosophy of tertiary education. For them, the purpose of a university was to advance the frontiers of human knowledge through research and publication.
In the United States and in many other countries, including Germany, the purpose of a university is now a blend of these three missions: pass on knowledge, train professional workers, and advance the frontiers of human knowledge. Some educational systems have added a fourth mission: community or public service.

para partilhar depois as suas preocupações com o ensino superior actual

1. There is no clear philosophical mission for tertiary educational institutions.
2. There is almost universal agreement on the need for quality control, but no clear definition of what constitutes quality tertiary education.
3. There is no clear identification of the public to be served.
4. Because of these deficiencies, tertiary education is now in a state of competitive marketing.
   
5. Because of these deficiencies, tertiary education is now in a state of caveat emptor (buyer beware).

e concluir:

Tertiary education throughout the world is in greater turmoil now than at any time since the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Those who are providers of tertiary education are being subjected to philosophical, administrative, and financial pressures from an increasing number of directions. Those who clearly define their mission, their goals, their degree programmes, and their quality standards will have a better chance to have their degrees officially recognised internationally.

Do lado de lá do Atlântico...

... e mais além! Três links norte americanos (é de estranhar?) com uma preocupação com a globalização do ensino superior:

• Welcome to World Education Services, your portal to trusted, accurate research and intelligence about foreign academic credentials, institutions and trends. Whether your interest is for academic or professional purposes, we’ve got the tools and information to help. A World Education News & Reviews (WENR) deste mês (necessário registo para aceder) tem um artigo descrevendo o Processo de Bolonha e um outro bem mais interessante com uma reflexão sobre o papel das universidades: "The role of universities is to educate people, to provide students with general, universal knowledge, to create an autonomous human being – a free thinker. They are not meant to simply educate people for the labor market." (Leban, 2009) Só o contexto histórico do nascimento e evolução das universidades vale o tempo do registo no site, mas quem tiver pressa pode ler a versão original do artigo aqui.
  

• Changing Higher Education. Um site pessoal de Lloyd Armstrong. This website is dedicated to discussion and analysis of the forces coming to bear on higher education, and of ways in which higher education might proactively and effectively use these forces to increase its impact.

• GlobalHigherEd. Um blogue que se auto-descreve assim: "We are interested in how and why new knowledge and new spaces (including socio-technical networks) are being developed in association with the emergence of the ‘knowledge economy’, and what the implications of this complex development process are, especially for global public affairs."
  

Liberdade

Ai que prazer
Não cumprir um dever,
Ter um livro para ler
E não fazer!
Ler é maçada,
Estudar é nada.
O Sol doira
Sem literatura.

O rio corre, bem ou mal,
Sem edição original.
A brisa, essa,
De tão naturalmente matinal,
Como tem tempo não tem pressa...

Livros são papéis pintados com tinta.
Estudar é uma coisa em que está indistinta
A distinção entre nada e coisa nenhuma.

Quanto é melhor, quando há bruma,
Esperar por D.Sebastião,
Quer venha ou não!

Grande é a poesia, a bondade e as danças...
Mas o melhor do mundo são as crianças,
Flores, música, o luar, e o sol, que peca
Só quando, em vez de criar, seca.

O mais do que isto
É Jesus Cristo,
Que não sabia nada de finanças
Nem consta que tivesse biblioteca...

Fernando Pessoa

Journal of Learning Design

A Teresa Marques (Obrigado!) twitou o endereço desta revista. E eu já li os dois artigos que me atraíram mais:

• Erica McWilliam, Unlearning pedagogy
• "Is it possible that learning itself - learning as we have come to enact it habitually - may no longer be particularly useful? Could it be that the very habits that have served us so well in stable times might actually become impediments to social success, even to social survival? "
  
• Stephen Brown, A Critique of Generic Learning Outcomes
• "This paper presents a logical critique of their strengths and limitations and proposes an alternative approach to assessing learning impact in lifelong learning contexts based on the five key learning activity types defined by Laurillard."
  

Sobre o erro, as cabeças andantes, a inflação dos diplomas e a morte da criatividade

Daqui fui visitar o site de Sir Ken Robinson e ler a sua página
na Wikipédia.

Team-based learning

Este ano vou outra vez tentar o ensino baseado em equipas. Não se lhe chamam grupos porque, se tudo correr bem, formam-se mesmo equipas de trabalho e não apenas um grupo de estudantes. (Quer dizer, eu chamo-lhes grupos na mesma... falar em equipas parece ou muito futebolístico ou muito presumido)

Trata-se de uma forma de ensino muito elaborada e com muitas regras, mas também muito desafiante. O ano passado houve coisas que correram menos bem, mas aprende-se sempre: os estudantes e eu!

Para mais sobre este tipo de ensino, ver este site ou este site e os vídeos.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

DimDim

Há muitas opções em termos de salas virtuais. Esta é uma das que apenas permite um apresentador de cada vez, mas tem a vantagem de ser grátis (em certas condições...).

Trabalhar em grupo

Com o Wiggio, trabalhar em grupo nunca mais vai ser o que era! Obrigado, Prof. Teresa!

Sete princípios de boas práticas no ensino de graduação

O artigo, de Arthur W. Chickering e Zelda F. Gamson é de 1987 (Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, AAHE Bulletin) e pode ser lido aqui.

Os princípios são de muito bom senso, mas de implicações profundas:

1. Encorajar os contactos entre estudantes e docentes.
2. Desenvolver a reciprocidade e a cooperação entre os estudantes.
3. Usar técnicas de aprendizagem activa.
4. Dar feedback atempado.
5. Enfatizar o factor temporal das tarefas.
6. Comunicar expectativas elevadas.
7. Respeitar os vários talentos e formas de aprender.

A continuação, com um ênfase explícito nas novas tecnologias, é dado no site do TTL Group.

How people learn

Para encarar o e-learning a sério

O início: o artigo de Richard Mayer (2003), Elements of a Science of E-Learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 297–313.

O teste: a tradução do Google da revisão do artigo por Werner Hartmann:

Há muita controvérsia no campo da tecnologia educacional se apoiou computador aprendizagem é melhor do que aprender em ambientes convencionais, como em uma sala de aula ou de um livro. Estudos e relatórios que promovem e-learning muito frequentemente não são construídas sobre a investigação provas, mas são bastante doutrina de base. Este artigo tenta estabelecer uma ciência da e-learning, e-learning em que é definida como qualquer tipo de ensino que usa computadores.

O artigo prevê três métodos de investigação como o núcleo de uma ciência de e-learning. (1) replicaram achados que foram encontrados em uma variedade de contextos. (2) métodos rigorosos, sob a forma de bem concebida e executada cuidadosamente estudos. (3) métodos adequados de dar respostas às questões de investigação útil. O artigo enfatiza ainda mais o consenso entre muitos pesquisadores mídia que não é benéfico para perguntar se um meio é melhor do que outro, porque uma adequada instrução método escolhido é mais importante do que a entrega médio.

A maior parte do artigo salienta replicated efeitos encontrados em estudos de aprendizagem multimédia: modalidade efeito, contigüidade efeito, efeitos multimédia, personalização efeito, a coerência efeito, a redundância efeito, pré-formação efeito, sinalização efeito, estimulação e efeitos. Embora esses efeitos tenham sido conhecida há mais de uma década, o artigo oferece uma visão geral concisa destes efeitos e links deles para e-learning. Os princípios são multimédia transferidas para concreto concepção princípios para o design de multimídia explicações.

Estes achados multimédia investigação por Richard Mayer e seu grupo de pesquisa são seminal na criação de uma fundação de uma ciência de e-learning. Eles devem ser considerados um must-read para todos os envolvidos na concepção de materiais pedagógicos multimídia e na investigação sobre a eficácia do e-learning. Note-se que os achados são restritas aos e-learning que se esforça concepção materiais multimédia para interação humano-computador.

O desenrolar da meada: 

• os sites

• o livro de R. Mayer, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, sumarizado aqui.