Cathy Davidson: Why the Future of Learning Demands a Paradigm Shift
Published 11 months ago
Talk given at "Conversations That Matter III: Research, Policy, & Practice: The 3rd International Conference on Service-Learning in Teacher Education," June 21-23, 2012, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Virtually everything we think of as defining "work" and "education" are fairly recent institutions in human history. Most of the forms, rules, means of measuring productivity, and tests for intelligence and achievement were designed for the last information age and the industrial era's new technology of steam-powered printing and machine-made ink and paper.
We are now seeing the first generation to come of age in a new, digital information age. Our information age began roughly in 1993 when the Mosaic 1.0 browser went public.
We are currently doing a good job training students for the 20th century. What institutional changes do we need to make to education to help students thrive in this age?
In this provocative talk, Cathy Davidson proposes innovative ways that we can be transforming higher education to prepare students for their future (not for our past).
Cathy N. Davidson teaches at Duke University, where she co-directs the Ph.D. Lab in Digital Knowledge and holds two distinguished chairs (Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies).
She served as Duke's first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and helped to create the Program in Information Science + Information Studies and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She is a cofounder of the global learning network HASTAC, which administers the annual $2 million HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions, and she was recently appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Humanities.
Virtually everything we think of as defining "work" and "education" are fairly recent institutions in human history. Most of the forms, rules, means of measuring productivity, and tests for intelligence and achievement were designed for the last information age and the industrial era's new technology of steam-powered printing and machine-made ink and paper.
We are now seeing the first generation to come of age in a new, digital information age. Our information age began roughly in 1993 when the Mosaic 1.0 browser went public.
We are currently doing a good job training students for the 20th century. What institutional changes do we need to make to education to help students thrive in this age?
In this provocative talk, Cathy Davidson proposes innovative ways that we can be transforming higher education to prepare students for their future (not for our past).
Cathy N. Davidson teaches at Duke University, where she co-directs the Ph.D. Lab in Digital Knowledge and holds two distinguished chairs (Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies).
She served as Duke's first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and helped to create the Program in Information Science + Information Studies and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She is a cofounder of the global learning network HASTAC, which administers the annual $2 million HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions, and she was recently appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Humanities.
