5W Model: Learning Environment in 21st Century

 

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5W Model: Learning Environment in 21^st Century

Marmar Mukhopadhyay

Introduction

 It is quite a popular theme for the last about three decades.  There are a large number of writings accessible on the net.  There is an equally good number of slides in the slide share domain. I have however not come across any futurological study on the learning environment in the 21^st Century. What we find are imagination projected on a future canvas. Mine is no different. We are actually already 2 decades old in the 21st century.  What remains is about 80 years. 

It's a generic concept. If we see it through the prism of Future Shock, it is a Utopia. 21^st century has Eritrea and Finland; or Niger with an average of 2-year schooling and Luxemburg or Norway - the richest countries in the world where people can afford almost anything they wish. Whose learning environment are we talking about, any way! It looks more of a romantic tryst with ideas.

Within India, Learning environment in Kolkata–Delhi-Bangaluru-Mumbai-Chennai is not the same. Within Kolkata – learning environments in new generation institutions like Adamas University and the oldest - my alma mater is not the same, though both share the space in the 21st century. We need to find a set of descriptors of the learning environment that can explain changing time – next eight decades of this century, and geographical space from Niger to OECD Countries.

 Majority of the authors portrayed the 21st century learning environment on the basis of technological developments.  As I understand, the learning environment cannot be shaped without the involvement of the people.  I see the 21st century learning environment moving on two legs - one is the 21st century learners, and second is developments in technology. 

21^st Century Learners

This is another popular theme among the Netwriters/Bloggers. Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton’s 21 Characteristics is the most comprehensive[1]. 21^st century learners are far more exposed to environmental stimulations due to digital media, limitless human networking. Many more brain neurons are regularly excited creating new synapses and brain patterns making them much smarter learners. They prefer to decide what and how they want to learn. Having landed at the Level 3 of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, their focus is on ‘making a difference’ rather than earning to survive or ‘live   happily ever after’.  They   confidently assert freedom; love risks and challenges and are ready to fail to innovate and create. Master of social media, they connect and collaborate naturally with others across the lands and seas.  They prefer to explore, experiment and discover knowledge and solution to perplexing problems than accept what is told to them.  Endowed with natural intelligence, they happily unburden their cognitive overload on artificial intelligence, machine learning, block-chain, augmented reality. They are the masters of Alexa and her next generations.  They are not ‘prisoners of geography[2];  they know they are global citizens.

Technological Developments

Technological developments are fast, disruptive and unpredictable.  Technology integration is predictable. Early indications are integration of Smart board, Clickers, video-aided education, PPT slide-presentation, clickers, Computer and video games, online education, blended learning improve  student learning outcomes.  Technology integrating teachers are doing better. Online education is doing better and makes a big promise.

New Technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Block Chain Technology, Game-based Learning, Virtual Reality, Learning Analytics, Big Data, Mobile Apps, Internet of Thing, Adaptive Computer Testing, Bite Size Learning, Cloud Computing, Online ICT Tools, Open Education Resources are fast changing the contours of educational canvas. 

Digital divide in this age of digital learning is reality. There are three faces of digital divide. These are attitude, skill and access. Adults at home, institution and governance are at disadvantage. 21^st century learners possess better digital attitude and skills; thereby overcome deficiency in access. Adults in power centres have better access to digital devices; their poor attitude and skills   decelerate  unfolding the power of the learning environment.  

21^st Century Learning Environment: Agenda and the Challenge

The central  agenda of the 21st century learning  environment is to Create Lifelong  Self-learners.  Instead of mastery of a subject,  agenda is Mastery of the Art of Learning. With tremendous developments in technology, and knowledge revolution,  knowledge and information will suffer   obsolescence  faster than any time in the history.  Accordingly,  the biggest challenge of the 21st century learning environment will be to enhance  the conceptual complexity of the learner,  and continuous rebuilding of the cognitive structure to make it more and more capable of  abstract   and creative thinking,  leaving the concrete information to be stored in technological devices to be retrieved on JIT basis. In such a fluid unpredictable situation,  any description   or projection of the 21st century learning environment is fraught with risk of obsolescence  that may also  smack of misplaced romanticism. To be resilient and relevant for sometime at least, in this ever changing scenario,  I propose a 5W Model  where every component is also capable of changing.  In other words,  we need a model that  does not stand on here and now basis only,  but dynamic enough to change with the changing scenario.

5W Model

My 5W  Model comprises of 5 words -  Whenever,  Whatever,  Whichever,  Wherever, and Whomever.

I define the 21^st Century Learning Environment as Learn 

Whenever–Whatever-Whichever-Wherever-Whomever.  

21^st Century Learning Environment would include unnoticed, unintended incidental learning into an individual's  learning portfolio.

Whenever: Learning will no more be restricted to  fixed institutional time,   or the age of a person.  The 21st century learning environment will provide  learning opportunities anytime of the day,  anytime of the month and year not excluding Saturday-Sundays as non-learning days,  and anytime in life.  In other words,   the concept of learning at a particular time of the day,  and a particular number of days in a semester,  and in the first 25 years of life  would  no more  be valid.  People will  access  learning resources and learn anytime during the day,  or the year,  and any time during life. 

Whatever:   21st century learners  would have the opportunity of learning whatever she/he  wants to learn.  It can be a group of subjects from HASS  or STEM.  It can be phenomenon based multidisciplinary learning.  Learners can choose to learn forest fire,  Tsunami,  epidemic or pandemic, growing up, or scholarship. Learners can choose a full course on medicine or take  bite-size learning of diabetes or joint pain only. They would collect badges and accumulate at their sweet time and will.  

Whichever:  Learners would exercise freedom to learn the ways they  choose to. They may learn through  online  or face to face offline programs,  or blended learning.   They will  assess their own learning outcomes,  at their own style and pace, and instruments of their own choice. After all, self assessment is the most powerful source of feedback for improving learning outcomes.

 Wherever:  The geography of learning will be totally unbound.  It may be in the classroom;  or  home,  or Clubhouse; on the lush green meadows or in the sea or in the sky.  Learners will access   learning opportunities from local institutions, any university   and academic institution within the country or anywhere in the world. 

Whomever: The conventional concept of designated teacher would change to learn from anyone – people in white collar, yellow collar, blue collar or open collar; learn from their learning and experience, and expertise rooted in real situation through apprenticeship, tutorials, assistantships, etc. Teacher would provide the critical support in choosing appropriate person to learn from.

The 5W  model  indicates total freedom of the learner To learn whatever she wants to learn, whenever,  whichever and wherever. This is possible because of 21^st Century Learners’ will and zeal to learn and technological development that has successfully dismantled the geographical boundaries creating free access  to quality learning opportunities anywhere in the world via Internet and Open Education Resources.  

Conclusion

UNESCO’s International  Commission  on session on Future of Education: Learning to Become is in session. It is consulting everyone. I’ll wait for  the global collective wisdom about The Future of Education, and 21^st Century Learning Environment.

 

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[1] https://drsaraheaton.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/21st-century-learners/

[2] Title of a beautiful book by Tim Marshall

End of a Teacher: Obituary on The Health of Health Services

End of a Teacher

Obituary on The Health of Health Services

12th January: 2007.  It was the most glorious day for Tapati. God called her back to shelter her in a world not ravaged by discrimination against the rural born by the urban rulers while eating on the hands of their rural prey. It was the saddest day for Jhantu, her husband,   and her daughters. 

She left the world unknown, unnoticed although she made every effort to make the world little more beautiful than she inherited. What a paradox!  India is surging  forward with annual growth rate  touching 9% and above, claiming to be the one of the world leaders in the coming days. Hardly at stone's throw -- 55 kilometers from Kolkata,  the ‘cultural capital’ of India, a beloved   school teacher died without medical care. 

Tapati died,  probably out of  brain stroke, whatever that be,  in the afternoon around four o'clock when  her husband had gone to the nearest  block head quarter for  some petty household work; their nephew and his wife were  busy in their own household chores. Tapati  had gone to her room to rest, sleep if possible. 

There comes Tapati’s help, an old Muslim lady. She tries to wake her  up to find out what are the works for her.  Tapati doesn't respond even after several  calls and pushes. The maid gets panicky;  starts shouting and calling   everybody around. In a few moments, the  nephew rushes in. He too stands completely shocked; fails to make out whether she was really sleeping, or she has slept forever. He calls all possible people.  But who are available?

There is no doctor in the surroundings even to examine and declare whether she is dead or alive! The only good Samaritans are the quacks and a few compounders or  medicine vendors in the local village shops.  They rushed to the spot; many of them had  learnt to feel the pulse   in the olden days from  some doctor in the nearby villages.  The locals nodded their heads hopelessly; her nephew, another medicine vendor in the block headquarter rushed back home to confirm which he never wanted. For, he too lost her affectionate ‘home’ in her.

The only doctor, the qualified one, technically stays  in the village; he   works outside,  comes to the village for  the night halt. Only after  five  hours,   he was available only to  confirm  the inevitable and console.

One, nonetheless, wonders, even if she would have had life for another few hours,  where could she be taken? Nearest primary health centres are at a distance about 6 km on either side.  But to organise a vehicle and to reach there would have taken at least  one or  two hours, if not more.  But what  if she was taken to the  PHC. Health of the health centres are in precarious condition, suffering from terminal cancer without doctors and medicines for deserving people.  And, to take to Kolkata? It is a  matter of couple of hours. Roads are lesser said the better; brick laid uneven bumpy village roads often serve   as the  labour room; young mothers welcome their babies, future of India, on the man-pulled trolleys. No hope for  the villagers. 

How does it matter how hoarse the honest scholars cry with   data – per capita government expenses on an urban Indian is thirteen times more than that of his rural brethren; and that luxury of the urban Indian is paid for by the rural deprived. Indeed, what surging India has been able to build is urban castle on rural grave, no matter whether left or right or centrists are in power.

The tragedy is that Tapati’s  husband, and his elder brother,  took initiative   to provide some health checkup and services at their own personal initiatives and costs. They organised mother and child camps, eye-testing  camps, blood group  checkup camps, blood donation camps for the thalassaemia patients and so on. One of the camps that her husband organised was an ECG camp. The doctors identified eight  potential cases, and Tapati was one of them; and the first to have a heart attack. She survived with some paralytic  effect that was restored over a period of time. This one, she could not survive. Her husband saved many eyes and hearts, and many lives of the thalassemia patients. He helplessly watched his ‘home’  departing him.

What a pity! After 60 years of  independence, there is so much  claim about developments and hospitals all around and  medical tourism attracting people from the western world. Rural Indians are condemned to chance, luck and God’s grace for  survival in the resurgent India. It is indeed a sad day not only for her husband and the daughters, but also for the entire village that turned up to pay their homage to this committed village school teacher.

She was born in a Mukhopadhyay family and married to yet another Mukhopadhyay.  She used to claim herself to be   ‘double Mukhopadhyay’.  In fact, she was a very conservative and staunch Brahmin.  But, there was an unusual fragrance of  her  ‘Brahmanism’.

Tapati’s  old help was a Muslim lady, Chachu. Nobody seems to know her actual name; every one affectionately calls her Chachu.  As she   comes in the morning, she  will not be allowed to work unless she has taken a cup of hot tea and a few chapattis which Chachu  loved in preference over  biscuits. She was fed by Tapati with utmost care and affection, and then allowed to work.

There is a large Muslim community living just behind the school for decades, and now centuries.   None, none of them, ever turned up for schooling. It was this lady teacher, Tapatidi,  who took on herself to walk into their homes through utterly  dirty narrow  roads strewn on both sides with human excreta of the children. She walked through that every day. She advocated,  she counseled, she cajoled   them, and brought them to school. Today, in the same  school, children from the Muslim minority community are in majority. No wonder, news of her death spread like wild fire. Entire Muslim community, literally in hundreds, turned up to her  small village home that  failed to accommodate them physically; there was no  space. Probably her astral home had enough space for all of them. On the day of final rites according to Hindu tradition, special food-packs were  made   and distributed at their own  homes under the leadership of Chachu. 

Knowing her popularity among the Muslims, her colleagues  used make fun of her to contest for Panchayat elections. Had she taken to electoral politics,  ‘they will get divided into parties. Divided we fall, United, we stand’. Her mission was uniting them for education. She couldn’t afford to divide them lest they may leave learning.

“Such things happen” is the political statement on horrific Nithari killings. Tapati’s departure  too shall be trivialized. For masters, she was one of the billion Indians, and one of lakhs of voters. How would they ever understand the pain of losing the one and only one – the wife, the mother and the only Tapatidi who brought the underprivileged children from the minority community from darkness to light!!

Politicians and ministers have  major things to attend; how can they afford to attend to such minor matters?  

Tapati served for 35 years to retire  with  service benefit that fetched her a paltry sum of Rs. 2200  per month. Imagine, she  contributed all that she had to the country, to the society, to the community to be treated with contempt of poverty and lack of  care.

Undaunted by the social and economic deprivation, her stubborn daughters  decided that they  will not allow their mother to  remain unknown. Two daughters, Parnashree and Tanushree, were the nominees to her small  savings. They decided  not to   use  the money their mother  saved for them. They decided to contribute the entire amount to the village girls’ primary school that Tapati served till a few years ago.  This amount will be used to develop a science lab for the primary school children; Tapati loved children, so does her husband. He is working to survive her memory with  a children’s park.

The powerful governments could not  take care of basic needs of its  citizens,  save their  lives or create  opportunities to save the lives  in the villages. Poor husband and daughters could not save her either; they have dedicated all they have  to save her name from fading out.

I was in South Africa to address an international gathering on reforms in rural education in 1997. But before the event, I landed up into a hospital in unconscious condition. I lost my sense almost within half an hour of reaching the hotel room from the airport in the noon. I understand that I remained in that state till early morning next day; more than 12 hours. Only on regaining consciousness, I realized the time, that I was in a hospital and that too in South Africa, my first and only hospitalization in more than 50 years of my physical existence on this earth then.

At about 10 in the morning, a black woman nurse in late 30’s or early 40’s in uniform came to my bed with a towel and a container full of warm water. She told me that on doctor’s advise she was going to give a sponge to me and she's going to take off my clothes. I was quite scared. I didn’t know in what condition I was brought to the hospital. I was dressed up by the hotel staff in the unconscious condition and brought to the hospital. My weakness was so much that my hands were immobile to even check; equally insensitive was my body to make it out otherwise. With my feeble voice, I resisted her, “Sister, I don't think I'm putting on any undergarments.” The nurse said with a disarming smile, “so what, I'm your sister”.

Without hesitation, she put her hand at my back and softly put me up; she took off my kurta. Then she pulled out the string of my pyjama. With extreme care, she slowly turned me left and right, and pulled off the pyjama. I was without a thread on myself. She started mopping me with utmost care, and softness. By the time she finished my face and mopping my neck, several decades were rewinded in my life bringing me back to my sixth year when my real sisters used to give bath in the open in our village home with the same tender care, softness and love. I was nostaligically absorbed in bathing in my sixth year at the hands of my sister. Literally forgot the reality and lived few beautiful moments in the land of dreams. I woke-up only when the nurse started putting on my pyjama back. She dressed me up, combed my hair and put me back into the reclining position since I was already very tired. After a while, she was back with my lunch, some soft soup like thing.

I struggled to reach out to take the lunch. She said, “no-no, just sit up for a few minutes. I'm going to feed you today.” She started feeding me with a spoon reminding me not of my childhood- not the sick days, but my craze for indulgence of my sisters to be fed. It is at this stage, I told her, “I guess, now, I know why people call nurses as Sisters.” She reciprocated with her beautiful smile – bright white teeth at the backdrop of glowing dark skin spread a ray of hope in me.

I was to be relieved next day. When my papers were ready, a hefty young man came with a wheel-chair and helped me getting into it. Before he could lay his hands on the handle, the sister appeared from nowhere. She told him, “don’t bother. I’ll take him to his car”. The attendant persuaded her; it was his duty to take the patients out. She told him, “He is my brother, let me have the pleasure of taking him to the car and see him off.” The ward boy could not make out. ‘May be, he was confused about our relationships because of my own complexion. She pushed the wheel-chair with great care not to give me any jerk, and brought it to the car and helped me inside.

Instead of saying ‘bye’ which is common in this part of the world, she asked me the most difficult question, I have ever faced on this earth, “are you leaving your sister behind? Won’t you take me home with you?”

I had no answer; tears rolled down my cheek. As I looked through my moist eyes, she reciprocated with tear-pearls on her beautiful dark cheeks. The car rolled out.

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I am currently engaged in researching and developing a taxonomy of human thinking and link it to developing a new learning design that helps students 'Learning to think: Thinking to Learn'. Main focus is Learning without stress (of memorizing huge amount of meaningless irrelevant information) that is sustainable, joyful and exciting. I have developed programmes for teachers, Learning Labs for students and workshop designs for parents.

Learning to Think: Thinking to Learn

Learning in schools, colleges and universities are memory-based. According to brain research, human brain does not store informations that are not relevant for long. Learning is mostly fragile. There is huge loss of learning. Memorising is wasteful, stressful and unsmart.

Learning that is backed by thinking, is sustainable and high quality. It is thinking-based learning that leads learner to higher order thinking. How do we free students from the strangle hold of stressful, wateful fragile rote learning to learning without stress, sustainable and exciting!

That's my contemporary research. I have developed a taxonomy of human thinking; identified 62 different learning tactics that can be strategically blended depending upon the world view and learning style of the learner, world view and personality of the teacher, content pedagogy, assessment system, and values and ethics; all these to create higher order thinking.

I have also developed Learning Lab for students that helps them to become smart learner -- use their power of thinking to discover knowledge and invent solutions rather than memorising whole lot of irrelevant information and burden themsleves.

Namaste. I spent my life time in education. Began as a village school teacher in 1964. Superannuated in 2006. During this long 42 years, I taught in school, college, university, regional and national intitutions in India. Had leadership position in two major national and a state institutions -- National Open School(NOS, New Delhi), National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA, New Delhi), and West Bengal State Open School in Kolkata. I served as Vice-President(Asia) of International Council of Distance Education (HQ in Oslo) during 1995-99 term; on the Steering Committee of IMAGE (HQ: Washington DC).

I have been involved in educational policy making and planning at the highest level in India since 1984. One of my major contribution was the CABE Report on Universalization of Secondary Education as Chairman of the CABE Sub-committee. I am regularly consulted by UNICEF, UNESCO, and other such major agencies.

I have authored and/or edited more than 20 books -- all on education. My book, Total Quality Management in Education has been printed in several languages. Our edited volume Indian Education: Dynamics of Development is the most authentic volume on post independence Indian education. Have dabbled into educational film making; have addressed learned gatherings in various countries in the world.

Currently heading Educational Technology and Management Academy (www.etma-india.org) and rural development ngo, Howrah Rural Teachers Forum (www.udangforum.org)