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A University Using Superior Educational
Techniques |
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| The unfolding of new possibilities of learning
through the advances of our time has impressed the Commission
anti made us want to see AKU take full advantage of them. These
advances are in part a consequence of technology, as we have
illustrated, but they also have come from the study of learning
processes by cognitive psychologists and educators. In discussing
globalisation earlier, we have noted the remarkable diffusion
of radio, cinema and television that has brought MTV and things
more evidently beneficial to places as remote as Hunza. The
students who will come to AKU in future decades will undoubtedly
be even more accustomed to learning from sounds and images than
this year's students are. They will have been to school with
teachers who have had similar learning experiences, who are
more alert and better educated than teachers are now; and they
will have had better chances to manipulate calculators and other
electronic devices. The rapid urbanisation and the globalisation
of the world will have brought more and more of these students
-even ones from very disadvantaged backgrounds - into enlivening
and sophisticating influences that prepare them for better learning
in the University. |
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| The utilisation of computer and commmunications
technologies must he an important i part of AKU's strategy for
superior learning. There is an abundance of experience,
as illustrated in the anecdotes we have reported on Internet
use, to stimulate and guide AKU's ventures. The infatuation
of the United States with computers and networks has produced
"wired" campuses at pioneering, institutions like Dartmouth
and Carnegie Mellon, and many others (including Harvard) are
hastening to emulate them. The elite colleges and universities
equip student's rooms with special telephone jacks for computer
modems, but they are not alone in assuming that all students
will have access to a computer. (It is a common requirement,
even in "shirtsleeve" colleges, that papers be prepared on computers,
with even the word-processing software sometimes specified.)
The investments are not trivial (and constant reaching for increased
power moderates the cheapening of equipment) and much thought
is being exercised on optimal uses and on coping with unintended
effects. President Shapiro writes with unaccustomed jargon about
developing an "interactive software environment" at Princeton;
and as "artsy" a college as Bennington is going to have a New
Media Centre in co-operation with Apple and other manufacturers;
its new plan for the College's future declares that "Students
will assemble an ongoing electronic portfolio of their work
at the College on CD-ROM as a requirement for graduation, assuring
multimedia literacy of all Bennington graduates". [Symposium
Report of the Bennington College Board of Trustees, 1994,
p.30] We also read that there is faculty resistance and doubt
about the beneficence of "wired" campuses, the flood of e-mail
questions they bring, and some of the educational effects. [Cf.
The Economist. "Harvard Wired", February 5, 1994, p.87]
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| AKU will have to assess what it should imitate
and what it should avoid in this burgeoning set of experiences.
And it should be sure to keep educational purposes and results,
not mere technical chic, as its dominant concerns. Learning
experiences using modern computer technologies are certainly
different from those using more traditional means; the opportunities
for students to work by themselves, getting impersonal and confidential
guidance, rather than the more public, and sometimes humiliating,
experience of the classroom has been seen to offer new learning
potential for students at levels from basic literacy to the
very advanced. Modems and networks also make it possible for
students to work together, out of direct contact with the professors,
to the discomfort of some of the latter. Many classic educational
questions are given new forms by these developments; for example,
the old surmise that students learn more from one another and
motivate one another better than their professors is rising
again as students pass their work over the wires to one another.
A new intensity of learning may come about on the campus. But
the means that make this learning possible also are full of
potentials for drawing in resources from all over the world.
We have argued in preceding paragraphs that AKU as an institution
must be on the "information superhighways" of the world. This
must mean in practice that all of its members - faculty, researchers,
administrators, and students as well - will regularly be reaching
Out to wherever the most critical aids for their work may be
found. Students, in doing so, will be preparing for futures
in which distinction in their careers will require such habits
and skills. |
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| Members of the Commission stressed the enormous
need for improved teaching and learning in the universities
of the developing and Muslim worlds. The need poses the challenge
to AKU to : (a) become a model of excellence in teaching and
learning, and (b) to help replicate its successes to others
through training and research. We have been impressed at the
progress that has been made in developing "learning to learn"
programmes, based on the work of people such as Georgi Lozanov,
Howard Gardner, Paul McLean, Arthur Costa, Noel Entwistle and
others. The views have been expressed in the Commission that
AKU should develop a Unit to deal with Teaching-Learning Effectiveness
or that IED, as it develops, should broaden its concerns with
better ways of teaching and learning in the schools to promoting
them in all that AKU does in its various branches. We can commend
these views without absolving the faculty who are not professionals
of education from continuing attention to methods and techniques
that will make AKU distinctive not only in what students learn
but in how they learn. We think this so universal a responsibility
of the staff that it cannot be left to any special body to foster;
it is for everyone to attend to. |
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