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Further Reading
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Part IV
Individualized Digital Learning
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2018
Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, Ralf Schneider and Michael Zaddach (eds.)Digital Marketplaces Unleashedhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49275-8_12
12. Preface: Individualized Digital Learning
Kerstin Jeger1
(1)Montessori-Vereinigung Nürnberger Land e.V., Lauf/Pegnitz, Germany
Kerstin Jeger
Email: [email protected]
What purpose would education serve in our days unless it helped humans to a knowledge of the environment to which they have to adapt themselves? (Maria Montessori)
If one would conduct a historic review of educational systems one observes a coevolution of society and education. In the agricultural period education was characterized by an apprenticeship model which reflected the needs of the prevailing family and community settings. The current educational model was formed by the industrial revolution (“first machine age”) and is often referred to as the factory model. Today’s world, however, is characterized by the automation of cognitive tasks designed to substitute human activities with software based machines, the so called “second machine age”. This is triggering a new era of complexity with large scale social changes. While the concrete implications of that shift are still unclear, certain patterns with implications for an adjusted educational model can be detected. The digital champions of today are no longer relying primarily on an efficiency and cost savings focus, on hierarchical structures, and on placing the shareholder value at center stage. Thus, the hierarchical build factory model for education, which focuses on rote learning and standardized testing, with an emphasis to efficiently produce graduates, is put into question as well. A knowledge based, creative and innovation economy, which is less‐hierarchical and is focusing on customer value, requires a different set of skills. In a nutshell, I argue that it requires the ability to maintain a lifelong lasting curiosity and to be collaborative. Only a curious mindset, inquisitive and open to new situations, can transform complex problems into manageable situations. Collaboration is thereby the imperative for acting in complex settings. Our educational system has not yet adapted to the new requirements of the digitalized world. Rather than producing mines of information, educational institutions should foster curiosity and collaboration.
Curiosity or the “inner flame” is innate. Humans are born with an inherent urge to learn, to grow and to understand. The “inner flame” determines our learning potential which equals our human potential in many ways. If you stop learning you metaphorically “die”. Our current educational system based on the standardized transfer of knowledge is further extinguishing this flame. The “one size fits all” standardized education threatens our curiosity. To maintain our curiosity students need to be provided with an individualized learning environment that offers the opportunity to follow their own interests and foster their curiosity. Having spent my live in education, I believe that the framework of the Montessori method is an effective example or may even constitute a blueprint for a new educational model which values individual learning.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Montessori Method was developed by Maria Montessori, an Italian physician and educator. The method considers teachers as facilitators of children, who are helped “to help themselves” rather than to be taught and instructed. Key features of the Montessori method are mixed‐age classrooms, student choice of activity, uninterrupted work time and a constructivist “discovery” model in which students learn concepts from working with materials rather than by direct instruction. The individualization of education is thereby strengthening curiosity and the desire for lifelong learning. Living in complex systems, solution to problems need to be found in an exploration not a pure analytical manner. Maintaining curiosity and, linked to this, the desire for lifelong learning is a prerequisite to get along well in today’s world.
Equally important to the Montessori approach is Collaboration. The open learning environment, the free movement and the multi‐age classrooms is designed to facilitates collaborative learning. For me, there is nothing more satisfying than seeing an eight year old child explaining what it just learned to a five year old. Imitative learning and peer tutoring offers students daily opportunities to teach, to share information and to collaborate all around. This collaborative environment is of immanent relevance as it demonstrates how respectful relationships can be established. In fact, the mutual relationships based on freedom of movement and the recognition of capabilities and interests help children to develop respect for themselves, others and the environment. This process is of particular importance in times where virtual worlds and a shield of anonymity provide new opportunities to engage in disrespectful and even inhuman behaviors.
Digital learning is complementary to individualized learning by further individualizing the learning experience through adaption and customization of the content for a certain group or person. The opportunities to implement Montessori’s idea of “thinking through doing” are manifold and teachers should consciously introduce digital media to the classroom. Cloud solutions, for example, give students the possibility to access information on demand, on their terms and from everywhere and thereby remove physical and social barriers to education. Social media enables them to interactively exchange information, share knowledge and build valuable connections. The application of multimedia devices and tangible interfaces facilitates the multisensory learning of abstract concepts such as “area”, “space”, “number” or even geometrical shapes. Technology offers completely new possibilities of multisensory learning by coordinating auditory, visual and kinesthetic education. Many programs designed for struggling readers, for example, use auditory elements in order to stimulate multiple senses. Simulation tools interact with every respective student and provide instant feedback guiding it through the customized virtual learning environment. Consistent with the Montessori philosophy, this as well helps to take away the fear of fail
ure, which is then replaced by a sense of safety that encourages learning through trial and error. History classes can be enriched by educational games that retell historic events in an interactive way, with implemented rules and objectives, enhancing the learning experience. Finally, applied data measurement and analysis can further contribute to the individualization of learning fostering curiosity and collaboration. As a result, digital technologies allow students to explore the world safely on their terms in a collaborative way. The use of technology in an educational framework offers many advantages. However, it can only support, but never replace the interaction between a teacher and a student, since deep inter‐personal relationships have the biggest impact on the development of students. This fundamental role of personal relationships will never change even with an increasing deployment of digital technologies in classrooms.
The Montessori education has spawned a long list of overachievers, such as management guru Peter Drucker, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Taylor Swift, George Clooney or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But especially when it comes to unleashed digital marketplaces it seems that it is particularly suited if one considers its alumni, such as the Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, AOL’s Steve Case and the creator of SimCity, Will Wright. In the case of Google, Montessori does not only effected the mindset of the two founders, but also the company’s DNA. In fact, Google did not start as a big idea, but was built trough experimentation out of a small digital library project at Stanford University. Page and Brin discovered their business model while solving upcoming problems with a sense of stipulating curiosity. Today, the Montessori methodology is spread throughout the company. In fact, Marissa Mayer, former Vice President at Google, explained that “you can’t understand Google unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids. In a Montessori school, you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so. This is baked in how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They’re always asking, ‘Why should it be like that?’ It’s the way their brains were programmed early on.” Similarly, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, is crediting his Montessori education for experimenting even if it may lead to failure or as he puts it: “I like going down blind alleys”.
To gain such an innovative, explorative mindset I believe the following aspects need to be taken into consideration. On a generic level, Montessori encourages students to ask questions, to experiment and to discover new things, relationships and possibilities. Reflecting on today’s world, the problem is not that we don’t have the right answers, but that we are often not generating the right questions. The fast pace of change causes many answers to be outdated or irrelevant quickly. It is clear that asking questions is an highly creative act as it requires considerations beyond the as‐is. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc., outlined the importance of questions to his organization when he said that “we run this business on questions, not answers.” Google’s strategies always find their origin within questions, as questions stimulate conversations and conversations drive innovation. To install a setting or culture in which asking questions is trained and welcomed is therefore of equal importance in both the educational setting as well as the corporate environment.
However, more concretely, there are also many striking similarities if one compares popular innovation frameworks, such as agile development or the lean startup methodology with the Montessori method. Montessori and agile projects are planned very similarly. In both cases there are no teachers, but only guides and mentors, that facilitate discussions on important events and to dos. Mixed‐age learning groups are equaling cross function teams. Task are voluntarily picked up – within a predefined range – by the preference of the student, just as developers would do it according to the Scrum method. Uninterrupted working blocks correspond sprints or epics. With regard to the discovery model, agile IT concepts such as continuous integration or test automation have built in control of error, which is an important part of the Montessori environments as well. Children can check their own work frequently and instantly without the help of their teachers. Instant feedback cycles guide the students through a process of exploration and trial and error. In this regard, even the hacker mentality (“fail fast, fail forward”) demonstrates certain similarities with the Montessori method. Just as within a Montessori classroom, agile startups often designed their office spaces as a heterogeneous, controlled environment which allows for free movement and spontaneous gatherings in order to trigger knowledge sharing, collaboration, well‐being and creativity instead of productivity. We are currently witnessing one of the most profound changes in human history and therefore have to significantly adjust the way we teach and learn. The whole educational system has to transform itself to adapt to the new requirements of the second machine age. The Montessori educational approach may hereby constitute a heuristic that enables us to comfortably navigate through this demanding, complex world. The spirit of Montessori shall therefore not only flourish in niches, but should find widespread application in our educational systems. For that we ensure that our education enables us to see the world as it is, to explore it with a curious mind and helps us to adopt to the given environment.
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2018
Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, Ralf Schneider and Michael Zaddach (eds.)Digital Marketplaces Unleashedhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49275-8_13
13. Corporate Learning in Upheaval
Rauthgundis Reck1 and Gunnar Jöns2
(1)Allianz Technology SE, Munich, Germany
(2)biners – business information security, Bonn, Germany
Rauthgundis Reck (Corresponding author)
Email: [email protected]
Gunnar Jöns
Email: [email protected]
13.1 How Digital Transformation Influences the World of Learning
A new era of customer communication has started as a consequence of the rapid spread of mobile social media. Companies now can serve their customers’ needs more specifically. It is for this reason that experiences, empathy, enthusiasm and passion matter to customers interests. In a similar manner, digital learning focuses on individuals and their interests and needs. The main focus therefore is not the applied technology but the aim to provide personalized education to many.
The digital working world is characterized by quickly changing processes as well as by knowledge intensive, creative and networked services. Work gets reorganized through mobile communication and collaboration platforms. Highly specialized professionals work together directly and globally in interdisciplinary teams. The availability of knowledge and information explodes, especially technical knowledge increases exponentially whereas its half‐life declines. That’s why we constantly learn something new in shorter and shorter periods of time. This development requires to rapidly acquire knowledge in a direct, adaptive, concrete and flexible way.
Disruptive innovations lead to new demands of human expertise. The digitalization and automatization proceed with ‘internet of things’ and ‘cognitive computing solutions’. The automatization of knowledge work and cognitive processes result in the acquisition of decision and management processes by machines in many areas. Humans will work together with machines. Hence, their skills will mostly be required in areas where machines have not yet overtaken human work completely [1].
This development strongly influences corporate learning. The previous digital approaches such as e‐learning and mobile learning could not achieve significant learning improvements within the company. Pretty often conventional learning concepts are simply digitalized instead of improved. If one wants to support sustainable and operative learning the consideration of impact factors is essential. For this purpose we examine the three core issues of effective learning – cognition, creativity and
skills. Thereafter we name examples of these issues showing improvements of learning concerning the chances of digitalization.
13.2 The Learner – Many Variables Influence Successful Learning
Cognitive science and neuroscience describe human learning as a highly individual process that is based on unique, intellectual structures of the brain which are constantly reorganized. Today learning is considered as an active and constructive process. Learning contents need to be integrated in the individual and unique cognitive‐emotional structures. Therefore learning processes need to be mainly self‐controlled. Human learning depends on several factors and frameworks that vary a lot between individuals. For example prior knowledge favors the acquisition of new knowledge as well as motivation and emotions underlining sense and significance to the learner. Study speed and strategies differ individually since everyone learns in a different way. We have to keep in mind that knowledge cannot be transformed, but has to be acquired actively. So even though people have the great opportunity to easily access ‘the world of knowledge’ they still need to work for it themselves. To conclude, we just get smart through highly individual and active cross‐linking of our own level of knowledge [2]. Therefore the dogma ‘you don’t have to know it yourself but only where you can find it’ is not far‐reaching.
Digital Marketplaces Unleashed Page 16