Currently, I want to identify my research methods / approach for my OnPhD
research project. Given I have identified a weakness around research methods I believe I need some input into identifying my learning regarding research approaches, and to have people well versed in research would assist greatly. I will reach out to the OnPhD google group and also begin my search for my OnPhD supervisory team. Given I intend my research to be in the intersection of Educational Technology, Heutagogy, and Solution Architecture I would like my supervisory team to fall with a collective expertise in these areas.
One thing important to me is to turn away from traditional academia. This is not due to my thinking there isn't great value available from people with an academic background, and I really hope to have people well versed in academia on my supervisory team. I have two main reasons for looking away from traditional academia and current education innovation, these two reasons are as follows;
- I believe so many great open education projects end up looking toward traditional approaches for guidance and support, or end-up leaning toward corporate interests. And through time these initiatives become increasingly aligned with traditional academic approaches and profit (rather than public service) and lose their opportunity to work outside these traditional approaches. I see this as important because I believe global education innovation needs to look more closely towards those who have limited access to education (those who have access to education are already well served). Traditional approaches struggle to comprehensively meet the needs of the 75% who do not have access to continued and tertiary education. I believe the solution will be found with more grassroots and clinical approaches, where the educational needs are localized and focused upon community educational needs rather than global educational trends. Due to environmental and economic factors, I believe the future is localized.
- Learning is an individual meta-cognitive effort, and the current educational technology innovation should focus more on individual approaches rather than massive ones. I honestly believe the future of education is about teaching people to teach themselves, everything else is content and tools to deepen, assess and recognize learning. All educational technologies are tools in the individual learners toolkit. There is no significant difference in any one of these technologies being better than another, it is a collective effort.
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| There are more people unserved by Higher-ed than those being served. This needs to change by increasing the self-directed approaches to the life-long learning mix. |
The people in my
dream team of OnPhD supervisors would come from a variety of backgrounds and fall into one of these three categories. My preference would be to also have supervisors who can span two of my three knowledge domains.
1. Educational Technology
Seeking educational technologists with a broad view toward applying technology to education. They would be equally well versed in open source and propriety systems. Though my preference would be toward open systems. They would have strong experience with rich and mixed media, and will have deployed these media on a variety of open platforms. They have good experience with implementing geographically disbursed systems and would have worked in public education.
2. Heutagogy / Pedagogy / Autodidactic
Seeking accomplished life-long learners who have reconciled within themselves how to best learn what interests them and what they need to be successful. These learners have differing depths of understanding the theories and approaches of
heutagogy,
andragogy,
pedagogy and
autodidactism. What is most important is they are self-directed life-long learners and/or help others to be self-directed life-long learners.
3. Solution Architecture
Seeking
solution or
enterprise architects with an interest in continued professional development within all subject domains of computer and information systems architecture. In particular, people who are familiar with open and standards based approaches to architecture with focus on
TOGAF and
software architecture.
