My recent contribution to DESD...

Here is an excerpt of my posting to the list, please do comment! :-)

I took part in a course on Pedagogy for Online Learning (POL) [part of the UNU Global Virtual University] (in the ESD context) so was able to be a 'participant-observer'. We had participants from around the world...

The analyses were informed by a systems model of ESD across three sectors of education - Education, Commerce and Organisations - which was called GESSD-ECO. Each sub-system had four stakeholder levels hence I was interested in how five categories of factors impinged upon communications between these levels.

Broadly the conclusions were thus categorised into Pedagogical, Organisational, Economic, Technological and Socio-cultural (which also included political and personal) factors or POETS ...

The final Working Paper is available on the UNU-IAS website or amongst my other publications (pdfs, 956 kb). You can also find the data and research proposal at the latter site.

The conclusions can be found on pages 49 to 53 and general conclusions on page 58 and are repeated here for your convenience:

1. Virtual organisations, particularly trans-national ones, bring unique organisational issues, for example, International Quality Assurance.
2. Virtual organisations can learn from physical ones, for example with regard to institutional mechanisms of collaboration, such as employing clear communication channels.
3. It is important to not be idealistic but pragmatic in e-learning.
4. The Digital Divide is an issue for Developing Countries although for some it is being addressed.
5. More research is required, particularly practical mechanisms of running courses and appropriate organisational structures.
6. Open approaches may be beneficial in e-learning, that is, in terms of pedagogy, technology and content.
7. 'Glocalisation' helps reorient knowledge to a local context and helps recognise multi-culturalism.
8. Social-constructivism should be cautiously employed, it may be unwelcome or problematic in non 'Western' education.
9. Personal lives affect online students just as much as face-to-face students but more so in Developing Countries.
10. Participation in e-learning can lead to performance improvements (as measured by assessments).

What's Happening? (May 24th, 2006)

In terms of what's been happening on the DESD List, which inspired this Blog in the first place, we have mainly been considering other DESD 'indicators' projects around the world. Most of them are in their infancy and some obviously are at an embryonic stage! Members also contributed their own efforts if not already mentioned. Certainly there is a great variety in approaches, which is heartening (referring to an ealier post).

For my part, aside from sharing some of the experiences and your comments mentioned on this Blog, I also talked about the feelings I share with one member that it is more important to measure process rather than output. To illustrate, one leftfield idea I had was to present students, workers or community members, etc. with scenarios (which could be computer-based or even a board game! :-) then observe their decision-making and problem-solving behaviour. Obviously we are looking for changes in attitudes, etc. that lead to changes in behaviour which are more in-keeping with the notions of sustainability. Hence, although grossly simplified, we can examine if the DESD has been effective. Ideally these indicators can then be fed back into curricula design rather than simply be input from the outset.

I also raised the issues of looking for typical 'quality' indicators of education such as appropriate administrative structures, good assessment results, selection of teaching staff etc. although these may not need to be examined if appropriate 'quality' procedures are already in place.

Finally, I raised the important issues of Internationalisation of the curriculum (although in our case perhaps Regionalisation is more appropriate). Thus learners should be aware of their neighbour's issues in (E)SD which entails perhaps being aware of their socio-political or geographic issues etc. as well as gaining an appreciation of their culture and possibly language (essential for International negotiations) for example.

What Exactly Are Indicators?

Yesterday I attended a seminar by Douglas Bourn of the Development Education Association (DEA), a self-styled "umbrella" organisation working in the UK. Douglas was at the University of Leicester to discuss with people from this and other Universities about how we may integrate Development Education and the broader Sustainable Development (SD) agenda into UK Higher Education (HE). Douglas has a refreshing participant-centred delivery style, often asking us to break off into small groups to discuss some of the issues. His insights were mostly well elucidated and relevant although I felt obliged at one point to question his question asking us to consider how we would ideally integrate three common UK Government level SD initiatives into HE. In my frank opinion the days of idealism should now be far behind us and pragmatic, realistic approaches should only be entertained. However, in retrospect maybe this was simply a rhetorical trick on Douglas's part, I'm sure he realises the seriousness of today's situation.

I just emailed Douglas to point out my own attempt at a pragmatic approach, " Contextualisation of Virtual Learning in the Global Marketplace", to Education for Sustainable Development (EfSD) through online education based on my research at the UNU Global Virtual University. I'll write more about this sometime but in terms of the pragmatics the conclusions between pages 49 and 53 and the final recommendations on page 58 may be of use.

Anyway, aside from the talk Douglas also brought a selection of material. Of interest to this Blog is the DEA's work on indicators for Development Education, "Measuring Effectiveness in Development Education". Please click on "key concepts" for the descriptions of indicators. This website/"toolkit" is an outstanding piece of work: succinct, clear and sufficiently 'high level' to be of more generic use.

Of course, the work still needs to be done to map all these indicators and knowledge of designing indicators onto the matter at hand, notably the UN DESD in the Asia-Pacific.