21st August 2018
Springer publishes Derek Woodgate's latest paper on foresight, technologies and education
Derek Woodgate's academic research paper titled "Foresight as a Tool for Increasing Creativity in the Age of Technology-enhanced Learning" will be published by Springer in Communications in Computer and Information Science Series (CCIS). The paper provides content for his keynote presentation at the 10th ICT Innovations Conference in Ohrid, Macedonia.
Abstract: The inclusion of established methodologies from the science of foresight within an ICT course structure, can lead to increased levels of student creativity when these processes are learned through a multi-media enhanced learning environment. The science of foresight has at its core the development of alternative futures involving a complex framework and toolset of alternative thinking techniques, computational forecasting and modeling, environmental scanning, scenario-building and strategic implementation, commonly based upon horizons longer than a decade. The goal is to create the future. In 2014, I was asked by the ICT Department of the Faculty of Engineering and Science at the University of Agder to design and teach a master’s course on the future of mobile learning. I decided to undertake a three-pillar approach to the course design, using the science of foresight as an overarching framework:
a) To apply the principles of opportunity-oriented problem-based learning theory as a foundation and to build out the curriculum around the science of foresight
b) To integrate technology-enhanced accelerated learning, using a constructivist-blended - experiential learning structure.
c) To make the increase in student levels of creativity a core objective of the course.
This framework provided an opportunity to involve each student in ultimately solving potential future real-life problems by learning the methodologies and techniques for alternative thinking in a plausible future landscape full of unknowns and discontinuities, to develop novel multimedia approaches and tools for the future of mobile learning. Subsequent research around the question of whether or how the future of mobile learning course delivered increased creativity, established that the science of foresight elements, such as having to place oneself and think in an alternative future landscape, creating novel future scenarios and solving potential future problems of discontinuity were as important or more important for the students’ increase levels of creativity as the emerging multimedia learning approaches and tools they used or developed.
Abstract: The inclusion of established methodologies from the science of foresight within an ICT course structure, can lead to increased levels of student creativity when these processes are learned through a multi-media enhanced learning environment. The science of foresight has at its core the development of alternative futures involving a complex framework and toolset of alternative thinking techniques, computational forecasting and modeling, environmental scanning, scenario-building and strategic implementation, commonly based upon horizons longer than a decade. The goal is to create the future. In 2014, I was asked by the ICT Department of the Faculty of Engineering and Science at the University of Agder to design and teach a master’s course on the future of mobile learning. I decided to undertake a three-pillar approach to the course design, using the science of foresight as an overarching framework:
a) To apply the principles of opportunity-oriented problem-based learning theory as a foundation and to build out the curriculum around the science of foresight
b) To integrate technology-enhanced accelerated learning, using a constructivist-blended - experiential learning structure.
c) To make the increase in student levels of creativity a core objective of the course.
This framework provided an opportunity to involve each student in ultimately solving potential future real-life problems by learning the methodologies and techniques for alternative thinking in a plausible future landscape full of unknowns and discontinuities, to develop novel multimedia approaches and tools for the future of mobile learning. Subsequent research around the question of whether or how the future of mobile learning course delivered increased creativity, established that the science of foresight elements, such as having to place oneself and think in an alternative future landscape, creating novel future scenarios and solving potential future problems of discontinuity were as important or more important for the students’ increase levels of creativity as the emerging multimedia learning approaches and tools they used or developed.
