The Decentring of the Traditional University: The Future of (Self) Education in Virtually Figured Worlds

by Francis; Russell

• ISBN13: 9780415550536
• ISBN10: 041555053X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-22
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Decentring of the Traditional University provides a unique perspective on the implications of media change for learning, literacy and education. Francis draws our attention to the plight of advanced resourceful learners ' Oxford University students ' as they start to break away from traditional modes of instruction and learn through active engagement in a globally interconnected participatory culture.Chapters illustrate students designing radically personalised learning environments to support advanced knowledge work; learners cultivating and nurturing globally distributed funds of living knowledge they take with them as they migrate across countries and institutional contexts; and learners shaping their own sense of self and life trajectories through serious play in virtually figured worlds. These concepts are illustrated with vignettes that suggest some of the surprising and unexpected ways emergent media forms are now routinely exploited by students as powerful learning resources. Nevertheless, these stories also highlight the challenges and choices confronting students as they struggle to negotiate the faultlines of media convergence and master the New Media Literacies they need to exploit the full potential of participatory media for self education.Overall, this compelling argument proposes that we are witnessing a period of historic systemic change in the culture of university learning that may allow us to peer into the future of education more generally. In particular, the argument highlights why we need to start conceiving of learner's identities as powerful mediators (and motivators) of learning activity given the loss of enabling constraints implicit in the design of traditional learning spaces and paper-based learning media.