News Story

Futurium Webinar

KMi Reporter, Friday 24 May 2013

Today, as part of the "Future Fridays" series of webinars for The European Commission’s Futurium initiative, Professor Peter Scott, Director of the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, presented his vision of the Future of Education & Learning.

The live Webinar was hosted under the Digital Agenda for Europe events aimed to discuss policy innovation with a long term vision. Professor Scott led a discussion on "New channels. New affordances. New learners?" which picked up on foresight thinking from EU projects like STELLAR and TELMAP. This work aims to help us to see the emerging shape of a new learning landscape, and to put innovations like Learning Analytics and MOOCs into the wider context.

"Indeed, new channels for reaching learners are appearing constantly in our networked world", said Professor Scott. "In this talk I will connect these visions to the practical experience of the UK’s Open University in the design of learning experiences to fit the affordances of these new channels. The Open University distributes materials to learners worldwide via its OpenLearn programme, on iTunes U., in YouTube, and via a variety of other ‘podcast’ channels. As Apple announce the billionth download from iTunes U, now is a good time to reflect upon the new channels and the new affordances they offer. Indeed, the Open University on iTunes U (with over 60 Million downloads to date) is 70% to iOS mobile and tablet devices. Is it possible that the "book" affordance is the most important one to focus on next?"