Ranulph Glanville kindly sent me a couple of very interesting columns he has written for Cybernetics and Human knowing on second order cybernetics and education. I find myself a fellow traveler on Ranulph’s shirt tails on the importance of design disciplines and practice to the construction of knowledge. I am also in agreement that studio-based learning should be imported from design education to mainstream education. I just wish that he had not thought these thoughts ten or twenty years before I did. So I recommend tracking down his columns from Cybernetics and Human Knowing on ‘A (Cybernetic) Musing: Cybernetics and Human Knowing’ and ‘A (Cybernetic) Musing: Some Examples of Cybernetically Informed Educational Practice’. The second paper features excellent descriptions of studio-based and problem-based learning.
Asher Rospigliosi and I applied elements of the studio-based approach when teaching Digital Entrepreneurship, i.e. embedding information systems within SMEs, to entrepreneurs at the University of Essex iLab. We integrated the studio-based approach with action learning / research. So there *were* consequences to the learner's actions. Working together and ‘pinching’ ideas certainly seemed to help the learners to combine experiences in tasks such as authoring change and innovation plans and thus avoid reinventing wheels. My learning from the experience was that eclecticism is important in learning design. Although leaning designers should not be dilettantes, they should select the most appropriate aspects of the available approaches. This requires staying in contact with developments in learning and teaching and being a reflective practioner. As Van Morrison sang “No guru, no method, no teacher …” but perhaps that over states the case. Some of Ranulph’s advice from A (Cybernetic) Musing: Some Examples of Cybernetically Informed Educational Practice’ quoted below can help a learning designer/teacher to remain grounded.
- "Treat students as you would be treated yourself: show concern for them and for their vulnerability. Thus we relearn generosity.
- Remember, if we have to present in “preaching” modes (e.g. lectures), at least to entertain. Lecturing, especially “educational” lecturing at university, is a performance art (that’s why it’s so hard). Tell a good story well!
- If you wish to be interesting, you must be interested.
- Education is involved in helping others learn. It is concerned with the learner, first and foremost. It is not an opportunity for a teacher to display his/her knowledge/authority.
- We, as teachers, are also learners. There is an endless conversation to be had between us all." (Glanville, 2002, p 8).
Further reading
You can download both columns from Ranulph's web site.
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