How Innovations Flourish

Catalog description

A common misconception is that innovations are self-contained ideas, but in fact they arise from the more complex interplay between the ideas and the surrounding environment. This course is a survey of contemporary innovative developments, topics, and trends taking place in education across the world. It focuses on the education innovations themselves, the conditions under which they succeed or not, their interactions with context, and their underlying processes and mechanisms for change. Close analysis will be directed at the core methods people use to bring these current innovations to the field in a variety of new ways to improve learning and the multiple frameworks by which they can be assessed and applied to real-world examples. The course examines new pedagogies and approaches to teaching and learning, learning sciences research and its growing influence on solution development, technologies that continually respond to and lead change, and an emerging culture where learning takes place anytime, anywhere. The course will explore how these innovations can transform education systems to offer equitable access, experiences and outcomes for all.