by Danielle Arets
In a near future, MOOCs and online education are flaunting on your CV. Classrooms no longer are the only places where knowledge & skills are taught, instead schools are turned into laboratories or studios where students, coaches and mentors as well as entrepreneurs, exchange ideas. Is this actually the educational future we aim for?
Design Academy student Alvin Arthur kicks off this session with an image of the movie Dead Poets Society where the tutor is sitting in class looking at his students. That is also the setting for this discussion, where tutors are positioned in the audience.
When students are asked to come forward it takes a while till they dare to come up, but when they finally do, it results in a lively discussion on the importance of having inspiring mentors that are supportive, critical and have time enough for real coaching. The latter is often lacking, since tutors are also busy with management, their own education or their own business.
After that it’s time for tutors of the various academies to respond. Caroline Hummels, professor at Tue, states that educating is not about ‘what I know best’; it is to offer a space where you both as student and tutor are both eager to grow. “If I don’t want to grow, how can I ask my students to do so?” The fact that this method is working out, is exemplified by former TU/e student Jens Gijbels who is now tutoring at HU and creates a room for exchange there.
Erwin Slegers (HKU) however states that there is a bigger radical societal change going on than the educational renewal we are discussing. “Of course education needs to evolve, but we need to make sure that creativity is already embedded at primary education. Chequita Nahar (Academy Maastricht), fully agrees: “We have to start much earlier, we are at the end of the spectrum.” And this with much more experts involved, addresses Cassandra Vugts of SPARK academy.
DAE students of the minor design for journalism, have been developing a Wikipedia site on reversed mentoring in the mean time; when they read out their summary with the statements made during class, we only can come to the conclusion that we wrote history this evening.
Programme Create out Loud: http://mu.nl/en/exhibitions/create-out-loud