Inside the New University: Prerequisites for a Contemporary Knowledge Production

In Sweden today, there is an intensive debate discussing the changing conditions within higher education, one of the major issues is the one of meeting a new student cohort, i.e. millenials, or the generation Y students, etc. But what if the problem may not be the new students entering the university but the fact that we have to adjust to a new order ? Barnett, (2004) argues that we have to educate for a new work life. Implying that the students need to develop skills that are functioning in the world we live in right now. Bowden and Marton (1998) are talking about being able to transfer knowledge to new situations. Whilst Weiler ( 2005) argues that we have to meet the new cohort with new educational methods. Students of today are more visual learners, and we have to design for that in order to make the education meaningful.

The idea of a “Net Generation” has been around for some time and diverse claims have been made as to how its members differ from earlier generations. Specifically, these claims points toward a necessity for higher education to change and adapt when they enter our universities. In the first part of this article, some of these claims are discussed and questioned. In the second part, the results of an inquiry into the learning experience of two members of this generation are presented. These results and the preceding discussion of their generation lead to the conclusion that the changes that may be required in our institutions of higher education should not be based on the assumption that the students of today are so very different in their approach to learning. The question of how to make better use of their skills and of available tools, however, merits further study.

This chapter discusses how young students’ are using their digital competence in higher education. It also gives suggestions about relevant aspects to consider when implementing digital tools in higher education in order to support students’ learning. The main conclusion is that the young generation is usually highly digitally experienced but still lacks the basic knowledge about how to use digital tools for the purpose of learning and planning for a career. There is thus a complex difference between the students’ private use of digital tools and the use that applies to a specific course in higher education. To be competent in using the tools for private purposes does not imply that one is automatically competent in using the tools for other purposes. Consequently, to get the students to see the benefits of how digital tools can support their learning, a dialog needs to take place between students and teachers about the purpose of their use and how digital tools can be used in a variety of contexts and social practices. The actual use of digital tools in higher education also needs to be continuous to enable the students to clearly see the potential of the tools in different subjects and courses and for learning in a broader sense, that is, lifelong learning.

The chapter describes experiences of an international web-based program entitled Adult learning and global change (ICM/ALGC) that has now been effective since 2001. The aims of the program are to enable students to learn and teach globally and use global technologies; understand knowledge-based societies and the implications for learning; develop an understanding of Globalization discourses, and develop cultural sensibilities and sensitivities; develop equity perspectives on learning, and engage in reframing their own professional practices; establish a global community of adult learning practitioners, and challenge orthodoxies in adult education practice.

Four universities in four continents cooperate through taking on responsibility for the whole cohort during the courses that they provide. The chapter comprises quotations from students to illustrate ways the programme is experienced from their perspective.

Considering the pace of development of information and communication technology all over the world, one challenge for the future is to continue to explore ways that we can enhance our web-based teaching. The advances in ICT in most countries provide an opportunity to make the ICM/ALGC program even more dynamic. In contexts like South Africa where telephone costs are exorbitant and the internet is relatively slow, there is an inevitable drag on the overall system which does shape what innovations can be used. However, the contexts are very dynamic and the programme has to continually be in touch with the emerging possibilities.

For decades, higher education has been criticised widely for not preparing students well enough for the demands of working life. In response to this criticism, the focus has increasingly turned to issues on authenticity and that learning should be based on problems that are experienced as realistic. In this study, the empirical case relates to this discussion, and how principles on problem and work based learning are understood and adopted by teachers and students in a three-year academic nursing programme. The results showed that there was a tension between the efforts to integrate theoretical and clinical understandings of care problems and the institutional organisation of the programme. This tension points to needs for further attention to how students construe the very relation between disciplinary knowledge and clinical problems in designing for authenticity and learning for working life.

The developments of the mass-university and academisation of professional education have reshaped the core activities of what to teach and how to teach. Although the content of teaching at universities has changed considerably since the late 1960s, how the actual teaching has been conducted has not evolved in the same manner. This has changed only in the last two decades. In the article it is argued that the changes of teaching have been motivated not by criteria formulated inside the academic system, but by external forces, embedded in the diversified movement called New Public Management. The state has approved the introduction of market-like steering mechanisms. As a result, the state loses direct control over how the work is carried out in the public sector, but it regains control by means of the development of comprehensive instruments for control and evaluation which challenge the timehonoured autonomy of professionalism. In the wake of the new management technology, the state has shifted from an advocate of dynamic research and education to a controller of them. One consequence, if this development continues, is that the former student at the university is reshaped into a grown-up pupil.

In our text we describe and discuss the practice of anti-oppressive education as norm criticism, and the teacher’s self-reflexivity. This is exemplified by an attempt to create a learning environment within higher education where we– together with the students– critically examine norms, power relations and processes of dominance and subordination, in the larger society as well as in our own classroom. Mainly it is about our attempt to introduce and use “master suppression techniques” as tools for understanding, detecting and defining teacher power in the classroom. It is also about some of the dilemmas and paradoxes that we identified in this process and afterwards. One of the dilemmas that confronted us was a sort of “trade off” between letting the students critically examine our position of power and us actually willing to “give up” some of our formal rights and privileges in the classroom. Finally we discuss how the norm critical stance risks become a norm in itself.

Education has provided few resources and conceptual tools through which to interrogate the historically and culturally specific premises constituting our understanding of ourselves and all other beings on the planet. Education, in general and higher education in particular offers no guarantees of understanding, wisdom or even survival; the necessary requirements to contribute to a better world (Orr, 1994/2004). Instead the academy has looked inwards in mass producing unconnected knowledge ‘experts’ rather than engaging outwards so as to enhance our values and capabilities in acquiring knowledge through others by learning relationally. We argue here for an ‘ecoversity’ approach to university education which highlights ways of thinking and acting sustainably and relationally about life and ethics. Through the notion of ‘ecoversity’ we propose a whole of university approach to future survival. The ecoversity approach involves directing the whole university towards a relational education for and about environmental sustainability and survival.

The chapter focuses on Innovation in the Higher Education (HE) system within Europe and how the future of this ‘system’ might look if European society follows certain trajectories. We speak as recent graduates of this system having just completed our Masters year (2012). This chapter brings to our reflections a sense of personal exploration, as the futures we consider will impact directly on our lives. Future scenarios are used to unpack higher education futures in Europe and to consider a range of possible alternatives to the dominant model currently framing the higher education debate. As HE change is an issue of real importance to us, we admit to desiring more flexible and open ended learning systems in HE. A futures approach to this topic is chosen since it provides the depth and rigor needed to facilitate insights and alternatives in organisational/systems change. The chapter starts with an outline of the processes and methods employed both in recognizing the main drivers as well as scenario building. The main framework adopted is the Six Pillars framework by Sohail Inayatullah (2008). From the analysis preformed, four scenarios are defined: the auto- factory, the castle, the fancy salad bar, and the central park. These four scenarios illustrate the analysis and dynamics of the drivers in potential futures. The Central Park scenario represents our clear preferred future. The HE system within this scenario requires more engagement from students and at the same time empowers them to create their own curriculums within the context of an inclusive society. The conclusion builds on the findings of the futures analysis and offers suggestions for a productive way forward.

This chapter is designed as a conversation between two researchers/teachers with experience from two Universities, one in Australia and one in Sweden, and two different academic contexts. The conversation is dealing with the concept of the University, what is it and what it could be? It also touches on the issue of what it is that could be said to be new, in the new University, and also lists some problems that existed within the old University. To present the thoughts in the form of a conversation is our way to both implement and present Gilles Deleuze, and Bruno Latour's epistemological ideas in a new and more rhizomatic knowledge and University structure. The aim of the article is not to present well defined facts about Universities, it is to start a conversation about this burning issue and important subject.

“The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest for life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning. The university imparts information, but it imparts it imaginatively. At least that is the function it should perform for society. A university which fails in this respect has no reason for existence” (Whitehead, 1960, p. 97).

There is an epochal need to nurture a new university as part of regenerating education in general and higher education in particular. Our universities have been at a crossroads for a long time. Contemporary universities emerged in the modern world embodying the limitations and possibilities of modern world view as well as its socio-political organization. The present article discusses some of its limitations such as disciplinarity and a false sense of universality. It discusses how we can nurture transdisciplinary and multiversal places of learning as part of our creative experiments with present and future.

Increasingly, the transitions between institutions of higher education and working life are attracting interest and becoming more important due to changes both in students’ academic “trajectories” and in the organisation and nature of working life, tasks and careers. The first part of this article discusses some experiences from a project, aiming to facilitate these transitions for students in co-called co-op education, i.e. study programmes that intersperse academic studies with internships. The project consisted of students writing cases, based on their experiences of these internships, as a way of integrating learning in the workplace with learning in the classroom. The second part of the article relates the cases and the writing of them to the concept of boundary objects in order to draw some conclusions about the nature and design of such objects. The conclusion is that such cases seem well suited as a basis for an intelligible translation between academia and working life.