Michelle Marks, Mason's vice president for academic innovation and new ventures, discussed learning innovation with authors Edward Maloney and Joshua Kim. Photo by Lathan Goumas/Office of Communications and Marketing.
Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney aren’t just focused on what students are learning, they want to know more about how students learn.
In their new book, “Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education,” Kim and Maloney argue that advances in learning science, or learning innovation, can improve the nature of teaching and learning throughout the higher education landscape.
“We realized that we can’t just do the same things, the way we’ve done it before,” said Kim, director of digital learning initiatives at the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning and a senior fellow at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University, during the two authors’ recent visit to George Mason University to discuss the issue on a panel with Mason’s Michelle Marks. “It has to be better, faster. We have to incorporate change and help push institutions forward.”
From active learning to online and hybrid courses, the study of learning innovation examines how new methodologies are challenging long-standing assumptions about how teaching and learning happen. As a result, universities are being compelled to devise new ways to meet the needs of today’s students.
Speaking to an attentive crowd of roughly 50 people, Kim and Maloney contended that colleges and universities must adapt at an institutional level that includes a full spectrum of engagement, including investments in the classroom and closer collaboration with instructional designers.
The two lauded Mason as an example of how universities that are in tune with technology’s growing role in the face of changing student demographics can be effective and move quickly while creating an entrepreneurial environment.
“We need to meet students where they are and realize that students learn in a variety of different ways,” said Maloney, a professor of English at Georgetown University, where he is the executive director of the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship.
Marks, who is Mason’s vice president for academic innovation and new ventures, praised the book’s relevant message.
“It’s something that’s impacting higher education,” she said. “We need to continue making investments, but learning innovation has to always be at the heart of the university’s mission of serving its students.”