Learning and Education: beyond the Age of Delivery

This work has been partially supported by the POSI programme of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and European Union FEDER. 1 Antonio Figueiredo, University of Coimbra, Department of Informatics Engineering, Polo 2, 3030 Coimbra, Portugal, [email protected] 2 Ana Paula Afonso, University of Coimbra, Institute of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Rua do Colegio Novo, 3000115, Coimbra, Portugal, [email protected] 3 Paulo Rupino da Cunha, University of Coimbra, Department of Informatics Engineering, Polo 2, 3030 Coimbra, Portugal, [email protected] Abstract  This paper argues that, although the mainstream vision on learning and education is still strongly based on the mechanistic models of the Industrial Society, we are at the dawn of the Knowledge Society, where the old premises are vanishing and completely different paradigms apply. We start by briefly analyzing the mechanistic heritage of education and the model of “delivery” of “content” it inspired. We then take stock of the representatives of educational thought that started breaking away from those mechanistic views into views where the contexts of learning are given the front stage. Following an analysis of the duality between content and context, we recall that valuable frameworks already exist in the literature to guide the design of learning contexts, and we briefly present, as an example, one such framework. We then close with some examples of simple learning activities that illustrate how improved learning contexts can be created, both online and face-toface.