Two months ago, President Barack Obama launched his “Educate to Innovate” campaign to advance science, technology, engineering and math education, but a Duke professor has been working toward that goal since 2006.
In 2002, English professor Cathy Davidson, along with David Goldberg of the University of California, Irvine, co-founded the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory. For four years, HASTAC has been administering the Digital Media and Learning Competition, a program that seeks to improve the quality of STEM education by implementing technological tools.
“[The competition is aimed at] providing imaginative, inspiring new ways that [students] can learn using technology, through technology and about technology in their own social lives,” Davidson said. “Our argument basically is that all of us have changed enormously in the last decade and a half because of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the way we interact online, but our institutions of education have changed very, very little. The whole point is to rethink learning, research and formal education for a digital age.”
HASTAC has three main tenets: the development of new kinds of technology that take advantage of the digital—such as games and learning labs—for different forms of learning, critical thinking about the role of technology in our lives and society and new forms of collaborative learning that are facilitated by the Internet, Davidson said.
The competition, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, grants two types of awards: one for learning environments and digital media-based experiences that encourage young people to use a STEM-based approach to address social challenges, and one for STEM-based video games or additions to video games. The application system opened Jan. 15.
“The president has set this goal that by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” said Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology in the U.S. Department of Education. “In order to meet that goal, we have to harness the best possible technologies available to improve our education system.”
Goldberg said digital media has enormous potential as an educational tool because of its widespread popularity and the opportunity it provides for collaborative learning. Without even realizing it, people can apply STEM-based principles while playing computer games, surfing the Web or interacting with others in social networks, he said.
“Instead of forcing learning upon people, the intent here is to try to seduce, to attract them while pointing to the seriousness of it all,” Goldberg said.
Indeed, advancing STEM principles through technology will be vital to the United States, Cator said.
“The idea around STEM is that for our nation’s economy, we need to nurture the next generation of innovators, and innovators obviously come with a lot of skills,” she said. “One of the skills happens to be that they tend to focus around STEM, but they also need a creativity, design and innovation skill set. So it’s important for the nation’s future, the future workforce and the future economy.”
Davidson said she believes the fusion of education and media will significantly improve the quality of STEM education in the United States.
“I think that the way we’re now testing STEM abilities in our schools is almost the opposite of the scientific method,” she said. “The ways we are testing focus on rote examination, multiple choice exams, on super specialization at a young age.”
Davidson added that individuals need to become less specialized within their fields and work together across the sciences and the humanities.
“In the past 150 years, we’ve been making education increasingly specialized, and we need to figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” she said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.