New Media, Digital Culture and Learning Society

There are two new lectures online, I gave recently. They are both in Finnish. The titles of the lectures are 1) New Media and Digital Culture and 2) Learning Society? Knowledge Society and Learning.

The first lecture – New Media and Digital Culture – is part of a common study program for students of the Aalto University’s three schools (Science and Technology, TKK, Economics, HSE, Art and Design, TaiK). The title of the course is “Media in Change” (Median murros) and the aim is to present different point of views to the topic.

The first lecture is online (the right way) as a Flash video one can embed. Here:

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The slides of the lecture are here:

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The other lecture is part of a course with a similar idea: different point of views to a common theme. In this lecture series the common theme is sustainable development.

From this lecture series there are already some great lectures online. Unfortunately they are put online the wrong way – as Windows Media. Here is a link to the video from my lecture:

Part 1

Part 2

Preparing and giving a lecture of 1,5 hours is not something I do everyday. In my school (art and design) and department (Media Lab) we have a very few this kind of “lecture series”. We do stuff. This is of course possible because we have relatively small groups in the classes, although they have been growing rapidly in last two or three years with more students and less faculty. The class sizes in the two other schools – science and engineering and economics – are much bigger, often hundreds of students in one lecture series.

What I am worried about is what will happen to our quality education (awarded several times) if the 1.5 hours lectures will become the facto standard in the new Aalto University?

In a worst-case scenario we will decrees the average class sizes (in the whole Aalto University) to level that does not have any real effect on the quality of education but will look better in the Annual Report. In our school we will have more students and in the two other schools less students, but nobody will benefit.

If you are interested in to get some idea of the Learning Society –lecture, there is a great blog post about it. It is critical but fair post. Here is the link:

The learning society didn’t really take off (have a look of my comments in the end of the post, too)