Learning in the 21st Century Principles, Models, Environments

If a time traveler from the 18th century came to town, he would be amazed by all the technological advances in transportation, communication, medicine, etc. However, upon visiting a nearby university, he immediately would recognize the teaching method. Our teaching methods have not changed much; we still educate students the same way they were taught hundreds of years ago. The proliferation of powerful personal computers and the Internet changed everything: digital repositories were built and tens of thousands of massively parallel computers provided rapid access to extensive knowledge bases. Information has become as common as dirt. This demands a new model of education that caters to 21st-century skills: teamwork, brainstorming, co-creativity, critical thinking, and social intelligence. This book outlines the fundamental principles of a learning methodology that my students followed in the past decade or so.