Hi, I am Raghav from Mumbai, India. I am engaged in research and work towards developing open education tools, platforms, and environments to support self-directed learning and innovative teaching methods.
Hi Raghav, happened across your profile and found your goals interesting. It looks to me that from this post, you're looking to publish longer form work that's hampered by the 500 character limit of Mastodon. You might want to try Kbin, as it has a 25000 character limit, it reads and posts to both Mastodon and Lemmy instances, and has a far greater range of tools for publishing to and navigating the Fediverse. Good luck with your efforts, and I look forward to seeing what you have to post.
I dropped out of college and became an independent interface design researcher. I got disillusioned by academia due to my own terrible experiences and hold an idealistic vision for an alternative education system that promotes open education, free from competition and hierarchy.
I strongly believe in abolishing traditional evaluation mechanisms such as exams, marks, and percentages that establish hierarchy and competition among students.
My passion lies in inventing things and helping others develop skills to invent and build for themselves. I enjoy exploring new artistic and technical mediums and techniques, introducing unique activities to the world.
In terms of skills, I aim to learn a diverse range of expertise, from metalworking and computational geometry to music composition and projection mapping.
I aim to become well-versed in programming languages that help in conceiving and prototyping novel UI concepts, paradigms, affordances, conventions and to develop experience with various frameworks and software.
My strong desire is to make education accessible to all, free from the pressure of competition and the limitations of traditional institutions. I envision a platform where individuals can learn at their own pace and in their own way, without the fear of judgment or comparison. I believe that education should be a right, not a privilege, and seek to create an open educational system with multi-year projects and transparent evaluation standards.
I'm deeply concerned about the negative impact of competitive exams and authoritarian teaching methods on students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. I question the association of exams with learning and the gatekeeping of knowledge based on memorization and regurgitation. I advocate for personalized pedagogies and resources that support every individual in reaching their maximum potential, rather than predetermined assumptions about their abilities
I believe that learning should be an enjoyable process and attribute difficulties in understanding to uninspiring teaching materials and pedagogies, rather than the learner's capabilities. I see a lack of imagination in the current teaching approaches and envision a more creative and engaging education system.
In conclusion, what I aim to do in life is the removal of the concept of exclusivity, competition, and hierarchy in learning and research spaces for the democratization of knowledge production and consumption via open education tools. I also aim to conceive of learning, teaching, and researching experiences grounded at a fundamental level in experiences of compassion, joy, and kindness.
I want to design tools that make learning, teaching, and researching less cruel and centered on kindness, compassion, and joy. I have realized that at the heart of my project and life goal is creating an environment of learning and teaching without competition and fleshing out more imaginative practices for learning and teaching.
Focusing on imagination is at the core of the project, specifically for designing tools for augmenting & increasing the capacity of one's imagination, joy, & wonder during learning and teaching, which competition-based learning pedagogies don't enable
It's exploring excellence in imagination. It's figuring out an expertise in imagination. It's about helping develop rigor of imagination. Making tools that help cultivate & develop imagination as a deep & robust craft
I'm trying to figure out making two projects one of them involves the creation of a new framework and theory for both UI design and self-directed learning, presented in the form of a workbook for designers.
The workbook includes exercises on generating novel UI concepts, patterns, conventions, and paradigms for tools that facilitate self-directed learning.
Tools that encompass various aspects of a self-directed learner's workflow, including open access publishing, information synthesis, curriculum creation, literature reviewing, research curation, research discovery, and personal knowledge management. Essentially, they assist at every step of the research process for independent learners and researchers.
However, my primary interest lies in discovering new pedagogies, modes of learning, and teaching methods through the utilization of computing technology. I am keen on reevaluating current formats of online education and learning, which often only replicate existing methods (such as test-taking and quizzes) rather than exploring and conceptualizing entirely new pedagogies unique to the computing medium, web, and internet.
Another project is of a product idea I have in mind
The idea is a custom search engine client that stores and visualizes your search queries in the form of a mind map, which you can play with and form intersections of queries to find interesting interdisciplinary research.
Via it you're actively creating relationships yourself using your creativity; the interface just provides a fun, convenient visual abstraction—connecting/ disconnecting edges from nodes.
The custom search engine client, designed as a mind map for fostering interdisciplinary research, reflects my desire to encourage creativity and intentional combinatorial thinking in the pursuit of knowledge, so this product idea aligns perfectly with my vision and goals.
Ultimately, my goal is to cultivate and develop an imagination for constructing an ecosystem of tools and services that eliminate the need for competition in the learning process, thereby removing the reliance on exams. In essence, I aim to create resources, tools, services, and platforms that support self-directed learning, leading to an entire ecosystem of open education, open access publishing, and open educational resources (OER).
In essence, I strive to do everything possible to develop tools, platforms, and spaces that democratize research and knowledge production outside of university settings.
Two fundamental beliefs shape my views on education and learning:
Knowledge, intellect, and learning are constructed and processual, constantly evolving and changing. Consequently, the concept of exams becomes illogical.
Expertise and excellence are merely a result of exposure.
These beliefs align with my core motivation, which is the driving force behind everything I aspire to accomplish in life: combating mechanisms and criteria that restrict access to knowledge consumption and production.
Once you adopt the perspective that acquiring knowledge and skills is a continuous process, and that anyone can achieve it given the right freely available resources, the need for competition and comparison dissipates.
This perspective leads me to conclude that all we need is a robust ecosystem of open education, open access publishing, and OER. Such platforms would assist individuals in collaboratively curating their own curricula, facilitating discussion groups, and providing support and collaboration on assignments and projects. They would also serve as platforms for free publication and consumption of research.
I hope to connect with individuals who are involved in building tools and platforms for open education, open access publishing, and OER. I am particularly interested in connecting with designers and engineers whose primary motivation is to promote free knowledge production and who deeply consider the inaccessibility of formal education. Together, we can envision an entire ecosystem of open access and open education alternatives.
I am eager to engage with individuals who value critical thinking and imagination, and who are interested in open education, open pedagogy, open access platforms, personal knowledge management, and the "tools for thought" space. I seek to collaborate with those who strive to democratize knowledge and research production and consumption outside of traditional university settings.
I hope to connect with individuals who possess a balanced approach, combining critique with inventive, speculative, and imaginative thinking, and who believe in the power of open education and self-directed learning.
@impactology The other difficult part is making sure students have the social interaction that, for many students, is essential for learning. You mentioned discussion groups, and those are good, but sometimes they also need support. Perhaps some clearly identified goals? If students feel they are working towards a goal, they can have both direction and be motivated through the reliance they have on each other.
@lavender_in_sun >? If students feel they are working towards a goal, they can have both direction and be motivated through the reliance they have on each other.
Agree 100%, a support group with shared interests/skills would definitely help
@impactology ooh also having access to professionals in the field is very motivating for students.
Oh, other issue is making sure students still learn stuff that isn’t fun but they still need, so that they can be an informed and active citizen.
Just to be clear I’m not challenging your ideas, definitely agree with them, just wanted to mention some things that come up in the classroom.
imagine if there was a program like theirs but as an open education platform that assists teachers, students in cultivating their pedagogical creativity
@impactology Nice! Well, I did my MATESOL at SIT in Brattleboro, and that definitely emphasized creativity, but it was focused on TESOL of course, and honestly felt kind of short. There wasn’t enough time for just good brainstorming of new teaching practices
@lavender_in_sun Ah, yes as I'm researching more on teaching training courses I'm finding a lot of them focus on training teachers to meet with the standards of...standardized testing 😅.
Teaching to the test style of teaching, less on exploring ways to teach that help students reimagine concepts
@impactology I agree with most of what you’re saying, and I am interested in learning more.
Some students don’t do well with self-directed learning; they find themselves floundering and unsure of what to do, or perhaps they haven’t developed strong internal motivation. In the classroom, I find that different students need different amounts of direction. What supports would you include for students that, for example, have so much going on in their life that they just can’t focus on self-direction
There was this talk by a designer called Jon Kolko long ago where he showed a project which was about introducing high school kids to a variety of jobs, like "a day in the life of xyz professional" kind of stuff
Like as a way to show how are curriculums, all the things they would learn translate to everyday routines. Like what expertise in a certain field looks like in daily periodic routines
@impactology this is nice. I’m going to bookmark it to watch the whole thing later.
It looks like this is geared towards high school & college though — what are your thoughts on age when it comes to self-directed curriculum? In teaching middle school, I had some success identifying required C3 goals then brainstorming where we wanted to go as a class, and at one point of the unit had students work independently on projects. Which is another question: would this include PBL?
Over my career, I've come to question the value of "educational" resources. My teaching has come less to depend on such specially-created resources and more to create projects that create communities of learning where students use pre-existing resources (software, reference documentation, primary literature, etc.) and not materials created solely for education.
Being able to find and identify trustworthy resources is part the task I set students, so I usually spend some time with them, as they begin their projects, discussing how to locate and evaluate resources.
In my undergraduate Scientific Writing course: I use one week (one three-hour class period) to do an activity on information literacy, where we consider sources and, basically, try derive the CRAAP test. For scientific writing, it's simpler because, in the end, we're only going to use peer-reviewed references.
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