“Bricolage in the blend” by bricolage 108
(Photos taken with this camera)

The 2014 edition of the Open University’s annual Innovating Pedagogy report was recently released. In a slight, but very welcome, departure from previous editions, the 2014 report focuses more on the underlying pedagogies rather than the technologies that could be used to achieve them. This makes a lot of sense (and echoes our own Teaching Approaches Menu) because technology changes and develops meaning that anything linked directly to a particular tool has a chance of becoming quickly obsolete, whereas a focus on the pedagogy means that new tools can be slotted in as they appear.

There are 10 topics this year and each is given a rating of its probable impact and the timescale to adoption. The topics are:

1. Massive open social learning (“Free online courses based on social learning”)
2. Learning design informed by analytics (“A productive cycle linking design and analysis of effective learning”)
3. Flipped classrooms (“Blending learning inside and outside the classroom”)
4. Bring your own devices (“Learners use their personal tools to enhance learning in the classroom”)
5. Learning to learn (“Learning how to become an effective learner”)
6. Dynamic assessment (“Giving the learner personalized assessment to support learning”)
7. Event-based learning (“Time-bounded learning events”)
8. Learning through storytelling (“Creating narratives of memories and events”)
9. Threshold concepts (“Troublesome concepts and tricky topics for learning”)
10. Bricolage (“Creative tinkering with resources”)

Each two-page chapter gives a short and straightforward overview of a topic and includes a list of further reading if you want to investigate more deeply. My only criticism, and this is more related to my own personal view, is that there is a little bit too much emphasis placed on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), with them being mentioned in several other topics in addition to being subject of the first one. Overall, the report contains some very interesting ideas and is well worth a read.