TRIUMF (The Art and Science of Particle Physics)

I visited the TRIUMF lab at the University of British Columbia this week. This is one of three labs in the world that has the capacity to move the material world around at high speed to study the characteristics of sub-atomic matter. The other two are in Chicago (FermiLab) and Switzerland (CERN).

TRIUMF outlined three goals in its 2008 Mission Statement:

• Make discoveries that address the most compelling questions in particle physics, nuclear physics, nuclear medicine, and materials science
• Act as Canada's steward for the advancement of particle accelerators and detection technologies
• Transfer knowledge, train highly skilled personnel, and commercialize research for the economic, social, environmental, and health benefit of all Canadians 

So, what was a humanities/art/design person like myself doing at Triumf? Well, Emily Carr has a collaboration with the lab that links science and art in a really interesting and productive way. Students from Emily Carr are working on visualizations of what Triumf does, which is gaze into those parts of the material world that the naked eye will never be able to see. Of course, the debate between the sciences and the arts has been going on for a long time. Suffice to say, that the differences are there, but the similarities, that is the desire to engage in creative thinking and output are shared.

It was artists and scientists working in close proximity who developed a deeper understanding of perspective which led among other things to a fundamental shift in painting but also to a profound change in a variety of technologies. 

Artists and scientists have always been early adopters and developers of new technologies. The interactions are too numerous to mention. This quote summarizes the potential and the beauty of art and science meeting on a common ground.

"The materials in art pieces are universal. The sinuous molecules that bind pigments in oil paint are like those that beaded up in Earth’s primeval oceans to form the first cell. Glass is a translucent form of sand and is representative of the mineral content of the Earth’s mantle and Earth-like planets elsewhere. Metal is a relic of supernovae, the fiery stellar cataclysms that also enable biology by forging and ejecting life’s elements. Wood panels and paper are among the means by which formerly living things are brought into our service, making art an indirect homage to carbon and biology." The Living Cosmos: A Fabric That Binds Art and Science by Chris Impey and Heather Green (Leonardo, Volume 43, Number 5, October 2010, pp. 435-441)

Learning in the 21st Century (Part Five)

The debate is raging everywhere.

In Europe, the Bologna process has led to furious discussions about the purpose of universities largely because Bologna (a treaty signed among European nations to create some uniformity about the expectations governments have for the post-secondary sector) has pushed universities towards curriculum that is directly linked to job outcomes and job creation. In England, universities are evaluated on the number of jobs their graduates get and in Canada, labour market data is used to assess the effectiveness not only of degrees but also of the content of student learning. In the US, vocational schools and private for-profit colleges that emphasize job readiness are now celebrated for their effectiveness, even if their outcomes are spotty at best.

This argument about the effectiveness of learning and education has been at the core of the last two hundred years of post-secondary educational policy development and discussion. In Italy, highly qualified graduates cannot find jobs and a generation that is now into their thirties is looking at a bleak future. Although statistics tend to support the notion that getting a degree results in more security and more income over a lifetime, that research includes the boomer generation which had a much easier time finding jobs than their children.

And, I am not talking here about the quality of employment, jobs that are meaningful and lead to a richer life. I am simply referencing the debates about employment as statistical indicators  of anticipated outcomes to learning.

The challenge, and it is a substantial one, is that the purpose, direction and importance of public education may be hidden by the way in which this discussion is being held. On the one side, call it the Humanities side (see Martha Nussbaum’s recent work) writers and policymakers try and defend the role and importance of learning, becoming critical and aware, in other words, students learning to understand what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. This means supporting the study of history, literature and the social sciences. It means supporting the importance of the arts in all of their forms. It means offering as diverse a curriculum as possible to increasingly diverse groups of students. It means taking some leadership on the importance of culture and cultural activity to the well-being of humans irrespective of background.

On the other side, are the pragmatists (those who would link that skills and outcomes in a linear fashion) who want the educational system to serve the needs of society and who see those needs through the labour market and the economy. They want educational institutions to retool and accommodate increasingly complex economic shifts by narrowing their curricula to serve immediate needs defined narrowly by data that is entirely quantitative.

21^st Century learning however, now takes place in a different way and on terms that are not as clear cut as the opposition between humanists and pragmatists would suggest. Today, learning is substantively defined not only by the Internet and what it makes available, but also by the social networks that surround and increasingly define everyday life. We have entered an age of qualitative differentiation. What does this mean?

Learning experiences will be respected for their impact on the personal values of learners and how learners translate their values into pragmatic decisions.

Since learning takes place at all levels and at all times in an individual’s life, employment will be a function not only of what you know, but how well you have defined the context in which your learning can be translated into some outcomes. Learning one thing or learning in one way or learning a particular craft or skill will not suffice. Learning how to learn and maintaining and updating how you learn will be of far greater importance than ever before.

This is the true meaning of life-long learning and it is an exciting prospect because it means that public educational institutions will be essential arbiters of the future. Public institutions are the only places where the curriculum diversity that will be essential to economic and social and cultural health will be maintained. The struggle will be to define a middle ground among the stresses and strains created by overly narrow conceptions of economic need and the broader concerns for critical and historical thinking so essential to the learning process.

Distributed learning among many experiences within diverse venues will only work if learners of all ages can actively discriminate between good information and bad information. To learn means to choose and choices made without an understanding of context challenges the very essence of what it means to engage with work and one’s future.

More on this in the next installment of this series.

Smart Clothes and Wearables

Research into smart clothes and wearables is accelerating. This video talks about the work going on in Europe at the moment. Emily Carr University is also involved in research in this area.