Digging up Plato's Garden: A New Approach to Learning

Paper by Stephen Whaley and Tom Campbell (first published 1999)

One: Old School

Ever since Plato turned his garden outside Athens into the Academy two thousand years ago, there have been a number of fundamental, if often unspoken, assumptions about the educational process and the nature of educational institutions and organisations. These include:

• The institution is fixed in a particular location and visited by those who wish to learn, rather than the other way round.
• The institution is modular � divided into faculties / departments with specific, unrelated skills taught in each. So, for example, the computer science department and the business studies department are kept separate.
• There is a fundamental distinction between people who teach and people who learn. Hence, people often feel intimidated and in awe of teachers (guardians of knowledge), or else regard them as irrelevant, unable to cope in the real, practical world - George Bernard Shaw�s �Those who can do, those who can�t teach��
• Education is a deeply serious business and, as such, teaching should be an appropriately austere and serious process, which uses negative and positive incentives to ensure that seriousness is maintained.
• Education is a process that occurs for one fixed period of someone�s life (a single three-year visit to the college) and after that, the student leaves the institution to go forth into the world. There is a basic division between these periods � you are either a student or a professional, never both at the same time.
• Education is about giving out principles that can then be applied by those that learn them. This means that abstract, universal knowledge (such as mathematics) is highly prized over other forms of knowledge, and that the teacher�s responsibility is only to give out these principles: it is up to the students to make practical use of them.

Two: 2000 years after Plato

Many of the assumptions outlined above are no longer appropriate for providing the types of skills and knowledge required by the modern economy. The reasons for this include:

• Geographical location is no longer a constraint and an institution does not have to be a fixed place that is physically visited by students. An institution can exist, and knowledge can be distributed, in a variety of ways: both with �lean-back� broadcasting and with �lean forward� human-computer interaction.
• Education needs to be an ongoing process that takes place at many different stages of someone�s life. As equipment, tools, platforms and practices continually change, people need to be continually educated to keep up with this, and they need to do so while maintaining their professional responsibilities.
• Education needs to be fun and enjoyable. If people are sacrificing their spare time or business hours learning new skills, then they must enjoy doing it. Unlike school children, legislation and punishments will not keep people there.
• Professionals need to have a rich variety of skills and knowledge to draw upon, not just a few, specific ones. For complex projects, such as a website for example, there are a whole range of issues that everyone involved needs to be confident in: computer programming, telecommunications, design, marketing strategies, business models, project management, editorial requirements etc.
• Abstract principles are very difficult to apply in the modern, complex business world. People need skills, knowledge and assistance tailored for their own individual requirements, rather than obtuse abstract rules that are impossible to apply to their special case.
• All too often, people complain that their teachers are �out of date� or irrelevant to their needs (Interactive London 99 showed that a significant proportion of new media professionals regarded university courses as irrelevant and �a waste of time�). The people who teach and design courses need to have practical, professional experience of what it is their students need to know.

Three: New School - The New Media Knowledge Model

The NMK approach positions itself at the heart of the new media industry, providing a central knowledge-exchange point for academics, businesses, freelancers, researchers and investors. The NMK programme is based on the following principles:

• The NMK website is the focus for distribution and dissemination of knowledge. People can interact with the site: find resources, email with specific problems and queries. They are not required to visit us in order to acquire information, rather they interact directly with it.
• NMK is not an institution but a network. It puts people with specific needs, problems, inquiries in touch with people who have the specific skills, knowledge, experience to help. NMK facilitates this process, rather than dictating it.
• Programmes are designed to minimise disruption as much as possible. Evenings, odd afternoons, flexible and multiple sessions � everything is done so that, as much as possible, people can learn without it impinging on their day-to-day professional duties.
• People with professional experience are consulted and work on every aspect of the programme. Steering groups made up of people from private enterprises are set up and play an active role in identifying key needs for the programme. They are always encouraged to actually help teach as much as possible.
• Every session is as relaxed and comfortable as possible for the participants. No tests, examinations, punishments or incentives: mature people have come to learn and are treated maturely.
• As much as possible, people travel across the NMK programme. We don�t teach someone Photoshop and then leave them to make an uncertain living from it: we offer them a rounded set of skills that complement each other. The designer that learns Photoshop, for example, will also be taught some business, project management and marketing skills, so that he goes into the workplace with enough confidence and knowledge to succeed on a practical as well as a creative level.

NMK, 1999