Built the learning-sciences education and research system
Problem
When I became dean of the College of Education, I felt a deep sense of urgency when ChatGPT appeared in my first year. What should we teach? How should we teach? Who should teach? I believed all three fundamental questions of the education system were being challenged. At the same time, I worried about the future of a college of education whose purpose is to train teachers as the school-age population declines. The fundamental crisis of education and the existential crisis of the College of Education had arrived at the same time.
Process
I concluded that responding to the fundamental crisis in education required shifting the paradigm from knowledge transmission to active learning by learners, and that overcoming the existential crisis required training diverse education professionals in addition to teachers. After long discussions with professors in the College of Education, we decided to look to the learning sciences for the answer and to build the foundations for learning-science research and education directly within the university.
When ChatGPT appeared: what do we teach, how do we teach, who does the teaching. I thought all three fundamental questions of education were about to be challenged.
Result
We established Korea's first Learning Sciences Research Institute and launched an undergraduate Transdisciplinary Learning Sciences Major. As a result, for the first time in the 80-year history of Korea's colleges of education, students were able to choose a curriculum that would prepare them for education professions beyond teaching. We also created a new form of governance in which the undergraduate major is operated directly by the college rather than as a department. This was the starting point for redesigning university education around students' whole-person growth, beyond the simple transmission of knowledge.