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Advanced Instructional Technologies

Learning Module

Abstract

This Learning Module offers an overview of the broad range of technology types currently available to support learning. Some of these, such as learning management systems, have been used for decades, in which case the focus is on current developments. We also explore new and emerging technologies, such as educational data mining and learning analytics.

1A. Learning Management Systems

For the Participant

Background Reading

Chapters from our New Learning e-book:

The video that follows shows the classical modern site of formal learning. (Classical = archetypical; Modern = humans have only done this, or at least on a mass scale, since the nineteenth century; Formal = this is only one place or way to learn and there are many others.)

Media embedded September 23, 2019

Post-Covid Thoughts

This Update: Learning Management Systems—what are they, and to what extent do they reproduce traditional relationships of learning (or sometimes make them even more 'didactic'); and to what extent can they push the boundaries of learning (new affordances, for instance our seven affordances)?

Examples of widely used learning management systems include:

And, in quite a different kind of way CGScholar is also a learning management system. (If you are new to CGScholar and want to understand how the Commmunity area works, visit section 2 of our Getting Started in CGScholar learning module.)

Comment: Have a quick look at the overview material for several of these learning management systems. What are their characteristic features? How can they be used to reproduce old learning (didactic/mimetic)? How can they be used to support new learning (collaborative/reflexive).

Media embedded September 23, 2019

 

For the Instructor

We have suggested that participants make updates (as well as comment on admin updates). If you want to do this, you will need to go to your community settings and make this an 'unrestricted community'. If you don't want to have your participants make their own updates, make your community 'restricted', then as soon as you have posted this update to Community, delete the 'Make an Update' instructions.

If your course participants are new to Scholar, you may want to post updates from the Getting Started in CGScholar learning module as and when needed.

1B. Recent Publications by Cope and Kalantzis

For the Instructor

2. Social Media and Peer Interaction

For the Participant

Hands Up!

In her pathbreaking book, Classroom Discourse, Courtney Cazden characterizes the classical pattern of classroom discussion as Initiate-Respond-Evaluate (I-R-E). E-Learning environments like CGScholar also prompt discussion, but in ways which are deceptively different. In fact, we want to argue that they are better in some important respects. Read more in our New Learning community here. (And do join the community while you are there—it is a public communuity.

Comment: In what ways are social media discussions like or unlike 'classroom discourse'—with its classical I-R-E routine: teacher initiates, student responds, teacher evaluates? What are the characteristic features of Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, the Scholar activity stream, discussion boards (such as Piazza, or Edmodo) and blog discussions? How are they different from each other? What is similar about all of them, and how are they all different from the classical oral discourses of learning?

 

For the Instructor

3. Adaptive and Personalized Learning

For the Participant

In the traditional classroom, with its didactic pedagogy, all students marched to the same beat, the beat of the teacher, the textbook and the curriculum. The assumption was that all the learners in the class were more or less the same. In fact, with its age segregation and the removal of students with disabilities, every attempt was made to make the students as much the same as possible. But this never really worked, no matter how hard school administrators tried.

Before the rise of learning technologies, progressive educators tried to change expectation that every learner should be the same. Sometimes this was successful, such as Montessori's mixed age classes with their workstations where groups of learners were doing different things together, or John Dewey's project-based learning.

However, the vast majority of classroooms did not change.

Three kinds of instructional technology and approach can be applied to make more intrinsically 'adaptive' (and these three ideas and technologies often overlap):

These technologies go out of their way to accommodate learner differences, and calibrate learning so it is just right for every learner. However ...

Comment: When and why does personalized learning become 'you're on your own' learning, just you with the machine? When is adaptive testing little better than a memory checker, or a behaviorist monitor, rather than something capable of gauging deep disciplinary understanding? What's the best and the worst of adaptive learning systems?

For the Instructor

4. Games and Simulations

For the Participant

James Gee is a leading thinker about the learning that happens in games. Here is a short extract where he discusses video games as a kind of literacy; and another where he speaks more generally about the new digital media. And here, he distills this into 36 learning principles the things that school could learn from games.

Comment: What are the strengths and weaknesses of games as media for learning?

Make an Update: Describe and analyze a learning game. What are its distinctive pedagogical characteristics?

For the Instructor

5. Differentiated Learning

For the Participant

  • Differentiated instruction systems - What are they? How do they work? OR:
  • Universal design for learning - What does it mean? How does it work in computer-mediated learning?

Here is a paper where we explore "productive diversity in learning."

KalantzisCopeProductiveDiversityinLearning.pdf

Comment: Traditional pedagogy was typically one-size-fits all. What do you think about the assumption that all learners in a class should be more or less the same? It was, still is, a pragmatic necessity? Created more problems than it solved? Works less as a strategy than it used to? What's the impetus behind calls to differentiate instruction? What role can/should  instructional technologies play?

For the Instructor

6. Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Learning Analytics

For the Participant

Here are some papers surveying the potential impacts of artificial intelligence and big data in education.

Education 2.0
Artificial Intelligence for Education

 Sources of Evidence-of-Learning: Learning and Assessment in the Era of Big Data

Interpreting Evidence-of-Learning: Educational Research in the Era of Big Data

Comment: Perhaps it's time for a paradigm shift in educational assessment? After the test, "learning analytics"?

For the Instructor

Peer Reviewed Projects

For the Participant

This course includes peer-reviewed projects as a part of the course requirements. These projects must be fully completed for course credit.

To see details of these projects and the peer review rubric, refer to the Learning Design and Leadership Course Framework Learning Module from the CGScholar Bookstore. Refer to your course community and the course syllabus for specific timelines.

For the Instructor