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.
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.)
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).
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.
Essential Reading and Update
Following are some (mostly recent or upcoming) scholarly publications by Cope and Kalantzis. We'd like you to read some of them to get a broader sense of our thinking. Please join the New Learning community in CGScholar for updates as we publish new work!
Comment (Essential): Read two of these articles. Analyze the selected articles and write at least 200 words that focuses on a theme addressed in these readings. Comment on at least 3 others' posts.
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?
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?
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?
Here is a paper where we explore "productive diversity in learning."
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?
Here are some papers surveying the potential impacts of artificial intelligence and big data in 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"?
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.