e-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates

The Scholar platform as a practical example of "New Learning". (Peer-graded Assignment: Essential Peer Reviewed Update #1)

Starting from the fact that in this module we are learning to critically analyze the methods and practices of designing effective education systems, I would like to propose the Scholar platform (http://CGScholar.com), as a web workspace for students that directs the technology of "social knowledge" through specific educational and pedagogical practices.

This analysis very briefly summarizes some of the proposals of Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis regarding the practical agenda established in Scholar published in the article "Towards a New Learning: the Scholar social knowledge workspace, in theory and practice", published in 2013.

Cope and Kalantzis propose this platform as an academic intervention that attempts to reframe the relationships between knowledge and learning, recalibrating traditional modes of pedagogy to create learning ecologies that are more appropriately attuned to current needs and tools. In this case, technology is taken advantage of from the new social networks, supported by “cloud computing” and “semantic publishing” processes.

We well know that “ubiquitous learning” means learning at any time and in any place, which the Scholar project puts into practice, by rethinking learning technology that results in a technology product of “social knowledge”, but knowledge social, in the sense of creating a place for systematic engagement that produces new artifacts of knowledge and culture.

The Scholar platform places students in active positions of knowledge creation by giving them the role of "creators" and giving them credit for the works that are created. In turn, each "creator" has the role of "peer" or "collaborator", since he must review part of the works of his peers. Within the community there are “editor” agents, who coordinate groups in the collaborative workflow of knowledge production. All this results in a "community" where works on the logistics of knowledge production are published and discussed.

When thinking about the community in these terms we see that the platform, beyond being a place to reproduce knowledge, is a space for students to become designers of knowledge, and as producers they are given an active role as those responsible for the generation. of knowledge. This contributes to engagement and encourages critical thinking and creativity.

At the same time, the evaluation of educational results is not focused on cognition (memorization).

and deduction), but in representations of knowledge (artifacts). The evaluation is not a final evaluation of a product, but rather a formative evaluation, that is, one that is evaluated and carried out on the fly and that, in a detailed and constructive manner based on feedback, sometimes automatic and other times social, mediated by machines. Then, when it comes to summative assessment, all we have to do is present a retrospective view of students' progress, using nothing more and nothing less than all the data collected in the formative assessment process.

For more information see:

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2013). Towards a new learning: The Scholar social knowledge workspace, in theory and practice. E–Learning and Digital Media, 10(4), 332. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2013.10.4.332