e-Learning Ecologies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age

For three decades and longer we have heard educators and technologists making a case for the transformative power of technology in learning. However, despite the rhetoric, in many ways and at most institutional sites, education is still relatively untouched by technology. Even when technologies are introduced, the changes sometimes seem insignificant and the results seem disappointing. If the print textbook is replaced by an e-book, do the social relations of knowledge and learning necessarily change at all or for the better? If the pen-and-paper test is mechanized, does this change the nature of our assessment systems? Technology, in other words, need not necessarily bring significant change. Technology might not even represent a step forward in education. But what might be new? How can we use technologies to innovate in education? This course explores seven affordances of e-learning ecologies, which open up genuine possibilities for what we call New Learning – transformative, 21st century learning: 1. Ubiquitous Learning 2. Active Knowledge Making 3. Multimodal Meaning 4. Recursive Feedback 5. Collaborative Intelligence 6. Metacognition 7. Differentiated Learning These affordances, if recognized and harnessed, will prepare learners for success in a world that is increasingly dominated by digital information flows and tools for communication in the workplace, public spaces, and personal life. This course offers a wide variety of examples of learning technologies and technology implementations that, to varying degrees, demonstrate these affordances in action. -------------------------------- Recommended Background -------------------------------- This course is designed for people interested in the future of education and the "learning society," including people who may wish to join education as a profession, practicing teachers interested in exploring future directions for a vocation that is currently undergoing transformation, and community and workplace leaders who regard their mission to be in part "educative." -------------------------------- Related Resources -------------------------------- Online resources are available here: https://newlearningonline.com -------------------------------- Join our Online Communities! -------------------------------- CGScholar (Create an account and join the New Learning community) https://cgscholar.com/community/community_profiles/new-learning/community_updates Facebook https://www.facebook.com/newlearningonline Twitter https://twitter.com/neolearning -------------------------------- Take this Course for Credit at the University of Illinois -------------------------------- This course has the same content and anticipates the same level of contribution by students in the Assessment for Learning course offered to graduate certificate, masters, and doctoral level students in the Learning Design and Leadership Program in the College of Education at the University of Illinois. Of course, in the nature of MOOCs many people will just want to view the videos and casually join some of the discussions. Some people say that these limited kinds of participation offer evidence that MOOCs suffer from low retention rates. Far from it – we say that any level of engagement is good engagement. On the other hand, if you would like to take this course for credit at the University of Illinois, you will find more information about our program here: https://ldlprogram.web.illinois.edu/overview/ And you can apply here: https://education.illinois.edu/epol/programs-degrees/ldl -------------------------------- The Learning Design and Leadership Series of MOOCs -------------------------------- This course is one of a series of eight MOOCs created by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis for the Learning Design and Leadership program at the University of Illinois. If you find this MOOC helpful, please join us in others! e-Learning Ecologies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age https://www.coursera.org/learn/elearning New Learning: Principles and Patterns of Pedagogy https://www.coursera.org/learn/newlearning Assessment for Learning https://www.coursera.org/learn/assessmentforlearning Learning, Knowledge, and Human Development https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-knowledge-human-development Ubiquitous Learning and Instructional Technologies https://www.coursera.org/learn/ubiquitouslearning Negotiating Learner Differences: Towards Productive Diversity in Learning https://www.coursera.org/learn/learnerdifferences Literacy Teaching and Learning: Aims, Approaches and Pedagogies https://www.coursera.org/learn/literacy-teaching-learning Multimodal Literacies: Communication and Learning in the Era of Digital Media https://www.coursera.org/learn/multimodal-literacies

• Module 1: Course Orientation + Ubiquitous Learning
• We begin this module with an introduction to the idea of an "e-learning ecology" and the notion of "affordance." We use this idea to map the range of innovative activities that we may be able to use in e-learning environments – not that we necessarily do. Many e-learning environments simply reproduce the worst of old, didactic pedagogies. We then go on to explore the notion of "ubiquitous learning," the first of seven "affordances" in computer-mediated educational applications and environments that we examine in this course.
• Module 2: Active Knowledge Making + Multimodal Meaning
• This module examines two more e-learning affordances: "active knowledge making," or the right and responsibility of learners to take a degree of control over their own knowledge making; and "multimodal meaning-making," or the tools learners now have at hand to support their thinking and to represent the knowledge they have gained – including, for instance, text, image, diagram, animation, simulation, dataset, video, audio, or embedded web media.
• Module 3: Recursive Feedback + Collaborative Intelligence
• Two further e-learning affordances are explored in this module: "recursive feedback," or the rapid and repeatable cycles of feedback or formative assessment now available, including machine feedback and machine-mediated human feedback; and the "collaborative intelligence" fostered by the very social nature of Web 2.0 and contemporary e-learning environments.
• Module 4: Metacogniton + Differentiated Learning
• We come now to the last two of our seven e-learning affordances: "metacognition," or the process of thinking about thinking – a second order, more abstract, theoretical, and generalizable way of thinking; and "differentiated learning," addressing learners' different needs and interests. Together, these seven affordances become a tool with which to evaluate the scope of an e-learning technology and its application.