Connected Learning experiences in formal, higher education settings tend to involve five key activities: establishing a personal learning network; curating, critiquing, and organizing data; connecting or coordinating concepts over space, time, and spheres of learning; transforming data into new products; and sharing new products with the personal learning network (Dede, 2009; Kop, 2011; Downes, 2006).
Therefore, I’m working on a new way to think about identifying “connected learning instructional designs.” Much of my thinking arises from my recent immersion in the open education, connected learning, and networked learning literature. It’s a mix of the three, really. I’m not suggesting that all connected learning courses need to have all components; ultimately, connected learning instructional design should probably be considered on a spectrum, kind of like the PLOS criteria for open access (see “How Open Is it?”)
If I were to make a similar infographic for “How Connected Is IT?” I would probably assess course designs along the following criteria (note that the descriptions provided focus on the furthest end of the spectrum of connectedness) :
- Open Educational Resources (course documents, activities, content and materials). The most connected learning spaces would make course documents (including syllabus and activities) public; it would privilege the use of OER and encourage students to use or make additional OER.
- Collaboration and Curation. The most connected learning spaces would require students to work on collaborative projects. One example might be a collective curation of web resources that would be available after the end of the course – and also for the public (as a form of OER).
- Network Fluency. The most connected learning spaces require students to practice their networking know-how through interaction in public spaces such as twitter. It’s not just about co-constructing knowledge around the topic; it’s about figuring out how to develop social capital. Therefore, learning activities should be structured to support network fluency; course documents should be explicit about why these activities are taking place how and where they are occurring. Course design would provide opportunities (probably some engineered by faculty) for students to mix and mingle with potential mentors in and beyond the immediate academic environment.
- Digital Fluency and Maker-Oriented Design. The most connected learning spaces require students to stretch their understanding of digital platforms. For some students, just putting together a blog is hard. Ok, but it shouldn’t stop there. Weekly blog assignments should move beyond having them write text-based responses to exploiting the affordances of digital media – images, infographics, video, concept maps, audio. I pulled this from Yin Kreher’s connected learning course site to help describe Maker Oriented design. Creative makes, explicit privileging of artfulness, multimodal expression. There should be evidence of this sort of thing in the course documents.
- Student Choice – The most connected learning spaces provide students with a lot of leeway in designing their own research and learning.
- Peer/Self Assessment – The most connected learning spaces focus on making assessment sustainable, as an essential element of lifelong learning. Sometimes this means providing structured support in helping students assess themselves.