connectivism

Articles

Quad-blogging: Promoting Peer-to- Peer Learning in a MOOC

09 May 2013

We present the concept of quad-blogging, and its potential for facilitating and enhancing peer-to-peer learning in higher education, specifically in a massive open online course (MOOC) by increasing peer engagement, promoting the practice of blogging and fostering the formation of professional learning networks through social media.

Articles

The Impact and Reach of MOOCs: A Developing Countries’ Perspective

09 May 2013

Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a recent but hugely popular phenomenon in the online learning world. They are hailed by many as a solution for the developing world’s lack of access to education because MOOCs can provide learning opportunities to a massive number of learners from anywhere in the world as long as they can access the course through Internet.

However, a close consideration of the ability of learners from most developing countries to make use of MOOCs seems to contradict this rhetoric. This paper discusses features of MOOCs and looks at them from a developing countries’ perspective to conclude that due to a complicated set of conditions (‘access’, language, computer literacy among others) prevailing in developing countries, MOOCs may not be a viable solution for education for a large proportion of people in these areas of the world. The paper further shows the need for more data on the demographics of MOOC participants from developing countries to form a better understanding of MOOCs role in educating people from developing countries.

Articles

Realising the Potential of Peer-to-Peer Learning: Taming a MOOC with Social Media

09 May 2013

We report on peer-to-peer learning online, describing the role of cooperative, student managed groupings in successful learn-by-MOOC experiences.

We found that to expand learners’ potential in digital culture, it helps to by-pass traditional notions and tools of online learning support, and embrace networked social media.

Articles

"OER" Resources for learning - Experiences from an OER Project in Sweden

15 March 2013

This article was originally published on the European Journal for Open, Distance and E-Learning.

This article aims to share experience from a Swedish project on the introduction and implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education with both national and international perspectives. The project, OER – resources for learning, was part of the National Library of Sweden Open Access initiative and aimed at exploring, raising awareness of and disseminating the use of OER and the resulting pedagogical advantages for teaching and learning. Central to the project’s activities were a series of regional seminars which all featured a combination of multi-site meetings combined with online participation. This combination proved highly successful and extended the reach of the project. In total the project reached around 1000 participants at its events and many more have seen the recorded sessions.

 

Several unresolved issues beyond the scope of the project became explicit but which are absolutely crucial challenges. Firstly, the evolution from OER towards open educational practices (OEP) and open educational cultures (OEC). OEP and OEC imply the establishment of national and international policies and strategies where the use of OER is officially encouraged, sanctioned and developed. Secondly it became explicit that the issue of metadata is crucial for finding OER and facilitating their use and reuse for teachers and learners. Thirdly, the sustainability of OER must be stimulated by ensuring the creation of material that can easily be adapted and reused by teachers in other countries and contexts.

Articles

A Pedagogy of Abundance or a Pedagogy to Support Human Beings? Participant Support on Massive Open Online Courses

29 October 2012

This paper published at International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning Vol 12, No 7 (2011) examines how emergent technologies could influence the design of learning environments.

The paper examines the roles of educators and learners in creating networked learning experiences on massive open online courses (MOOCs). It proves that it is possible to move from a pedagogy of abundance to a pedagogy that supports human beings in their learning through the active creation of resources and learning places by both learners and course facilitators.

Directory

E2BN - East of England Broadband Network

12 January 2012

E2BN seeks to raise educational standards across the whole community by providing effective broadband services throughout the East of England. Harnessing the full potential of ICT and broadband connectivity, and drawing on good practice and collective expertise, they will continue to develop, share and deliver high quality educational opportunities and contribute to community and economic development in the region.

Projects

Game Based Learning on Education and Action Training

06 January 2012

The Project GREAT – Game-based Learning Research in Education and Training Action is a project funded by the Leonardo da Vinci Multilateral Projects – Transfer of Innovation with the purpose  to provide a methodology and a way to use Game-Based Learning by Training Companies/Organizations (focusing on SMEs and on the Social Economy) and VET organizations (including Higher Education) trough the knowledge producers and distributors: Trainers and Teachers.

"We talk about creative learning. However, all learning involves some form of destruction, some form of creation and/or particular co-creation...(…) Learn to create, learn how to create disruptions, learning to create innovation, learning to live together to collaborate. But if Learning and Technology, together, can build and host its core in the destructive potential of creativity and, by extension, of the collaboration, the need for meaning in all this is imperative. It is crucial to making sense of all forms of learning: informal, formal, not formal."

Roberto Carneiro in Conference Book Creative Learning & Innovation: 2009.

 

With the purpose  to provide a methodology and a way to use Game-Based Learning by Training Companies/Organizations (focusing on SMEs and on the Social Economy) and VET organizations (including Higher Education) trough the knowledge producers and distributors: Trainers and Teachers.

 

Products and Results will be:

  1. Documented methodologies for developing and implementing game-based learning for training and higher education actors and for the learning community in general.
  2. Needs analysis assessment instruments for developing and implementing game-based learning for training and higher education actors.
  3. Learning content and training methodologies (b-learning) for trainers and teachers developing and implementing game-based learning.
  4. Workshops/seminars for supporting trainers/practitioners/teachers/tutors in developing a predictive and proactive capacity to select games for their use.
  5. Documentation:reports, compendium, proceedings, guidelines.

 

GREAT project will explore the capability to influence, to involve and to bring together in specific moments some experts and recognized European authorities for focus based learning, trough their individual members and partners. Experienced users of different knowledge channels provided to the Commission, like Engage Learning, elearning papers, CEDEFOP and ETF papers, as well as members of DGEAC, DGINFSO, IPTS/JRC, DGEI and those who have access to the European learning platforms like EUCIS LLL and ETDF.

 

APG - Portuguese Association of Human Resources Managers leads the development partnership:

  • FH JOANNEUM University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria
  • MERIG - Multidisziplinares Institut fur Europa-Forschung Graz
  • AIF - Associazone Italiana Formatori
  • Gazy University, na Turquia
  • I.Zone Knowledge Systems

 

Events

Positive Futures for higher education; connections, communities and criticality

24 May 2011
Taking a global perspective of higher education, the most fundamental question of the moment has to be 'Higher Education – for what and for whom?' Is the concept of higher education as a universal public good sustainable? Or, is there a more complex but equally powerful set of objectives that would both describe and shape positive futures for higher education and have the potential to be shared universally?
Articles

ConnectLearning – an answer for the new challenges?

28 February 2010
The latest reports seem to announce a new world of learning, in which students are connected through technology and internet. The increasing influence of the world wide web has led to fast-paced knowledge cycles and to New Millennium Learners, who are supposed to have different learning styles. However, in this article we don’t approach today’s youth as some kind of alien who learn in a totally different mode: they just incorporate new ways to access information and to socialize, and hence to the learning process.
While we agree that learning scenarios are changing their form and inner organisation through technologies, it is questionable if a new concept of learning is emerging. This article is thus an attempt to analyse whether the undoubtedly new social challenges are stimulating the demand for a new form of learning and if the existing theories are still applicable to today’s learning realities. Therefore, we overview social changes, analyse the concept of eLearning 2.0 and outline how existing theoretical approaches capture the reality of learning. A special emphasis has been put on analysing the nature of new scenarios, such as a special type of networked learning (ConnectLearning), based on Connectivism and Constructivism and situated learning approaches.

We conclude that change has to take place in the learning scenarios, as the required theoretical foundation has been in place and under discussion for the last two decades. Networked learning is not about a new paradigm or a fundamentally new model of learning, it rather describes how a consolidated concept (based on innovative ideas and building blocks of existing learning theories) can help to satisfy the demand for “new” learning scenarios which are self-organised, learner-oriented, situational, emotional, social and communicative.