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.
Offered By
e-Learning Ecologies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age
University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignAbout this Course
Learner Career Outcomes
14%
11%
Learner Career Outcomes
14%
11%
Offered by
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a world leader in research, teaching and public engagement, distinguished by the breadth of its programs, broad academic excellence, and internationally renowned faculty and alumni. Illinois serves the world by creating knowledge, preparing students for lives of impact, and finding solutions to critical societal needs.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
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.
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM E-LEARNING ECOLOGIES: INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO TEACHING AND LEARNING FOR THE DIGITAL AGE
This course was very interesting and thought provoking. I would certainly recommend for any teacher that is now trying to work with their students from within an online forum. Thank you!!!
This course is Amazing. The learning opportunity helps me to become more EQUIPT with the necessary information and practices that I need to be more effective in my work. Thank you so much.
Great content regarding online learning environments. More oversight of participants needed, especially regarding posted assignments (plagiarism) and peer reviews (arbitrary grading).
I appreciated the well-organized format and overall the way the course was designed. Particularly the opportunity to choose our own areas of focus for assignments to learn more.
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