Networked Collaborative Learning

The sustainability of Networked Collaborative Learning (NCL) is a key topic of discussion amongst the institutions where it has been or may potentially be introduced. In order to determine the extent of NCL's sustainability, the added value university education may yield by adopting collaborative learning strategies must be quantified. In turn, an understanding of the implications NCL produces in terms of design and management is gained. After comparing NCL with other Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) approaches and discussing the possible reasons for adopting it, a multidimensional model for the sustainability of NCL is proposed. The model is characterized by four dimensions: pedagogical approaches, e-teacher professional development, instructional design models and valuation/assessment approaches. Each of these dimensions is examined on the basis of the author’s direct experience gained through applying NCL to his university teaching. Delineates a framework for NCL sustainability Provides an instructional design model for NC Describes an original approach to the evaluation of collaborative learning processes

The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning Edited by: Vivien Hodgson, Maarten de Laat, David McConnell and Thomas Ryberg This book brings together a wealth of new research that opens up the meaning of connectivity as embodied and promised in the term ‘networked learning’. Chapters explore how contexts, groups and environments can be connected rather than just learners; how messy, unexpected and emergent connections can be made rather than structured and predefined ones; and how technology connects us to learning and each other, but also shapes our identity. These exciting new perspectives ask us to look again at what we are connecting and to revel in new and emergent possibilities arising from the interplay of social actors, contexts, technologies, and learning. Caroline Haythornthwaite, University of British Columbia Despite creating fundamentally new educational economics and greatly increasing access - teaching and learning in networks is a tricky business. These chapters illuminate the complex interactions amongst tools, pedagogy, educational institutions and personal net presences – helping us design and redesign our own networks. In the process, they take (or extract) network theory from the practice of real teaching and learning contexts, making this collection an important contribution to Networked Learning. Terry Anderson, Athabasca University What kinds of learning can social networking platforms really enable? Digging well beneath the hype, this book provides a timely, incisive analysis of why and how learning emerges (or fails to) in networked spaces. The editors do a fine job in guiding the reader through the rich array of theories and methods for tackling this question, and the diverse contexts in which networked learning is now being studied. This is a book for reflective practitioners as well as academics: the book's close attention to the political, pedagogical and organisational complexity of effective practice, and the lived experience of educators and learners, helps explain why networked learning has such disruptive potential — but equally, why it draws resistance from the establishment. Simon Buckingham Shum, The Open University The networked learning conference, a biannual institution since 1998, celebrates its 14th year in this volume. Here a range of studies, reflecting networked learning experiments across Europe and other global contexts , show important shifts away from a conservative tradition of Œe-learning1 research and unpeel dilemmas of promoting learning as an elusive practice in virtual environments. The authors point towards important futures in online learning research, where notions of knowledge, connectivity and Œcommunity1 become increasingly elastic, and engagements slide across material and virtual domains in new practices whose emergence is increasingly difficult to apprehend. “p>Tara Fenwick – University of Stirling. The chapters in this volume explore new and innovative ways of thinking about the nature of networked learning and its pedagogical values and beliefs. They pose a challenge to us to reflect on what we thought networked learning was 15 year ago, where it is today and where it is likely to be headed. Each chapter brings a particular perspective to the themes of design, experience and practice of networked learning, the chosen focus of the book. The chapters in the book embrace a wide field of educational areas including those of higher education, informal learning, work-based learning, continuing professional development, academic staff development, and management learning. The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning will prove indispensable reading for researchers, teachers, consultants, and instructional designers in higher and continuing education; for those involved in staff and educational development, and for those studying post graduate qualifications in learning and teaching. This, the second volume in the Springer Book Series on Researching Networked Learning, is based on a selection of papers presented at the 2012 Networked Learning Conference held in Maastricht, The Netherlands.

The book is based on nine selected, peer-reviewed papers presented at the 10th biennial Networked Learning Conference (NLC) 2016 held in Lancaster. Informed by suggestions from delegates, the nine papers have been chosen by the editors (who were the Chairs of the Conference) as exemplars of cutting edge research on networked learning. Further reviews of all papers were conducted once they were revised as chapters for the book. The chapters are organized into two sections: 1) Situating Networked Learning: Looking Back - Moving Forward, 2) New Challenges: Designs for Networked Learning in the Public Arena. Further, we include an introduction which looks at the evolution of trends in Networked Learning through a semantic analysis of conference papers from the 10 conferences. A final chapter draws out perspectives from the chapters and discusses emerging issues. The book is the fifth in the Networked Learning Conference Series.

Networked learning is learning in which information and communications technology (ICT) is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners; between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources. Networked learning is an area which has great practical and theoretical importance. It is a rapidly growing area of educational practice, particularly in higher education and the corporate sector. This volume brings together some of the best research in the field, and uses it to signpost some directions for future work. The papers in this collection represent a major contribution to our collective sense of recent progress in research on networked learning. In addition, they serve to highlight some of the largest or most important gaps in our understanding of students’ perspectives on networked learning, patterns of interaction and online discourse, and the role of contextual factors. The range of topics and methods addressed in these papers attests to the vitality of this important field of work. More significant yet is the complex understanding of the field that they combine to create. In combination, they help explain some of the key relationships between teachers’ and learners’ intentions and experiences, the affordances of text-based communications technologies and processes of informed and intelligent educational change.

One of the most significant developments in contemporary education is the view that knowing and understanding are anchored in cultural practices within communities. This shift coincides with technological advancements that have reoriented end-user computer interaction from individual work to communication, participation and collaboration. However, while daily interactions are increasingly engulfed in mobile and networked Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), in-school learning interactions are, in comparison, technologically impoverished, creating the phenomenon known as the school-society digital disconnect. This volume argues that the theoretical and practical tools of scientists in both the social and educational sciences must be brought together in order to examine what types of interaction, knowledge construction, social organization and power structures: (a) occur spontaneously in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) communities or (b) can be created by design of TEL. This volume seeks to equip scholars and researchers within the fields of education, educational psychology, science communication, social welfare, information sciences, and instructional design, as well as practitioners and policy-makers, with empirical and theoretical insights, and evidence-based support for decisions providing learners and citizens with 21st century skills and knowledge, and supporting well-being in today’s information-based networked society.

This volume is of interest to researchers and students, designers, educators, and industrial trainers in such disciplines as education, cognitive, social and educational psychology, didactics, computer science, linguistics and semiotics, speech communication, anthropology, sociology and design. It includes discussions on knowledge building, designing and analyzing group interaction, design of collaborative multimedia and 3D environments, computational modeling and analysis, and software agents.

The ground of higher education is shifting, but learning ecosystems around the world have much more space than MOOCs and trendy online platforms can fill, and Loewen shows how professors have an indisputable pedagogical edge that gives them a crucial role to play in higher education. By adopting the collaborative pedagogical process in this book, professors can create effective social learning experiences that connect students to peers and professional colleagues in real-time. Loewen moves beyond surface questions about technology in the classroom to a problem best addressed by educators in bricks-and-mortar institutions: if students are social learners, how do we teach in a way that promotes actual dialogue for learning? Designing learning experiences that develop intercultural competencies puts the test to students’ social inclinations, and engagement with course material increases when it’s used to dig deeper into the specificities of their identity and social location. Loewen’s approach to inter-institutional collaborative teaching will be explored with examples and working templates for collaborative design of effective social learning experiences. This is done by collaborative dialogue with G. Brooke Lester and Christopher Duncanson-Hales. As a group, Loewen, Lester, and Duncanson-Hales create a text that extends pedagogical innovation in inspiring but practical ways.

The persistent challenge of achieving excellence and equity within education systems has renewed interest in generating context-specific solutions through localised school networks. But how can successful school networks be developed? Based around the lifecycle of a network, this book traces the development of a network from its initial inception, exploring the ways in which it can be sustained and remain capable of meeting the future challenges faced by schools and their communities. The book explores a series of important issues facing school leaders, including: the benefits of investing time and energy in networks with other schools and communities the particular problems faced by schools and the education system which are best tackled by network-based solutions the advantages for schools and communities of engaging with collaborative reform agenda the ways in which networks can be managed, and the differences between leading a school or a team and a network the elements which make an effective network. The book draws on UK and international research to discuss the development and leadership of networks and to outline a number of tried-and-tested leadership approaches. In addition, the authors draw on their own experience and research to provide accounts of real networks to expose the realities of networking. Each chapter tackles a key leadership issue and ends with a series of tools to support those leading and facilitating networks tackle these in practice. This book will be of interest to practising school leaders, network co-ordinators, postgraduate students and those researching educational leadership and school improvement.