Place Based Spaces For Networked Learning

With the boundaries of place softened and extended by digital communications technologies, learning in a networked society necessitates new distributions of activity across time, space, media, and people; and this development is no longer exclusive to formally designated spaces such as school classrooms, lecture halls, or research laboratories. Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning explores how qualities of physical places make both formal and informal education in a networked society possible. Through a series of investigations and case studies, it illuminates the structural composition and functioning of complex learning environments. This book offers a wealth of key design elements and attributes for productive learning that educational designers can reuse in multiple contexts. The chapters examine how places are modified, expanded, or supplemented by networking technologies and practices in order to create spaces in which learners can collaboratively develop new understandings, connections, and capabilities. Utilizing a range of diverse but complementary perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, psychology, sociology, and urban studies, Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning addresses how material places and digital spaces are understood; how sense can be made of new assemblages and configurations of tasks, tools, and people; how the real-time analysis of new flows of data can inform and entertain users of a space; and how access to the digital realm changes our experiences with both places and other people.

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.

This book explores how educators can realize the potential of critical place-based pedagogy. The authors’ model leverages the power of technology through strategies such as mobile mapping so that students can read the world and share spatial narratives. The same complexity that makes spaces outside the classroom ideal for authentic, purposeful learning creates challenges for educators who must minimize students taking wrong turns or reaching dead ends. Instructional design process is key and the authors offer exemplars of this from multiple disciplines. Whether students are exploring a local community or a natural environment, place-based inquires must include recognition of privilege and the social dynamics that reinforce inequalities. Concluding with a discussion of the changing social context, the authors highlight how contemporary events add a sense of urgency to the call for a critical place-based pedagogy—one that is more inclusive for all students.

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.

The multiple, related fields encompassed by this Major Reference Work represent a convergence of issues and topics germane to the rapidly changing segments of knowledge and practice in educational communications and technology at all levels and around the globe. There is no other comparable work that is designed not only to gather vital, current, and evolving information and understandings in these knowledge segments but also to be updated on a continuing basis in order to keep pace with the rapid changes taking place in the relevant fields. The Handbook is composed of substantive (5,000 to 15,000 words), peer-reviewed entries that examine and explicate seminal facets of learning theory, research, and practice. It provides a broad range of relevant topics, including significant developments as well as innovative uses of technology that promote learning, performance, and instruction. This work is aimed at researchers, designers, developers, instructors, and other professional practitioners.

This book, by combining sociocultural, material, cognitive and embodied perspectives on human knowing, offers a new and powerful conceptualisation of epistemic fluency – a capacity that underpins knowledgeable professional action and innovation. Using results from empirical studies of professional education programs, the book sheds light on practical ways in which the development of epistemic fluency can be recognised and supported - in higher education and in the transition to work. The book provides a broader and deeper conception of epistemic fluency than previously available in the literature. Epistemic fluency involves a set of capabilities that allow people to recognize and participate in different ways of knowing. Such people are adept at combining different kinds of specialised and context-dependent knowledge and at reconfiguring their work environment to see problems and solutions anew. In practical terms, the book addresses the following kinds of questions. What does it take to be a productive member of a multidisciplinary team working on a complex problem? What enables a person to integrate different types and fields of knowledge, indeed different ways of knowing, in order to make some well-founded decisions and take actions in the world? What personal knowledge resources are entailed in analysing a problem and describing an innovative solution, such that the innovation can be shared in an organization or professional community? How do people get better at these things; and how can teachers in higher education help students develop these valued capacities? The answers to these questions are central to a thorough understanding of what it means to become an effective knowledge worker and resourceful professional.

Through the lens of sensory affect, this book offers a new way of thinking about day-to-day teaching and student engagement within learning spaces in design education. The book examines the definitions, concepts, ideas, and overlaps of a repertoire of learning spaces prevalent in higher education and addresses the pedagogical gap that exists between broader learning structures and spaces, and the requirements of specialist design education. Recognising that mainstream teaching environments impact upon design studio learning and student engagement, the book positions creative learning spaces at the heart of practice-based learning. It defines the underlying pedagogical philosophy of a creative learning space in design education and reports on how practical strategies incorporating sensory affect may be implemented by educators to foster better student engagement in these spaces within higher education. Bringing much-needed attention to specialist design teaching and learning spaces in higher education, this book will be of interest to educators, researchers, and post-graduate students immersed in design education, pedagogy, and learning spaces more broadly.

This book presents a mobile technology capacity building framework that offers academics, students, and practitioners involved in workplace education a deeper understanding of, and practical guidance on, how mobile technology can enhance professional learning. Approaching professional and workplace learning as a hybrid space in which work, learning and technology meet, the book discusses the value of mobile technology in shaping professional education, particularly during student placements. The framework focuses on staying professional and safe, considering issues of time and place, planning learning activities, initiating dialogue, networking, creating learning opportunities on-the-go, and deepening reflection. It is designed to assist students and their educators to use mobile technology knowledgeably and responsibly, and to help bridge the gap between university learning and workplace practice. This book also contributes to a better understanding of the interconnectedness between learning, practice and technology. It demonstrates how to enhance learning and working with mobile technology by drawing on two perspectives: the ‘professional-plus’ and the ‘deliberate professional’.