Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media

by Jon Dron, Terry Anderson

Overview

Within the rapidly expanding field of educational technology, learners and educators must confront a seemingly overwhelming selection of tools designed to deliver and facilitate both online and blended learning. Many of these tools assume that learning is configured and delivered in closed contexts, through learning management systems (LMS). However, while traditional "classroom" learning is by no means obsolete, networked learning is in the ascendant. A foundational method in online and blended education, as well as the most common means of informal and self-directed learning, networked learning is rapidly becoming the dominant mode of teaching as well as learning.

In Teaching Crowds, Dron and Anderson introduce a new model for understanding and exploiting the pedagogical potential of Web-based technologies, one that rests on connections — on networks and collectives — rather than on separations. Recognizing that online learning both demands and affords new models of teaching and learning, the authors show how learners can engage with social media platforms to create an unbounded field of emergent connections. These connections empower learners, allowing them to draw from one another’s expertise to formulate and fulfill their own educational goals. In an increasingly networked world, developing such skills will, they argue, better prepare students to become self-directed, lifelong learners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781927356821
Publisher:	Athabasca University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2014
Series:	Issues in Distance Education
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	370
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Jon Dron is associate professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems and a member of the Technology-Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University. His current research concerns the social aspects of learning technologies, with an emphasis on methods and technologies that enable learners to help each other. He is the author of Control and Constraint in E-Learning: Choosing When to Choose.

Terry Anderson is professor and researcher in the Technology-Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University. His interests focus on interaction and on the use of social media in educational contexts. He is the editor of The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, the second edition of which won the 2009 Charles E. Wedemeyer Award.

Jon Dron is associate professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems and a member of the Technology-Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University. His current research concerns the social aspects of learning technologies, with an emphasis on methods and technologies that enable learners to help each other. He is the author of Control and Constraint in E-Learning: Choosing When to Choose.
Terry Anderson is professor and researcher in the Technology-Enhanced Knowledge Research Centre at Athabasca University. His research interests focus on interaction and social media in educational contexts. He is the editor of The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, 2nd ed., winner of the 2009 Charles E. Wedemeyer Award.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Preface

Chapter 1. On the Nature and Value of Social Software for Learning
Chapter 2. Social Learning Theories
Chapter 3. A Typology of Social Forms for Learning
Chapter 4. Learning in Groups
Chapter 5. Learning in Networks
Chapter 6. Learning in Sets
Chapter 7. Learning with Collectives
Chapter 8. Stories From the Field
Chapter 9. Issues and Challenges in Educational Uses of Social Software
Chapter 10. The Shape of Things and of Things to Come

References / Index