Innovate

In an interview with James Morrison, Innovate's editor-in-chief, Vijay Kumar describes how rethinking distance learning as network-enabled open education can catalyze a whole new set of learning opportunities. The growing open-education movement has made an increasing number and variety of resources freely available online, including everything from lecture notes to complete courses and real-time laboratory experiments. The result is an ability to tailor education to local contexts and individual learners. That ability, combined with communication technologies that link learners across the world, can create a powerful new kind of learning experience that melds localized, individual education with global networks.

Traditional e-learning efforts use information communication technologies to create and support educational opportunities that are not constrained by temporal and spatial considerations. The focus of ee-learning is to couple e-learning's approach with experiential education models that employ service-learning methodologies and with social-constructivist views of learning that rely on learner participation in a community. Sandra B. Schneider and Michael A. Evans provide a theoretical framework for thinking about the relationship of experience and participation to pedagogy. Their model, which draws on Barbara Rogoff's work as well as John Dewey's notion of habits, examines pedagogical authenticity from a sociocultural perspective and highlights some structural features of successful, supportive organizational environments for authentic curricula.

As a reflective practitioner of higher education, Margaret Farren seeks to contribute to a knowledge base of professional practice by using a "living educational theory" form of action research in her approach to teaching and learning. She focuses her research on the Masters program in e-learning at Dublin City University where professional educators from a variety of private and public institutions seek to transform their pedagogy and their students' learning experiences through the application of the latest interactive technology. In this article, Farren demonstrates how an action-research approach to pedagogy that includes a commitment to both a "web of betweenness" and "living educational theory" can provide opportunities for educators to inquire into their educational influences, establish living standards of judgment, and take responsibility for their own learning. 

Student response system (SRS) technology is one of many tools available to help instructors create a rich and productive learning environment. David J. Radosevich, Roger Salomon, Deirdre M. Radosevich, and Patricia Kahn describe a study designed to measure the effect of an SRS on student interest and retention. Two sections of an undergraduate management class participated in this study. Section 1 served as a control group by participating in a typical class without SRS; section 2 used SRS throughout the semester to facilitate active learning. Results indicate that although the classes were comparable at the onset of the semester, those students who used the SRS as an integral part of the classroom reported greater interest in the class and higher expectations of success, performed better on a midterm exam, and more importantly, performed better on a knowledge-retention test administered at the end of the semester. Radosevich, Salomon, Radosevich, and Kahn argue that SRS technology can have beneficial outcomes for student performance and knowledge retention.

Academic department Web pages are important tools commonly used to inform students. However, little research has been done to determine what kinds of information students value on department Web pages. Trevor Hall, Ryan Jensen, and Daniel McLean examine how 65 undergraduate students value information that is typically placed on department Web pages. Q-methodology analysis determined four types of currently enrolled students: degree driven, career oriented, department centered, and operationally centered. Hall, Jensen, and McLean posit that a single Web design approach will not meet the expectations of all groups. However, understanding the expectations of different users will help designers cluster related links better and develop multiple navigation paths to information. 

In this edition of Places to Go, Stephen Downes describes Connectivism & Connective Knowledge, an online course being offered through the University of Manitoba by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. Designed in accordance with the principles of connectivism, the course, which has been dubbed a massive online open course (MOOC) for its diffusive, networked structure and its free and open enrollment, relies on a web of technologies to connect participants and illustrate its content. Connectivism & Connective Knowledge is not simply the use of networks of diverse technologies; it is a network of diverse technologies.

Alan McCord, Denise Easton, and James Shimabukuro discuss Innovate-Ideagora, a new social and professional networking site designed to enhance professional communication in the Innovate community. The site will both increase and elevate discussion among Innovate readers, providing a forum in which collaboration and complex problem solving can occur on an unprecedented scale, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Current discussion on Innovate-Ideagora include a complex, dynamic debate about the sources of and remedies for resistance to change in education, as well as conversations about the cultural resistance to educational technology in the Middle East, the effect of technology on learning-disabled students, and the challenges of acquiring and integrating technology in low-income school districts.   

The future of education will be shaped by innovative online communication tools that will change both the context and the nature of the relationships that influence education. In this article, Nancy Evans, Thalia M. Mulvihill, and Nancy J. Brooks explore the educational possibilities of Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual online environment. The authors posit that a multiuser virtual enviroment such as Second Life offers a valuable medium for enhancing and enriching online education because it meets human needs for belonging, esteem, and self-actualization; complements users' motivations for engaging with technology; and aids in building relationships and personal connections in an online environment, thereby offering transformative learning and teaching opportunities.  

One way of better understanding Net-Generation learners is to examine the texts they create on online social networking, blogging, and image sites as well as in virtual worlds. Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley explore the nature of Net-Generation texts as a reflection of the cognitive differences between this generation's students and their older instructors, discuss the unique challenges this group of learners may present for instructors who do not share their technological immersion, and suggest the means by which such challenges may be overcome. To accommodate the needs of the Net Generation, Mabrito and Medley suggest that faculty must reconsider traditional pedagogy and integrate more innovative ways of instruction for this significantly different population of students.

Integral to higher education, academic integrity stands as a cornerstone of academic life.  However, compelling evidence of widespread academic dishonesty among Net-Generation students threatens to undermine both the environment of trust that nourishes integrity and the safeguards that help ensure it. Working from their experience with widespread cheating on low-stakes quizzes in a large introductory information systems class, Valerie Milliron and Kent Sandoe describe the Net Generation's culture of cheating and explore ways to detect and deter cheating. Detailing technological, content-based, and behavioral approaches to detection and deterrence, Milliron and Sandoe provide an overview of the extent and the nature of cheating within the Net Generation.

Scott Windham details his redesign of the interactive syllabus, a Web-based method of organizing course themes and assignments developed several years ago by Sylvie Richards. Windham suggests that reconceptualizing the interactive syllabus as an assignment guide, integrating both well-structured and ill-structured techniques into it, and using it to reach beyond the textbook can produce a transformative educational experience for both students and instructors.

In this edition of Places to Go, Stephen Downes explores Pedagogy in Action, a Web site that seeks to provide pedagogical resources and support to educators in the field of scientific education. Managed by Carleton College, a small Midwestern liberal arts college, Pedagogy in Action, argues Downes, exemplifies what the Internet can do: increase the scope—and reach—of efforts by relatively small institutions. By creating connections and encouraging collaboration, Pedagogy in Action calls on educators to become both contributers and learners in the pedagogical process. While Downes does offer some concrete suggestions as to how this site and others like it can be made even more collaborative, he notes that the premise behind Pedagogy in Action epitomizes the Internet's ability to forge links among institutions working in a field, amplify their effect, and offer their services back to the field as a whole.

David Gibson and Susan Grasso describe the aims and theoretical foundations of the Global Challenge World Game project. The Global Challenge World Game is intended to provide pre-college students the opportunities for self-directed learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Using the Microsoft ESP visual simulation platform, the World Game will provide students with an intensive, immersive three-dimensional experience designed to help them develop understanding of the complex nature of global systems that are involved in meeting such challenges as climate change and the future of energy. The vision is to capitalize on computational science, simulation, and telecommunications tools to create powerful informal science learning opportunities. The use of a three-dimensional virtual world simulator powered by the new Microsoft ESP platform combined with innovative practices in informal e-learning will offer powerful new ways for K-12 students and teachers to learn to think in a structured fashion, work with large data sets, model complex processes, and share resources.