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eLearning
'Socializing' the CMS
7/1/2008
It is intriguing to consider how blogs or personal learning environments (PLEs) might be useful in capturing and serving students' various periods of hyper-attention and deep attention. Hayles' work suggests that learners are particularly engaged when they experience feelings of "autonomy, competence, and relatedness," feelings often encouraged by Web 2.0 applications.
The Keys to the Social Learning CMS
Clearly, the key features of a "social learning" CMS will be that learners are front and center, literally on the stage of learning, following the direction of and being mentored by the faculty member who is offstage in the director's chair. The faculty instructor creates the core script while the learners improvise and interpret the core script in their individual and group blogs, and in larger group gatherings that are (again) directed and overviewed by the faculty. The learner is not isolated in his blog, but links to and connects to the resources and ideas evolving in fellow learner blogs.
Another key feature of the new "social learning" CMS: a content repository for core concepts and classic discipline resources initially selected by the faculty for the core script. This content repository will also store and link content identified by and generated by the learners in the process of learning. In addition, a "social learning" CMS will have a set of tools on hand that support all the media forms of communication we now expect, such as synchronous collaboration tools, quizzes for practice, and discussion forums or conference areas and the necessary administrative tools.
Many of our current CMS systems do include features that begin to tap into the power of social networking but, right now, these features are more in the background. WebStudy, for example, houses the beginnings of learner blogs in student home pages. Currently, these pages are supporting the building of learning communities while the student forum tools serve as blogs and places for "learner stories."
LEARN MORE: Campus Technology 2008
This month in Boston, Gary Brown (director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Washington State University) will lead an intensive workshop on "Using Worldware for Student Success in the Classroom and Beyond." Join us for the Campus Technology 2008 annual summer conference, July 28-31.
Autonomy, competence, and relatedness.What, then, is on the horizon for our learning systems? Learning environments that encourage feelings of "autonomy, competence, and relatedness" may guide us where we want to go. It is these characteristics of Web 2.0 applications that tap into creative energy and joyful learning. In the end, moving back and forth between individual thinking/reflecting, and group commenting/creation, just may result in the serendipitous conjunction of learning and tools that we're looking for.
Judith V. Boettcher (judith@designingforlearning.info) is an independent consultant specializing
in distance learning and the applications of new media.
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