05/04/2019

DIGITAL LEARNING
IN AN EVOLVING
EDUCATIONAL
ECOSYSTEM

Emerging educational needs

Emerging technologies
Emerging challenges

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The eTwinning Experience

• An emerging pedagogy that
exploits environmental
conditions to develop highly
adaptive (pedagogical)
structures and mechanisms.
• Guiding students to interact with
the hybrid environment while
engaged in creative, networked,
collaborative learning.

Bringing radical changes in our Lives

- The organisation of work

- Social life
- Local and global relations
- Education

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Living in a Hybrid Reality

In which the physical and the
virtual environments embed our
social interactions and distributed
immersive lifestyles
• Across dispersed, fragmented,
fluctuating habitats
• Where individual identities are
continuously reformed via an
ever-shifting series of
networking with others and with
tools.

Immersion in an open and participatory

culture
• For both offline and online
practices, which are increasingly
interrelated.
• Potential benefits:
• Informal and peer-to-peer
learning
• Innovative attitudes toward
intellectual property
• Differentiation and mixing of
cultural expressions
• A more proactive conception of
citizenship

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Individual Learning in the digital era

• Digital technologies are affecting
what, how, where and when
people learn.

• The ubiquity of technology

provides new opportunities to
fulfil individual learning needs.

Collaboration - the most

revolutionary component
of new literacies

• Learning communities are defined by a culture of

learning, in which everyone is involved in a collective
effort of understanding.
• Schools are currently still training autonomous problem
solvers, whereas jobs demand working in teams,
drawing on different sets of expertise, and
collaborating to solve problems.

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Paradigm shift in cultural style and

educational process

Moving on to a Pre-Figurative Culture.

The Post-Figurative culture

• Typical of pre-industrial societies
• Change is largely imperceptible
and the ‘future repeats the past’.
• Education is considered as the
passing down of traditional
values and knowledge through
an adult-teacher.

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The Co-Figurative culture

• Typical of industrial societies

• Some form of disruption is experienced by society making the older not any more the experts.
• The young look to their contemporaries for guidance in making choices rather than relying on
their elders for expertise and role models in a changing world.

The Pre-Figurative culture

• Symptomatic of a fast changing
world (knowledge society)
• Society exists without models and
without precedent.
• Change is so fast that neither
parents, nor teachers or highly
skilled and professional people can
teach the young what they need to
know about the world or provide
models for the future.
• Role inversion is common where
the older learn from the younger.

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Changing educational priorities

• Prescriptive methodologies
become less appealing
• Approaches based teacher-student
partnerships, resonate more with
the hybrid reality.
• Both educators and students have
to contribute to the learning
context in the process both
acquiring new insights and skills
how to deal with the evolving
learning experience.
• Instead of acquiring it, knowledge
is co-created.

Emerging theories of knowledge

Pre and Post-Net Theories of Learning

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Pre-Net theories
• Were developed in a world in which
communication was expensive,
geographically restricted and the
information and content scarce.
• Include Behaviourist, Cognitivist,
Constructivist, Sociocultural,
Neuroscience.
• Continue to be useful because
emerging technologies are often
applied to the same challenges and
problems that originally inspired
educators and researchers.
• Some of these theories have evolved
by incorporating elements of the Net.

Net-Aware theories
• Understanding learning in a
connected society with
abundant access to information
and enormous communications
capacity that have created many
forms of interaction and
collaboration.
• Network-centric learning
theories support emergent
pedagogies.

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The Network Learning Theories

Theories focused on the Theories focused on

Theories focused on the
Network: Networked social-personal
Design of the Network:
learning, Connectivism, interaction: Heutagogy,
LAAN theory.
ANT. Peeragogy.

Networked Learning
• Learning and knowledge
construction is located in the
connections and interactions
between learners, teachers and
resources, and seen as emerging
from critical dialogue and enquiry.
• Considers learning as a social,
relational phenomenon
• Knowledge and identity are
constructed through interaction
and dialogue.

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Emergent technologies - pedagogies

• Tools, concepts, innovations, and
advancements utilized in diverse
educational settings to serve
varied education-related
purposes.

• Emergent technologies and

emergent pedagogies are
interdependent.

Major categories of emerging technologies

• Mobile Technologies
• Learning analytics
• Games and Gamification
• Hybridisation
• Natural interaction with
devices

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Mobile technologies

• Previously mobile referred

mainly to the portability of
the device
• The concept evolved to
include
• A permanent connection
• The availability of multiple
applications designed to
support location-based
learning.

Learning analytics

Various tools and techniques for

collecting, analysing and
displaying data related to
participation, performance and
student progress.

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Games and Gamification

Game-based learning includes

the use of designed games in
learning.

Gamification is the use of game

mechanics in non-game
contexts in order to engage
students.

Hybridization
Involves several technologies that
have the interconnection and
integration of the physical and
digital worlds in common:
• Augmented reality
• The Internet of things
• Wearable-technology devices
• The quantified self (incorporate technology into
data acquisition on aspects of a person's daily life).

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Natural interaction with devices

Systems to interact with devices through facial expressions, gestures

or voice recognition.

Emerging digital Pedagogies in the local

Educational context
• Instructional context – VLE,
IWB, Tablets.
• Self-Directed Learning –
ePortfolio
• Game-enhanced learning
• Hybridisation – VR, AR, Mixed
Reality, Smart Learning
• Design Approaches –
Interactive Story-telling,
Robotics, Minecraft, etc
• Networked, collaborative
learning - eTwinning

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Emerging Pedagogies

• Widen access to information

• Open up new ways of
learning
• Provide opportunities for
communication,
collaboration, participation
and the acquisition of skills.

Emerging educational
challenges

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More Flexible Learning Systems

• The standardization of traditional
teaching and learning systems does
not respond to the demands of the
globalized world.

• Formal education should provide

more flexible learning systems to
accommodate the different needs
and demands of students.

Addressing the needs of the digital natives / Citizens

• Young people can be described as

digitally and media fluent (not just
literate).
• Digital technologies and media are
among the most powerful forces in
young people’s lives today offering
a constant stream of messages
about every aspect of their lives.
• Does the educational experience
resonate with this dynamic,
vibrant, hybrid reality?

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Embedding school curricula in Authentic learning

Experiences
• Bring students in touch with real-
world problems and work
situations
• Immerse learners in environments
where they can gain lifelong
learning skills (especially through
metacognitive reflection and self-
awareness)
• Establishing relationships with the
broader community through active
partnerships.

Using Curriculum as a context to develop key

competences
Curricular subjects should serve as a
platform to develop key competences:
• Critical thinking
• Autonomous learning
• Creative enquiry
• Technology-mediated team skills
• Multi-disciplinarity
• Multiculturalism
• Oral, written and technology-mediated
communication
• Networking skills
• Are essential competences needed to
live, learn and work in a
technologically transformed society.

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Innovative Assessment modalities

• Student products often involve
nonlinear, associational webs of
representations (Eg. authoring a
simulation, developing/curating
on-line content).
• Peer-developed and peer-rated
forms of assessment complement
teacher grading.
• Assessments that provide
formative feedback on
instructional effectiveness and
collaboration.

Digital Citizenship Education

• Developing students’ digital
citizenship, ensuring mastery of
responsible and appropriate
technology use, including online
communication etiquette and
digital rights and responsibilities in
blended and online learning
settings and beyond.
• Due to the multitude of elements
of digital literacy, education leaders
are challenged to obtain
institution-wide buy-in and to
support all stakeholders in
developing these competencies.

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Digital inequity and Unequal participation

• Refers to unequal access to

technology, particularly broadband
internet.
• Providing high-speed internet
access to ensure accessibility to
online learning and open
educational resources to minority
groups and disabled students.
• Need to promote full participation,
communication, and learning
within society.

Evolving role of the Teacher

• The Designer for Learning

• The guide
• The Facilitator
• The teacher as a learner

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Equipping Teachers to manage future learning

Six competences needed by teachers
to actively manage networked,
collaborative learning.
The capacity to:
1. Manage Personal data
2. Work in open settings
3. Engage through Digital
Technologies
4. Engage in intercultural digital
dialogues.
5. Have a critical view on media
6. Deal with digital ethical issues

Personal data management

• Being able to understand and to
discuss personal data use.
• Includes comprehending the
terms of use of online platforms
and the business models of
services that we pay for with our
data
• Reflecting and adjusting one’s
behaviour based on legal and
technological developments.

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Work in open settings

• Adopt open approaches in daily
activities
• Share the knowledge produced
• Make use of knowledge produced
by others in a responsible,
transparent and traceable way
• Learn how to teach:
• With open resources
• Through open communities
• With open practices (using innovative ways for
course design, content production, teaching and evaluation
strategy).

Engage through Digital Technologies

• Prepare students to be active and
participative stakeholders in the
knowledge-sharing society.
• Guide students in managing their
emerging collective intelligence
dynamics in an open and
transparent way.
• Continuous Professional Learning
to understand that students
increasingly act as producers and
makers, not just knowledge
consumers.

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Engage in intercultural digital dialogues.

Move across diverse online

communities, grasping and
following alternative norms
and discerning and respecting
multiple perspectives.

Having a critical view on media

• Educate students on how to be
citizens, and being able to make
sense of media.
• Being able to deconstruct,
question and challenge media
content distinguishing between
real and fake news
• Guide students on how to
consume, understand, and
create media that corresponds
to fact checking standards.

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Deal with digital ethical issues.

• Core questions on digital society
that should be mastered by
contemporary educators:
• When and at what condition can data
be shared?
• Is it right to use openly available
data?
• How should one deal with the
increasing scarcity of web users’
attention?
• Be able to apply traditional ethical
frameworks to problems that are
proper of the digital world.

Conclusion:
Employing emerging technologies to
further educational goals may
necessitate the development of
different theories, pedagogies and
approaches to teaching, learning,
assessment and organisation.
Emerging pedagogies help us
experiment with different lenses
through which to view the world and
with different ways to explore such
ideas and practices as knowledge,
learning and collaboration.
(Gros, B. , Kinshuk & Maina, M. 2016)

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Thanks for your kind attention.

Send feedback and comments to:

philip.bonanno@um.edu.mt

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