Learning Ecosystems

Some of the powerful words that, if done well, are enabled by online learning are:

Choice:

• Of format — digital audio, digital video, text, graphics, animations, games, role playing, etc.; I can look at content from multiple angles and in multiple ways
• Of assignment — which one works best for me? Which one interests me the most? Or if I don’t really get the assignment in one way, I can reach the learning objective in another way.

Control:

• Of when and where I bop into my course and participate in it; it may be a brief 5-minute posting of a great and relevant article I ran across, or it may be a 3-4 hour stint
• Of playing media — pausing, fast forwarding, rewinding, slowing down or speeding up digital video and/or digital audio

Participation:

• I can contribute content that I created — in a variety of formats; content that I can spend some time on creating
  
• I can take my time to engage in thoughtful, reflective discussions; especially helpful to those of us who don’t think very fast on our feet and need time to think about a topic and develop our responses
  

Communication and collaboration:

• Between students
• Between faculty and students

bop in

— In my mind, those are very powerful words in many peoples’ learning experiences.