connected learning

Core properties of connected learning experiences

Production-centered
Digital tools provide opportunities for producing and creating a wide variety of media, knowledge, and cultural content in experimental and active ways.

Shared purpose
Social media and web-based communities provide unprecedented opportunities for cross-generational and cross-cultural learning and connection to unfold and thrive around common goals and interests.

Openly networked
Online platforms and digital tools can make learning resources abundant, accessible, and visible across all learner settings.

Design principles for learning environments

Everyone can participate
Experiences invite participation and provide many different ways for individuals and groups to contribute.

Learning happens by doing
Learning is experiential and part of the pursuit of meaningful activities and projects.

Challenge is constant
Interest or cultivation of an interest creates both a “need to know” and a “need to share.”

Everything is interconnected
Young people are provided with multiple learning contexts for engaging in connected learning—contexts in which they receive immediate feedback on progress, have access to tools for planning and reflection, and are given opportunities for mastery of specialist language and practices.

New media amplifies opportunities for connected learning

Fostering engagement and self-expression
Interactive, immersive, and personalized technologies provide responsive feedback, support a diversity of learning styles and literacy, and pace learning according to individual needs.

Increasing accessibility to knowledge and learning experiences
Through online search, educational resources, and communities of expertise and interest, young people can easily access information and find relationships that support self-directed and interest-driven learning.

Expanding social supports for interests
Through social media, young people can form relationships with peers and caring adults that are centered on interests, expertise, and future opportunity in areas of interest.

Expanding diversity and building capacity
New media networks empower marginalized and non-institutionalized groups and cultures to have voice, mobilize, organize, and build economic capacity.

Three crucial contexts for learning:

Peer-supported
In their everyday exchanges with peers and friends, young people are contributing, sharing and giving feedback in inclusive social experiences that are fluid and highly engaging.

Interest-powered
When a subject is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes.

Academically oriented
Learners flourish and realize their potential when they can connect their interests and social engagement to academic studies, civic engagement, and career opportunity.

Download the full report on Connected Learning here. More information at the Connected Learning Research Network website.

Below is a video about how to design and implement a connected learning experience. From an ignite talk given at DML conference, in 2013.

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