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Using YouTube, we learn that people all over the world can connect and share ideas, but it has become way more of a teaching tool. People are using this to reflect on themselves and the world around them. One student mentioned how they saw this as an inner thought process: how others would perceive them and how the conversation became inner-mediated. With the activities that we have in the course, the discussions, and blogs we learn to become self-sufficient learners. Not only through the reflective process, but in the activities geared towards the process of learning and why it is important to learn and help each other learn.

One online instructor (Alley 1996) has described this changing pedagogical consciousness as an �instructional epiphany�.� Alley tells of a personal transformation, stimulated by online instruction, marked by two "milestones". First, he had to totally redesign his course to fit and leverage the new learning environment. Second, he had to rethink what he calls his �basic approach�: �As long as I held on to the traditional �sage-on-stage� style of teaching, I would keep reinventing ways for students to be a passive audience� (1996:51).� Similar changes in pedagogical belief and practice have been reported by other faculty who have taught web-based courses (Brown 1998; Jaffee 1997; Cremer 1998) as well as researchers who have interviewed online instructors (Frank 2000).�� There are clearly some �structural constraints� built into the virtual classroom ecology that make it difficult to implement traditional modes of delivery and, in this sense, almost force instructors to entertain active learning strategies. As Frank (2000) discovered in her study of online instructors, "All of the participants saw online learning as empowering for students. The most valuable benefits were the facilitation of active learning, critical thinking, collaboration, confidence, and lifelong learning habits. A common theme was the way in which the teacher is forced to give up the control that one has in a face-to-face environment and re-examine the traditional role of content deliverer".� Just as the physical classroom architecture imposes constraints on, and opportunities for, particular pedagogical practices, so too does the virtual classroom. John Seely Brown (2000) has described the environment of the world-wide-web as a �learning ecology� that is a self-organized evolving collection of cross-pollinating overlapping communities of interest.� Asynchronous web-based courses that include a discussion forum possess many of the same ecological features. All members of the class can receive and broadcast information at any time. This critical communication feature distinguishes the virtual classroom from prior forms of instructional technology.�� While instructors can mediate and guide, they cannot entirely control the flow of communication. Thus, instructor and student roles and relations are less hierarchical and more overlapping and interactive. These greater opportunities for participation can contribute to a greater diversity of opinion and perspective. It is hard work to establish these social dynamics in a physical classroom constrained by a fixed space, a designated time block, and trained inhibitions. The virtual classroom, in contrast, has the potential to establish new patterns of instructor and student interaction and, accordingly, different teaching and learning roles and practices (Girod and Cavanaugh 2001; Becker and Ravitz 1999). ��������� In making comparisons between the physical and virtual classroom, it is important to emphasize a cautionary caveat. The pedagogical ecology, be it a physical classroom or a virtual interface, cannot entirely determine a particular pedagogical practice or learning outcome. The pedagogical ecology offers opportunities and constraints that will shape and influence classroom dynamics and learning outcomes, but much will also depend on the principles informing, and the actual design of, the teaching and learning process (see Chamberlin 2001). The various practices that are employed in both a physical and a virtual classroom indicate the range of possibilities. However, if we believe that, for the purpose of student learning, active student engagement and interaction is preferable to the passive reception of information, we should consider the degree to which this principle is advanced or facilitated by the expanding virtual learning ecology.�

Sociological theories and concepts have an important role to play in analyzing and interpreting these developments. A central sociological proposition is that structural environments influence the social perceptions, roles, and relations of human actors.� As increasing numbers of students and faculty find themselves operating in virtual learning environments, we might also expect to find some changing instructional dynamics. More specifically, there are a number of questions worth exploring. What are the relationships between the technical, the social, and the pedagogical infrastructures?� How has the introduction of new instructional technologies influenced established pedagogical practices? How does the shift from a physical classroom to a virtual learning environment shape and reconfigure the social roles and relations among faculty and students? What consequences will these technologies have for developing pedagogical practices?

have less to do with the proven effectiveness of the particular practice than the desire to appear legitimate or conform to normative expectations.�

Lecture = 5% Reading = 10% Audiovisual = 20% Demonstration = 30% Discussion Group = 50% Practice by doing = 75% Teach others / immediate use of learning = 90% It should also be recognized that a person's prior knowledg

Before we answer this question, ask yourself, "How do I learn best?" For example, do you learn better when someone tells you exactly how to do something, or do you learn better by doing it yourself? Many people are right in the middle of those two scenarios.

This has led many educators to believe that the best way to learn is by having students construct their own knowledge instead of having someone construct it for them

Current research indicates that some gifted students possess better self-regulated learning strategies than their peers, however gifted students may have done very well in school without using good self-regulation strategies because of a combination of their high abilities and/or an unchallenging curriculum. If learning is relatively easy for someone, less effort, organization and other self-regulated activities are expended. Social conditions or personal issues may prevent students from developing self-regulated learning strategies. For some students who already have some of these strategies, social or personal issues may prevent them from using them regularly, and thus, they need to be helped and encouraged to do so. Some gifted and talented students display perfectionism and need to learn to strive for excellence (their personal best) rather than perfection. Some talented students with high potential may find it difficult to learn self-regulation when it is not taught, modeled, or rewarded by the adults in their home and family. Even if students interact regularly with adults who demonstrate self-regulation, they may fail to use these skills themselves due to peer pressure or refuse to use the strategies their parents or teachers regularly employ at home or school. Compared with low achieving students, high achievers set more specific learning goals, use a variety of learning strategies, self-monitor more often, and adapt their efforts more systematically. The quality and quantity of self-regulation processes is crucial. We must recognize that one self-regulation strategy will not work for all students, and that the use of only a few strategies will not work optimally for a person on all tasks or occasions. It is important that students learn to use multiple self-regulatory learning skills rather than single strategies. They must also learn that their goals and their choice of self-regulation strategies have to be continually adjusted.

There is considerable evidence showing that assessment drives student learning. More than anything else, our assessment tools tell students what we consider to be important. They will learn what we guide them to learn through our assessments.

Assessment is more than grades To many, the word "assessment" simply means the process by which we assign students grades. Assessment is much more than this, however. Assessment is a mechanism for providing instructors with data for improving their teaching methods and for guiding and motivating students to be actively involved in their own learning. As such, assessment provides important feedback to both instructors and students. Assessment is Feedback for Both Instructors and Students Assessment gives us essential information about what our students are learning.and about the extent to which we are meeting our teaching goals. But the true power of assessment comes in also using it to give feedback to our students. Improving the quality of learning.in our courses involves not just determining to what extent students have mastered course content at the end of the course; improving the quality of learning.also involves determining to what extent students are mastering content throughout the course.

Assessment Drives Student Learning The types of assessment usually performed in first-year science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) courses--giving students tests--merely inform students about their grade, or ranking, after they have received instruction. In addition, these common testing techniques--which typically test for fact-based knowledge and algorithmic problem solving--tell our students that this is the type of knowledge we think is most important. That is, we appear to value the understanding of concepts at a relatively low level. Given that this is the type of assessment our students most frequently encounter, and that it will eventually lead to their final course grades, students learn to study the content in our courses in an expeditious way that allows them to succeed in passing many first-year STEM courses without necessarily developing deep understanding of concepts. It is our assessment that drives students learning.

Your learning styles have more influence than you may realize. Your preferred styles guide the way you learn. They also change the way you internally represent experiences, the way you recall information, and even the words you choose. We explore more of these features in this chapter.Research shows us that each learning style uses different parts of the brain. By involving more of the brain during learning, we remember more of what we learn. Researchers using brain-imaging technologies have been able to find out the key areas of the brain responsible for each learning style.

I was charged with explaining my "innovative approach to open social networks for learning"

Access. In 1996, Sir John Daniel estimated we would need to create a major university every week to educate the 100 million students qualified to enter a university who have no place to go. Fifteen years later, universities have simply not kept pace with the staggering demand for college education

2007 Silent Epidemic study funded by the Gates Foundation, I had what my students would call (pardon their French) a WTF moment. Eighty-eight percent of high school dropouts have passing grades. Huh? Nearly half say they are bored and classes are not interesting.

. In fact we encourage that kind of exploration. It is how children explore and gain information about the world around them.

Can you share some of what you learned about student-directed learning

What we are essentially doing when we move to student-directed learning is undermining our own relatively stable (though I would argue obsolete) notions of expertise and replacing them something new and different.