Group items tagged

A new studio classroom inspired excitement and motivated productive feedback from early faculty and student users

Traditional computing labs need to transform into flexible, technology-enhanced learning spaces. Initial research into space use and future needs can guide design and resource decisions. Involving all the stakeholders invests them in the outcome and optimizes design choices. Small changes can have big effects in redesign of existing spaces.

Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.

Although central to the business of higher education, the LMS has also become a symbol of the status quo that supports administrative functions more effectively than teaching and learning activities. Personal learning environments offer an alternative, but with their own limitations. An open learning network helps bridge the gap between the PLE and the LMS, combining the best elements of each approach. The initial implementation of an OLN at Brigham Young University represents a new learning platform model in higher education.

7 things you should know about voicethread

"The term personal learning environment (PLE) describes the tools, communities, and services that constitute the individual educational platforms learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals."