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Promoting digital ownership is different than assigning work in publicly accessible spaces.

For instance, public assignments tap into fears of public embarrassment

ut the assignments must be framed by a conversation about audience and the way the ‘domain’ represents the author to that audience.

written exams will have been replaced by assessment through multimedia portfolios of student work. These will show not only students’ current knowledge and competencies, but also their progression over time, and a range of equally important skills, such as their ability to work collaboratively, self-management of learning, and general communication skills. Assessment will be mainly on a continuous, on-going basis.

you are in a position to influence a different kind of vision

t will become increasingly difficult for institutions to protect student data and their privacy. This may turn out to be the biggest challenge for students, institutions, and government

Since content will be freely accessible, institutions’ reputation and branding will increasingly depend on the way they support learners. This will put much greater emphasis on instructors having good teaching skills as well as subject expertise.

They will have lost students to more prestigious universities and high status vocationally oriented institutions using online and flexible learning to boost their numbers.

e expected to be

The following are several specific examples of what the open standards and services must enable to make this new architecture for learning a reality: Digital content and applications must be easily, quickly (ideally, within a few minutes versus months), and seamlessly integrated into any platform that supports a set of vendor-neutral open standards and, importantly, are not trapped inside a single platform. User, course, and context information must be synchronized among selected applications so that neither the manual transfer of information nor multiple logins to different applications are required—thus making set-up and use of new software much easier for all concerned. Data that describes usage, activities, and outcomes must flow from learning content apps to the enterprise system of record, learning platforms, and analytics platforms. Systems, services, and tools must be virtualized and must increasingly move toward the elastic computing model that enables sharing scenarios across systems or other federations of users.Imagine what would happen if CIOs could safely add services and applications in a matter of days instead of months, if instructors could seamlessly combine these tools into their courses with one click, and if analytics data would begin to flow immediately thereafter. This new IT architecture would revolutionize the support for academic technology in the same way that the app movement has revolutionized what is available on mobile devices. A key difference with the new IT architecture, however, is that these educational apps are built using standards adopted and managed by the educational community and would be connected into the educational enterprise IT infrastructure.

The rise of the MOOC illustrates how important innovations often happen outside of established channels: by faculty who, interested in innovation, put together their own technology solutions outside their college or university. This should be a wake-up call for the higher education community to do better. Enterprise IT organizations need to enable such innovation, not stand in its way.

t continues to play an important role in network forms of sociality because of the essentially one-to-one edges between nodes that lead to what Rainie and Wellman (2012) refer to as “networked individualism”—

However, one of their defining characteristics is that their members are, in principle and often in practice, listable.

People may be unaware that they are part of a set (e.g., people with a particular genetic marker), or they may identify with it (e.g., people who are fans of football or constructivist teaching methods).

Group-oriented systems tend to provide features like variable roles, restricted membership, and role-based permissions. Network-oriented systems tend to provide features like friending, linking, and commenting. Set-oriented systems tend to provide tools like topic- or location-based selections, tags, and categories.

In an andragogical approach to teaching and learning, learners are actively involved in identifying their needs and planning on how those needs will be met

A key attribute of andragogy is self-directed learning

Within transformational learning, learning occurs along a self-directed path; as the learner matures and reflects on life experiences in relation to his or her self-perception, beliefs, and lifestyle, the learner perspective is adjusted and transformative learning can occur

The role of the educator in an andragogical approach is that of tutor and mentor, with the instructor supporting the learner in developing the capacity to become more self-directed in his or her learning. The instructor shows learners how to find information, relates information to the learner experience, and places a focus on problem-solving within real-world situations (McAuliffe et al., 2008). Instructors establish objectives and curriculum based on learner input and guide students along the learner path, while the responsibility for learning lies with the learner.

Heutagogy applies a holistic approach to developing learner capabilities, with learning as an active and proactive process, and learners serving as “the major agent in their own learning, which occurs as a result of personal experiences”

As in an andragogical approach, in heutagogy the instructor also facilitates the learning process by providing guidance and resources, but fully relinquishes ownership of the learning path and process to the learner, who negotiates learning and determines what will be learned and how it will be learned (Hase & Kenyon, 2000; Eberle, 2009).

The heutagogical approach can be viewed as a progression from pedagogy to andragogy to heutagogy, with learners likewise progressing in maturity and autonomy (Canning, 2010, see Figure 2).

More mature learners require less instructor control and course structure and can be more self-directed in their learning, while less mature learners require more instructor guidance and course scaffolding (Canning & Callan, 2010; Kenyon & Hase, 2010).

Web 2.0 design supports a heutagogical approach by allowing learners to direct and determine their learning path and by enabling them to take an active rather than passive role in their individual learning experiences. Key affordances of social media – connectivity with others, information discovery and sharing (individually and as a group), and personal collection and adaptation of information as required – are also affordances that support self-determined learning activities (McLoughlin & Lee, 2007, p. 667). In addition, Web 2.0 encourages interaction, reflection in dialogue, collaboration, and information sharing, as well as promotes autonomy and supports creation of learner-generated content (Lee & McLoughlin, 2007; McLoughlin & Lee, 2008, 2010).

learners are self-directed to continue to learn on their own and “can personalize their learning paths in the way they desire

Recent research also indicates that the use of social media can support self-determined learning.

Learner-generated content (active media use): Active use of social media in creating learner-generated content seems to contribute to development of skills of self-directedness. Initial research findings by Blaschke, Porto, and Kurtz (2010) indicate that active use of social media, for example, development of learner-generated content, supports cognitive and metacognitive skill development, whereas passive use (consumption) is less effective in supporting development of these skills.

Research on the use of social media and its role in supporting heutagogy is limited, however, indicating that this is an area for further investigation.

A heutagogical approach to learning and teaching is characterized first and foremost by learner-centeredness in terms of both learner-generated contexts and content.

Guiding learners to define self-directed questions is one of the biggest challenges facing developers of heutagogical courses, as designers must be “creative enough to have learners ask questions about the universe they inhabit”

Negotiated and learner-defined assessment has been shown to improve the motivation of learners and their involvement in the learning process, as well as make learners feel less threatened by instructor control of their learning process

Heutagogy’s holistic approach takes into account the learner’s prior learning experiences and the way in which these influence how she or he learns; by considering these past experiences and the learner’s current experience and reflecting upon these, the learner moves into a growth process that has the potential to lead to transformative learning

The literature review conducted here indicates that there is substantial work to be done in researching heutagogy within this research construct, for example examination of the means in which Web 2.0 and social media support a self-determined teaching and learning approach, and investigation of the effectiveness of the approach in higher education and in creating lifelong learners able to effectively and successfully translate competencies into capability in complex, real-world situations. Another area of research includes defining and testing criteria for heutagogy as a framework for teaching and learning.

By incorporating heutagogical practice, educators have the opportunity to better prepare students for the workplace and for becoming lifelong learners, as well as to foster student motivation by cultivating students who “are fully engaged in the topic they are studying because they are making choices that are most relevant or interesting to them” (Kenyon & Hase, 2010, p. 170).

ignore the new ‘cool stuff’ as somehow not ‘personal’ seems short-sighted