Special Issue - Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning Editorial

New technologies that influence how information is created and shared and how people connect and socialize hold promise for adoption in education. Much like the idea of a book necessitated the development of the library or the idea of structured curriculum and domains of knowledge produced classrooms, the idea of the Internet – distributed, social, networked – influences the structure of education, teaching, and learning. Educators and researchers face a challenge in determining how the existing education system will be influenced and the new roles that will be expected of learners, teachers, and administrators. Information-centric fields such as journalism have struggled with the new democracy of information creation for over a decade. The music industry continues to grapple with access issues and the “unbundling of the album” initiated by Napster and firmly entrenched by iTunes. Telephone companies face an uncertain future as Skype, Google Voice, and other web-based communication services increase in popularity. Essentially, the Internet has remade how society creates and shares content and how people communicate and interact. The implications for education are significant. Educators have explored the role of the Internet as a research and learning tool for several decades. In the late 1990s, social network services (e.g., Friendster) and easy publishing tools (such as blogs) increased the ability for anyone with an Internet connection to both publish and engage in online conversations. Since that time, we’ve experienced a decade of amazing innovation in social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter), in openness movements (open source, open access), in mobile technologies (mobile phones, iPads), in the growth of broadband, in gaming, in multimedia (YouTube, podcasts), and in new tools that blend the physical and virtual worlds (location-based services such as Foursquare and Groupon, augmented reality, “internet of things”). International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning

[1]  D. Hung,et al.  Situated Cognition, Vygotskian Thought and Learning from the Communities of Practice Perspective: Implications for the Design of Web-Based E-Learning , 2001 .

[2]  D. Jonassen,et al.  Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments , 1999 .

[3]  Catherine A. Hansman.  Context‐Based Adult Learning , 2001 .

[4]  E. Hutchins.  Cognition in the wild , 1995 .

[5]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[6]  Victor Kaptelinin,et al.  Computer-mediated activity: functional organs in social and developmental contexts , 1995 .

[7]  Ann Jones,et al.  PDAs as lifelong learning tools: an activity theory based analysis , 2005 .

[8]  Allan Collins,et al.  Design Research: Theoretical and Methodological Issues , 2004 .

[9]  Carl Bereiter,et al.  Design Research for Sustained Innovation , 2002 .

[10]  B. Nardi.  Activity theory and human-computer interaction , 1995 .

[11]  M. Cole.  A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition , 1993 .

[12]  Philip Bell,et al.  On the Theoretical Breadth of Design-Based Research in Education , 2004 .

[13]  S. Barab,et al.  Designing system dualities: Characterizing an online professional development community , 2004 .

[14]  A. Margaryan,et al.  Applying activity theory to computer-supported collaborative learning and work-based activities in corporate settings , 2004 .

[15]  Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch,et al.  Using Activity Theory to Understand the Systemic Tensions Characterizing a Technology-Rich Introductory Astronomy Course , 2002 .

[16]  Angela F. L. Wong,et al.  Activity Theory as a Framework for Project Work in Learning Environments , 2000 .

[17]  Noriko Hara,et al.  Community of Practice: A Metaphor for Online Design? , 2003, Inf. Soc..

[18]  Mark S. Schlager,et al.  Teacher Professional Development, Technology, and Communities of Practice: Are We Putting the Cart Before the Horse? , 2003 .

[19]  A. Collins,et al.  Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning , 1989 .

[20]  Diana Joseph.  The Practice of Design-Based Research: Uncovering the Interplay Between Design, Research, and the Real-World Context , 2004 .

[21]  Gerry Stahl,et al.  Group cognition in computer-assisted collaborative learning , 2005, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[22]  Sasha A. Barab,et al.  Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning: Shared “We” and Shared “They” Indicators of Group Identity in Online Teacher Professional Development , 2004 .

[23]  William Winn,et al.  Research into Practice: Current Trends in Educational Technology Research: The Study of Learning Environments , 2002 .

[24]  K. Squire,et al.  Design-Based Research: Putting a Stake in the Ground , 2004 .

[25]  P. Kirschner,et al.  Mindtools for teacher communities: a European perspective , 2003 .

[26]  Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch.  Using Activity Theory as an Analytic Lens for Examining Technology Professional Development in Schools , 2003 .

[27]  Rita Kop,et al.  Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? , 2008 .

[28]  Jim Hewitt.  An Exploration of Community in a Knowledge Forum Classroom: An Activity System Analysis , 2004 .

[29]  Eileen Scanlon,et al.  Using technology in Higher Education: an Activity Theory perspective , 2002, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[30]  Jesús Vázquez-Abad,et al.  Fostering Distributed Science Learning Through Collaborative Technologies , 2004 .

[31]  Abbie Brown,et al.  Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in c , 1992 .

[32]  Chris Taylor,et al.  What kind of creature is a design experiment , 2004 .

[33]  L. Vygotsky.  Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes: Harvard University Press , 1978 .

[34]  L. Schauble,et al.  Design Experiments in Educational Research , 2003 .

[35]  Susan Gasson,et al.  Framing design: a social process view of information system development , 1998, ICIS '98.