Henk Huijser - Böcker

Navigating the Impossible in Online Learning Design explores a range of innovative practices and opportunities for rethinking teaching and assessment in online higher education. Emerging societal norms like remote work, lifelong learning, and consumer technologies have challenged traditional approaches to university education, leaving post-secondary students in need of greater flexibility from their institutions. Building upon authentic empirical research cases and constructivist learning approaches, this book demonstrates how teaching and assessment can be designed to integrate and leverage digital technologies, engage and motivate learners, and facilitate collaborative and innovative learning in ways that align with the needs of increasingly automated societies. Chapters focus specifically on educational activities often considered impossible to undertake or be assessed online, such laboratory work, practicums, fieldwork, physical assessment, and research supervision. Tools and formats discussed include generative artificial intelligence, models of gamification, micro-learning, personalized learning, virtual reality, and more. Instructional designers, learning scientists, and teaching faculty charged with course design and development will come away inspired to sustain innovation in online teaching and assessment.

Navigating the Impossible in Online Learning Design explores a range of innovative practices and opportunities for rethinking teaching and assessment in online higher education. Emerging societal norms like remote work, lifelong learning, and consumer technologies have challenged traditional approaches to university education, leaving post-secondary students in need of greater flexibility from their institutions. Building upon authentic empirical research cases and constructivist learning approaches, this book demonstrates how teaching and assessment can be designed to integrate and leverage digital technologies, engage and motivate learners, and facilitate collaborative and innovative learning in ways that align with the needs of increasingly automated societies. Chapters focus specifically on educational activities often considered impossible to undertake or be assessed online, such laboratory work, practicums, fieldwork, physical assessment, and research supervision. Tools and formats discussed include generative artificial intelligence, models of gamification, micro-learning, personalized learning, virtual reality, and more. Instructional designers, learning scientists, and teaching faculty charged with course design and development will come away inspired to sustain innovation in online teaching and assessment.

In this book we respond to a higher education environment that is on the verge of profound changes by imagining an evolving and agile problem-based learning ecology for learning. The goal of doing so is to humanise university education by pursuing innovative approaches to student learning, teaching, curricula, assessment, and professional learning, and to employ interdisciplinary methods that go far beyond institutional walls and include student development and support, curriculum sustainability, research and the scholarship of teaching and learning, as well as administration and leadership.An agile problem-based learning (PBL) ecology for learning deliberately blurs the boundaries between disciplines, between students and teachers, between students and employers, between employers and teachers, between academics and professional staff, between formal and informal learning, and between teaching and research. It is based on the recognition that all of these elements are interconnected and constantly evolving, rather than being discrete and static.Throughout this book, our central argument is that there is no single person who is responsible for educating students. Rather, it is everyone’s responsibility – teachers, students, employers, administrators, and wider social networks, inside and outside of the university. Agile PBL is about making connections, rather than erecting barriers.In summary, this book is not about maintaining comfort zones, but rather about becoming comfortable with discomfort. The actual implementation is beyond the scope of this book and we envisage that changing perceptions towards this vision will itself be a mammoth task. However, we believe that the alternative of leaving things as they are would ultimately prove untenable, and more distressingly, would leave a generation of students afraid to think, feel, and act for themselves, let alone being able to face the challenges of the 21st century.

In this book we respond to a higher education environment that is on the verge of profound changes by imagining an evolving and agile problem-based learning ecology for learning. The goal of doing so is to humanise university education by pursuing innovative approaches to student learning, teaching, curricula, assessment, and professional learning, and to employ interdisciplinary methods that go far beyond institutional walls and include student development and support, curriculum sustainability, research and the scholarship of teaching and learning, as well as administration and leadership.An agile problem-based learning (PBL) ecology for learning deliberately blurs the boundaries between disciplines, between students and teachers, between students and employers, between employers and teachers, between academics and professional staff, between formal and informal learning, and between teaching and research. It is based on the recognition that all of these elements are interconnected and constantly evolving, rather than being discrete and static.Throughout this book, our central argument is that there is no single person who is responsible for educating students. Rather, it is everyone’s responsibility – teachers, students, employers, administrators, and wider social networks, inside and outside of the university. Agile PBL is about making connections, rather than erecting barriers.In summary, this book is not about maintaining comfort zones, but rather about becoming comfortable with discomfort. The actual implementation is beyond the scope of this book and we envisage that changing perceptions towards this vision will itself be a mammoth task. However, we believe that the alternative of leaving things as they are would ultimately prove untenable, and more distressingly, would leave a generation of students afraid to think, feel, and act for themselves, let alone being able to face the challenges of the 21st century.

This volume Student Support Services: Exploring impact on student engagement, experience and learning, covers a wide and diverse range of higher education contexts to explore the current state and the future of student support services.