Maarten de Laat – författare

With the boundaries of place softened and extended by digital communications technologies, learning in a networked society necessitates new distributions of activity across time, space, media, and people; and this development is no longer exclusive to formally designated spaces such as school classrooms, lecture halls, or research laboratories. Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning explores how qualities of physical places make both formal and informal education in a networked society possible. Through a series of investigations and case studies, it illuminates the structural composition and functioning of complex learning environments.

This book offers a wealth of key design elements and attributes for productive learning that educational designers can reuse in multiple contexts. The chapters examine how places are modified, expanded, or supplemented by networking technologies and practices in order to create spaces in which learners can collaboratively develop new understandings, connections, and capabilities. Utilizing a range of diverse but complementary perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, psychology, sociology, and urban studies, Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning addresses how material places and digital spaces are understood; how sense can be made of new assemblages and configurations of tasks, tools, and people; how the real-time analysis of new flows of data can inform and entertain users of a space; and how access to the digital realm changes our experiences with both places and other people.

With the boundaries of place softened and extended by digital communications technologies, learning in a networked society necessitates new distributions of activity across time, space, media, and people; and this development is no longer exclusive to formally designated spaces such as school classrooms, lecture halls, or research laboratories. Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning explores how qualities of physical places make both formal and informal education in a networked society possible. Through a series of investigations and case studies, it illuminates the structural composition and functioning of complex learning environments.

This book offers a wealth of key design elements and attributes for productive learning that educational designers can reuse in multiple contexts. The chapters examine how places are modified, expanded, or supplemented by networking technologies and practices in order to create spaces in which learners can collaboratively develop new understandings, connections, and capabilities. Utilizing a range of diverse but complementary perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, psychology, sociology, and urban studies, Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning addresses how material places and digital spaces are understood; how sense can be made of new assemblages and configurations of tasks, tools, and people; how the real-time analysis of new flows of data can inform and entertain users of a space; and how access to the digital realm changes our experiences with both places and other people.

The chapters in this book are based on selected peer reviewed research papers presented at the 11th biennial Networked Learning Conference (NLC) 2018 held in Zagreb and were chosen as exemplars of cutting edge research on networked learning. The chapters are organized into three main sections: 1) Aspects of mobility for Networked Learning in a global world, 2) Use and misuse of algorithms and learning analytics, 3) Understanding and empowering learners. The three main sections are flanked by chapters which introduce and reflect on Networked Learning as epistemic practice. The concluding chapter draws out perspectives from the chapters and discusses emerging issues.

The book focuses on the nature of learning and interactions as an important characteristic sought out by researchers and practitioners in this field.

The chapters in this book build upon selected research papers from the 12th International Networked Learning Conference 2020, hosted by University of Southern Denmark, Kolding. The selected chapters were chosen as cutting-edge research on networked learning which reflected focal discussion points during the conference such as: new demands on teachers in online and hybrid learning environments; organization of professional learning to meet and reflect on these demands; support of educators and students’ digital literacy; the interaction of human and technological agents in networked learning; and the development of new of networked learning designs to critically and creatively make use of technological possibilities.

The book is organized into three main sections: 1) Professional learning, 2) Learning networks’ development and use of digital resources, and 3) Innovating Networked Learning. Preceding the three main sections is a first chapter, which presents a discourseanalysis of how the term “networked learning” has been used in the papers at previous Networked Learning Conferences. The concluding chapter draws out perspectives from the chapters and point to emerging issues within the field of networked learning.

This book provides cutting-edge research on networked learning, focusing on issues of sustainability in design for learning, data use, and networked learning connections. It contributes novel theoretical perspectives on networked learning, its role in society and potential for sustainable learning design. It further contributes a set of exemplary empirical cases  - exemplary in terms of their innovative learning designs, pedagogical use of technology in connecting learners, and/or critical reflections on implications of utilizing different technologies to support learning.

The book is organized into four main sections: 1) Data and datafication, 2) Sustainable learning design, 3) Sociological perspectives on Networked Learning, and 4) Networked learning in times of lockdown. Concluding the book is a final chapter which points to emerging issues within the field of networked learning, based on discussion of perspectives from the chapters

The book''s focus on the nature of learning and technology-mediated interactions makes it of prime significance to researchers and practitioners in the field of technology-supported teaching and learning.

The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning

Edited by: Vivien Hodgson, Maarten de Laat, David McConnell and Thomas Ryberg

This book brings together a wealth of new research that opens up the meaning of connectivity as embodied and promised in the term ‘networked learning’. Chapters explore how contexts, groups and environments can be connected rather than just learners; how messy, unexpected and emergent connections can be made rather than structured and predefined ones; and how technology connects us to learning and each other, but also shapes our identity. These exciting new perspectives ask us to look again at what we are connecting and to revel in new and emergent possibilities arising from the interplay of social actors, contexts, technologies, and learning.

Caroline Haythornthwaite, University of British Columbia

Despite creating fundamentally new educational economics and greatly increasing access - teaching and learningin networks is a tricky business. These chapters illuminate the complex interactions amongst tools, pedagogy, educational institutions and personal net presences – helping us design and redesign our own networks. In the process, they take (or extract) network theory from the practice of real teaching and learning contexts, making this collection an important contribution to Networked Learning.

Terry Anderson, Athabasca University

What kinds of learning can social networking platforms really enable? Digging well beneath the hype, this book provides a timely, incisive analysis of why and how learning emerges (or fails to) in networked spaces. The editors do a fine job in guiding the reader through the rich array of theories and methods for tackling this question, and the diverse contexts in which networked learning is now being studied. This is a book for reflective practitioners as well as academics: the book''s close attention to the political, pedagogical andorganisational complexity of effective practice, and the lived experience of educators and learners, helps explain why networked learning has such disruptive potential — but equally, why it draws resistance from the establishment.

Simon Buckingham Shum, The Open University

The networked learning conference, a biannual institution since 1998, celebrates its 14th year in this volume. Here a range of studies, reflecting networked learning experiments across Europe and other global contexts , show important shifts away from a conservative tradition of Œe-learning¹ research and unpeel dilemmas of promoting learning as an elusive practice in virtual environments. The authors point towards important futures in online learning research, where notions of knowledge, connectivity and Œcommunity¹ become increasingly elastic, and engagements slide across material and virtual domains in new practices whose emergence is increasingly difficult to apprehend.

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Tara Fenwick – University of Stirling.

The chapters in this volume explore new and innovative ways of thinking about the nature of networked learning and its pedagogical values and beliefs. They pose a challenge to us to reflect on what we thought networked learning was 15 year ago, where it is today and where it is likely to be headed.

Each chapter brings a particular perspective to the themes of design, experience and practice of networked learning, the chosen focus of the book. The chapters in the book embrace a wide field of educational areas including those of higher education, informal learning, work-based learning, continuing professional development, academic staff development, and management learning.

The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning will prove indispensable reading for researchers, teachers, consultants, and instructional designers in higher and continuing education; for those involved in staff and educational development, and for those studying post graduate qualifications in learning and teaching.

This, the second volume in the Springer Book Series on Researching Networked Learning, is based on a selection of papers presented at the 2012 Networked Learning Conference held in Maastricht, The Netherlands.

The book is based on nine selected, peer-reviewed papers presented at the 10th biennial Networked Learning Conference (NLC) 2016 held in Lancaster. Informed by suggestions from delegates, the nine papers have been chosen by the editors (who were the Chairs of the Conference) as exemplars of cutting edge research on networked learning. Further reviews of all papers were conducted once they were revised as chapters for the book. 

The chapters are organized into two sections: 1) Situating Networked Learning: Looking Back - Moving Forward, 2) New Challenges: Designs for Networked Learning in the Public Arena. Further, we include an introduction which looks at the evolution of trends in Networked Learning through a semantic analysis of conference papers from the 10 conferences. A final chapter draws out perspectives from the chapters and discusses emerging issues. The book is the fifth in the Networked Learning Conference Series.