Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media

Within the rapidly expanding field of educational technology,learners and educators must confront a seemingly overwhelming selectionof tools designed to deliver and facilitate both online and blendedlearning. Many of these tools assume that learning is configured anddelivered in closed contexts, through learning management systems(LMS). However, while traditional classroom learning is byno means obsolete, networked learning is in the ascendant. Afoundational method in online and blended education, as well as themost common means of informal and self-directed learning, networkedlearning is rapidly becoming the dominant mode of teaching as well aslearning.

In Teaching Crowds, Dron and Anderson introduce a new model forunderstanding and exploiting the pedagogical potential of Web-basedtechnologies, one that rests on connections on networks andcollectives rather than on separations. Recognizing that onlinelearning both demands and affords new models of teaching and learning,the authors show how learners can engage with social media platforms tocreate an unbounded field of emergent connections. These connectionsempower learners, allowing them to draw from one anothersexpertise to formulate and fulfill their own educational goals. In anincreasingly networked world, developing such skills will, they argue,better prepare students to become self-directed, lifelong learners.