Designing Learning Environments in a Social and Digital World

In today's society, what counts as knowledge and expertise has changed considering the global shifts in interconnectivity, social interactions, and technology. Previous models of learning focused on knowledge as a collection of facts within curriculum and learning environments helping individuals obtain those facts. However, today technology can enable all individuals to quickly obtain facts. Instead, expertise requires deep knowledge in which ideas are applied across multiple contexts in particular contexts with people and tools. These shifts in knowledge as well as technological advances have significant implications for how we design curriculum and other learning environments. In this course, we will examine different learning environments as well as various aspects within those environments. For example, we will examine curriculum to evaluate the scaffolds to support student learning, analyze digital learning environments for professional development to support teacher learning and critique video of classroom discourse to examine student interactions and community development. In this course, we will consider the environment both as conceptualized by its designers (the design) and as it is experienced by participants as learning interactions unfold in particular settings (the enactment) to evaluate the effectiveness of those learning environments.