CYBER LEARNING

The term “cyber learning” reflects a growing national interest in managing the interactions of technology and education, especially with respect to the use of networking and information technologies. However, there is little agreement about what the term means. Such disagreements reflect underlying differences in beliefs about the purposes of education. These disagreements are problematic for anyone interested in evaluating cyber learning practices. This study used surveys and interviews to investigate how practitioners and experts in the field of cyber learning define it, how they implement it and what they believe its purpose to be. Little agreement was found among participants in terms of their definitions of cyber learning, which was supported by the wide variety of practices labeled “cyber learning.” Although most participants emphasized the purpose of cyber learning as a form of content delivery, an often-passionate minority argued for the potential of cyber learning to encourage a shift away from content-delivery paradigms. The participants’ spoke from a variety of perspectives about cyber learning including as educators, designers, activists, and policymakers, which led them to construct diverse narratives about the purposes and problems facing education and education policy.

The purpose of the Cyber learning and Future Learning Technologies program is to integrate opportunities offered by emerging technologies with advances in what is known about how people learn to advance three interconnected thrusts:

·         Innovation: inventing and improving next-generation genres (types) of learning technologies, identifying new means of using technology for fostering and assessing learning, and proposing new ways of integrating learning technologies with each other and into learning environments to foster and assess learning.

·         Advancing understanding of how people learn in technology rich learning environments: enhancing understanding of how people learn and how to better foster and assess learning, especially in technology rich learning environments that offer new opportunities for learning and through data collection and computational modeling of learners and groups of learners that can be done only in such environments.

·         Promoting broad use and transferability of new genres: extracting lessons from experiences with these technologies that can inform design and use of new genres across disciplines, populations, and learning environments; advancing understanding of how to foster learning through effective use these new technologies and the environments they are integrated into.

The intention of this program is to advance technologies that specifically focus on the experiences of learners; innovations that simply focus on making teaching easier will not be funded. Proposals that focus on teachers or facilitators as learners are invited; the aim in these is to help teachers and facilitators learn to make the learning experiences of learners more effective.

The study is expected to address all three of the program's thrusts. Of particular interest are technological advances that;  foster deep understanding of content coordinated with masterful learning of practices and skills,  draw in and encourage learning among populations not served well by current educational practices and to provide new ways of assessing understanding, engagement, and capabilities of learners. It is expected that research funded by this program will shed light on how technology can enable new forms of educational practice. This program does not support proposals that aim simply to implement and evaluate a particular software application or technology in support of a specific course.

By PROTAS LEVINA

BAPRM 42657