Why should instructors in traditional higher education institutions consider the re-design of their courses? The paper begins with a defense of four compelling reasons for changes in didactics: a review of some key principles of good teaching and learning, the increasing diversity of student characteristics and associated needs, the strategic and educational rationales for five types of flexibility increase in our current courses, and the particular need for instructors in faculties of education to provide leadership and models. Given the why, the next question is how? The remainder of the paper discusses the how in terms of a conceptually grounded approach to the pedagogical re-engineering of existing courses so that they become more flexible, with more student engagement, more-targetted communication, and more-attuned instructor scaffolding of increased student responsibility for his or her own learning. These concepts are made concrete through the extension of six standard sets of course-related tasks into redesigned sets involving the new didactics and WWW-based course-support functionalities. Examples from current practice at the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology at the University of Twente are used to illustrate the new didactical categories and their use of WWW-based course environments. The paper concludes with a consideration of key challenges that will confront the implementation of such new didactics in practice.

New didactics for university instruction: why and how?

The role of assessment has always been crucial in education. It is a truism that assessment shapes how teachers teach and students learn. If we want to know the truth about an educational system, we have to look at the assessment practices and what qualities of students and their work that are being valued by the system. If educational reforms do not include assessment, they often fail. Changing perspectives on teaching and learning combined with new demands in society on students' knowledge and abilities are gradually reshaping learning cultures. In such contexts we also need to see assessment through new eyes. While assessment in the past has primarily been a means of certification and accountability, a much wider range of purposes of assessment are now advocated. A new vision for assessment for the new millennium integrates learning and assessment and redefines the roles of students and teachers in the assessment process. Assessment for learning is now gaining importance over assessment of learning. The keynote speaker will discuss new modes of assessment from a socio-cultural perspective, focusing on how to engage students actively in the learning process through for instance portfolios, self-assessment and peer review, but also on the dilemmas arising when formative and summative forms of assessment are mixed.

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The challenges of assessment in a new learning culture

We have analyzed data from two online courses, designed to promote collaborative online learning, and in the contexts of two different cultures. Ongoing assessment (self, group, instructor) that actively engages students within the course (as opposed to instructor assessment at the end) is a central feature for achieving collaborative knowledge building in online dialog. Careful articulation and deployment of assessment criteria is a design feature that promotes meta-awareness, which, in turn, together with student-centeredness and operationalization of student experiences in the design of the curriculum, enhances student participation, motivation and ownership in the dialog. From eight years of experience with online dialog and two quite different implementations we offer a set of design principles, having a sound theoretical basis, that enhance the quality and quantity of online knowledge building. Our analysis suggests that the characteristics of the discussion threads emerging under these design criteria give evidence of true collaborative learning.

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Investigating knowledge building dialogues in networked communities of practice. A collaborative learning endeavor across cultures

This paper reports on a case study on the implementation of ‘language games’ as a pedagogical tool for analyzing, assessing and promoting the quality and the level of collaborative knowledge building in online learning dialogues. Part of the overall objective is to explore the use, strength, weaknesses, and limitations of using the method in the context of an online senior level university course (on-campus and off-campus continuing education) on Global Change. In this investigation, the insight from using a theoretical perspective of language games is elucidated and discussed in relation to the benefits of other theoretical approaches. Applying an analytical perspective of language games, sequences of online dialogues are analyzed in order to understand their specific characteristics and to diagnose the quality of the collaborative knowledge-building processes. To what extent do language games reveal true knowledge building in an online learning environment? Results of this study suggest that language ga...

Knowledge-Building Quality in Online Communities of Practice: Focusing on Learning Dialogue

This paper addresses the core goals for educators to stimulate participation across diversity (including life trajectories and culture) and motivate learners to engage in negotiation of meaning and knowledge building dialogue in the processes of networked learning. The paper reports on a Danish masters online course on networked learning for educators that attempted to realize these goals. The participating teacher learned important methods, including moderation, through experience, guided by a teacher educator whose instructional design was based on communities of practice for participants with different backgrounds, cultures, age, and prerequisites in a shared learning endeavor on the Web. The experience supports a twofold foundation for instructional design: the learning theoretical concept of Etienne Wenger (1998) and an orientation toward participant cultures in terms of experiences and competencies, in order to facilitate collaborative knowledge building online.

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Michael R. Taber

Papers

CSCL: Structuring the Past, Present and Future Through Virtual Portfolios

Virtual portfolios: Lessons learned from 4 years of implementation

Use of the Web as a tool for interactive learning.

Virtual Portfolios