"The last 100 years have seen a significant transformation in the way we understand teaching and learning. This chapter documents that change. We now understand that learning is neither merely the passive reception of new information nor that it need not be limited to formal classrooms and educational institutions. Now technologies have enabled the development of open and distributed learning, with access enabled for all, and with materials licensed and shared freely. This, in turn, has led to new ways of looking at pedagogy, as typified by trends in social learning, personal learning, and the massive open online course."
Downes S. (2017) New Models of Open and Distributed Learning. In: Jemni M., Kinshuk, Khribi M. (eds) Open Education: from OERs to MOOCs. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology. Springer, Berlin,
1. SUMMARY
The paper emphasized the students’ role in today’s new learning environment and reiterated major design criteria for online learning: prior learning, learning styles, motivations, knowledge information, community.
The paper then list new models of open and distributed learning in chronical order,including:
Social platforms as a learning tool (informal)
Open and distributed learning comprise of reusable modules - the concept of open-access learning. Open Licensing - the ability to modify and/or share content freely - has a big impact.
E-learning 2.0 - the idea that learners can interact socially with each other including sharing of resources, social learning, the wiki movements…
Personal learning and PLE : lightweight data and communication standards, built around the person, connects to a variety of services and resources around the web (wider than LMS)
The principles of connectivism and how it will open up new models for online learning such as MOOC
2. STRENGTHS
As a survey, the paper did a very good job in listing new models of open and distributed learning with just enough information, being very concise and easy to understand.
3. WEAKNESSES
The scope is very limited as an informative survey. More comparisons based on gathered performance data among different models could be included to give the paper more depth. The paper could have used more references.
