Title: New alignment for learning in a digital age

Abstract

In an age of ready access to people, online spaces and information, canonized formal knowledge acquisition is being disrupted. This presentation begins to unlock concepts and ideas associated with connected learning. It draws from research associated with New Alignments for the Digital Age: Insights into Connected Learning. A strong nuance about connected learning is that it is user-driven and self-orientating rather than externally determined, meaning that a quasi environment may be ‘created’ but the learning connections are individually made. Additionally, underpinning connected learning is the emergence of socially constructed knowledge which has implications for knowledge ownership, knowledge truth, knowledge formation and the merging of formal with informal processes for knowledge construction. Connected learning can not be considered wholly in the online realm. Rather it is embodied in every sense to an individual’s interest, interconnected experiences that transcend temporal, spatial and cultural boundaries. As such our conceptualisation of connected learning needs to deepen to effectively be able to rationalise how people learn in a digital age. In this presentations key concepts will be illustrated through current examples of connected learning both in formal settings, include learning communities and informal learning environments. In this approach the complexities of conceptualised self-driven global learning interactions will be explored.