The Future of Learning with Technology
Dr. Kemi Jona
The cyberlearning community in the United States brings computer scientists and learning scientists together to design and study innovative learning technologies. The Cyberlearning Community Report: The State of Cyberlearning and the Future of Learning With Technology highlights examples of the work the community is engaged in, integrating the latest innovations in learning science and computer science into new research designs and methods.
Dr. Kemi Jona, a computer scientist, Founding Director of the Lowell Institute School and Associate Dean for Undergraduate programs at Northeastern College of Professional Studies is a co-author of chapter 5: Remote Scientific Labs: Authenticity at a Distance.
The report, organized by the Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL) and co-authored by 22 members of the U.S. cyberlearning community, describes six design themes emerging across multiple National Science Foundation-funded cyberlearning projects:
- Community Mapping: Moving and Discovering across Contexts
- Expressive Construction: Enabling Learners to Represent Powerful Ideas
- Classrooms as Digital Performance Spaces
- Virtual Peers and Coaches: Social and Cognitive Support for Learning
- Remote Scientific Labs: Authenticity at a Distance
- Enhancing Collaboration and Learning through Touch Screen Interfaces
For each design theme, the report highlights computer science and learning science innovations, provides examples, and discusses opportunities and challenges. The design themes contrast with today’s common tablet or laptop-based school products by emphasizing context, mobility, physicality, agency, authenticity, and social learning.
The authors also highlight how cyberlearning researchers are advancing methods to study and improve these learning designs, in particular:
- Multimodal Analysis
- Learning Analytics for Assessment
- User- and Community-Centered Design Methods
The report is published by the Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Cyberlearning Program and by other programs across NSF that fund cyberlearning-themed projects. The report was edited by Jeremy Roschelle, Wendy Martin, Juhn Ahn, and Patricia Schank.
Download the report here.