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Laboratory for Interactive Learning Technologies |
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LILT, Dept. of ICS • University of Hawai`i at Manoa • 1680 East-West Road, POST 309 • Honolulu, HI 96822 • 1-808-956-3890
Engaged Learning in Online Communities: A New Collaboration
LILT is participating in a collaboration that has received a Science of Learning Center Catalyst award from the National Science Foundation.
The Engaged Learning in Online Communities partnership is led by Gerry Stahl (PI) at Drexel University (www.cis.drexel.edu), Sharon Derry at the University of Wisconson-Madison's Wisconsin Center for Education Research (www.wcer.wisc.edu), Mary Marlino of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (www.dlese.org), Ann Renninger of Swarthmore University and Math Forum (mathforum.org), and Dan Suthers of at the University of Hawai'i Laboratory for Interactive Learning Technologies (lilt.ics.hawaii.edu).
The goal of this project is to plan and lay the groundwork for an NSF-supported Sciences of Learning Center (SLC) focused on engaged learning in online communities. Increasingly, learners are seeking out and engaging with other learners and with digital resources in online communities. Despite the exciting, open-ended potentials of online learning, little is known today about how deep and engaged learning occurs in online communities, how group configurations and community structures matter, or how learning by online groups can be supported to develop over time. This Center will generate, conduct and review research into fundamental scientific questions about the potentials of online communities to promote engaged learning.
Project participants have already held two planning meetings in Philadelphia and Madison, and are initiating collaborative projects that investigate issues of online learning ranging from microanalysis of technology-mediated meaning making in small groups to examination of organizational issues in supporting online learning communities, such as might form between users of digital libraries.
A project web site is at http://engaged.hnlc.org. The NSF award announcement is available at http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0518477