Abstract

Self-directed learning is generally considered a core 21st century competence and is one of the priority learning outcome goals that e-Learning should foster. The biggest challenge in achieving this goal is not in having access to the technology, but changing the pedagogy. Pedagogical innovations, whether technology is used or not, are difficult to sustain because these pose serious learning challenges not only to the teachers, but to the entire school. Often, challenges are address through various approaches to providing professional development opportunities to teachers. In this talk, I will explain why such approaches will not result in scalable innovations as the fundamental nature of the challenge is one of aligning learning at multilevel levels. For innovation projects to succeed in scaling, their designs need to incorporate architectures for multilevel, multiscale  learning. I will introduce how this theoretical framework has been implemented in a government funded project titled “Self-Directed Learning in Science (SDLS) with e-Learning Support for Learner Diversity and Smooth Primary-Secondary Transition” (http://sdls.cite.hku.hk/) in Hong Kong. In particular, I will describe the crucial features and conditions in schools that had made the most spectacular progress in the first year of the project and illustrate how the successful schools leveraged the network learning approach of the project to build a strong learning community within the school.

Speaker Bio

Professor Nancy Law was the founding the director for the Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE) at the University of Hong Kong and is currently serving as its Deputy Director. She is also the co-convenor for the Science of Learning Strategic Research Theme corresponding at the University. Professor Law is internationally known for her work in the area of applying information technology (IT) to enhance learning and teaching, particularly in the area of international comparative studies of pedagogical innovations using IT, models of ICT integration in schools and change leadership, and IT-supported knowledge building for students, teachers and professional communities. A unique feature of her research is the depth of analyses and the remarkable breadth spanning many levels, from classrooms and schools to whole educational systems—characteristics she considers to be essential to address, both in theory and in practice, the sustainability and scalability of IT-supported educational innovations. Her current research focus is to apply design-based research methods to build network models of innovation that integrate teacher professional development and school leadership development with pedagogy, assessment and learning technology co-design. She  is developing a technology platform—the Learning Design Studio—to serve as a design tool, an archiving and collaboration platform that will hopefully contribute to changing teachers as instruction professionals to designers of learning experiences