Title of the course: Knowledge Media and Learning, KMDI 2003
Topic/Overview of course:
This course explores the various new media for learning, and the implications for knowledge communities of various kinds - see http://www.encorewiki.org/display/KMDI2003/Introduction
Number of students, and background of students
10-15 students, from the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) - which draws graduate students from computer science, education, information science, mechanical engineering, architecture, library sciences, sociology, and others.
Traditional challenges and opportunities in teaching your topic
With such topics, we are always challenged to practice what we preach: in other words, to use the new media, but not in the old message. No lectures, and try to implement some of these powerful new iedas like social tagging, semantic aggregation, immersive environments, etc - within the context of the course. HOW are people in the real world learning with these media? Can we as a class learn in the same ways? Such a "meta" aspect is difficult to convey to students, but it is exciting to try to get them on board.
Technologies employed
We used a wiki page for this purpose, building sub-pages for each week/theme of the course - to which we linked numerous Web applications, (e.g., for pod-casting, immersive environments, GIS systems, etc). The goal was to develop a "persistent home" for the course - allowing each new cohort of students to benefit from the aggregated experience of those who have gone before. This also reflects the "moving target" of the domain itself, as new media and new media practices emerge each year.
Innovative design approach
The wiki allowed us to develop activities, capture them for the present and future courses, and coordinate particiaption. We also captured all the resources, papers, readings, reports, Web sites, etc, and reviewed them. These were not pre-determined for the course, which is the essence of a knowledge community. So we needed a way to grow and mature our resources.
Evaluation (informal) and next steps.
While somewhat chaotic, we hope it become less so with each semester! One thing we heard from all the students: Never go back! They really enjoyed the increased sense of course ownership, and (in the opinion of the instructor) they flourished as a knowledge community. Five of the 14 of the students have volunteered to keep working on related projects with hte instructor, and two of them are continuing to help develop the wiki - all volunteer!