Courses

Course Organization | Courses | Capstone Project

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Course Organization

This program pushes the boundaries of theory and practice, forging strong connections between the two. It encourages lateral relationships of professional learning amongst course participants (all qualified teachers), focusing on the effect of this collaborative professional learning on the performance and outcomes of their students.

Lateral Relationships of Professional Learning

The New Learning and New Literacies masters degree program aims to build new practices of professional knowledge making and sharing. It requires high levels of reciprocity, based on principles of collaborative knowledge construction and social networking. Even though this is an online program higher levels of participant interaction and purposeful networking are anticipated than is the case in face-to-face classrooms. Key points of social responsibility include:

• Collaborative construction of a conceptual schema for a theory wiki; contribution of one concept page to theory wiki; review of other pages; redrafting of concept page and links to other pages.
• Participation in online classes by introducing one theme or concept and facilitating discussion on that theme or concept.
• Multiple points of self and peer assessment, plus reflexive review-the-reviewer responses.

The Eight Substantive Courses

Each course will challenge participants intellectually by introducing them to key theorists from within and beyond the discipline of education. Participants are asked to read short extracts from prominent theorists at the course website and contribute to a theory wiki which will build a collaboratively constructed conceptual schema for the course.

Each participant will also develop a 500-1000 word definition for one key concept and post it to the concept wiki, referencing the wiki entry with footnotes to key educational theorists, policies and relevant research findings. The participant will also source and provide one supporting 500 word extract from a book, one 500 extract from an academic article, and one annotated link to a website, blog or online video.

In parallel with each Learning Element, program participants will join a new media atelier, using these new media skills as a component of the Learning Element. For instance:

• Digital video
• Comics, machinima, storyboard or Flash
• Virtual worlds
• Wikis
• Blogging
• Using MySpace, Facebook or other web profiling
• PowerPoint

Participants will read and peer review wiki entries published each week. Reviewers will also be reviewed for the usefulness and relevance of their reviews to the authors of the texts they are reviewing. Once all concepts are posted to the wiki, participants will rewrite their contributions, making links to as many other relevant and related concepts as possible. Participants will also make links to the theory wiki in their practice-based Learning Element (created in the parallel Capstone Projects).

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Courses

*four terms per year, over two years

Course 1: EPS 431: New Learning

An introduction to the changing social and cultural contexts of education. What changes are afoot today in workplaces, civic life and everyday community life? What are their implications for education? This course will examine the possible impacts of contemporary social transformations on teaching and learning, including in the areas of technology, media, globalization, diversity, and changing forms of work - and, in these contexts, changing learner needs and sensibilities. The course will contrast classical theories and practices of education with new and emerging educational, policies, institutions and pedagogies.

We begin by examining the political and community expectations of schooling in the contemporary era-frequently characterized as the 'knowledge society'. How are these expectations expressed in the public discourse of politics? What value is accorded to education today, and does the reality match the rhetoric?

The course then goes on to investigate the proposition that we are reaching a point where education has a particularly critical social significance. What is this social significance, and what are the dimensions of a 'New Learning' which might meet changed and broadened expectations?

In order to answer these questions, the course takes an historical journey through three eras and three paradigms in the development of modern, mass-institutional education: didactic education, authentic education and a transformative education that might be characteristic of the New Learning.

Course 2: EPS 405: Historical and Social Barriers to Education

In this course we will examine the cultural and political relationship between race, class, and gender and citizenship and schooling. Particular emphasis is placed on how the construction of the citizen has been used as a tool to further deny equal participation in the public sphere such as schools.

Course 3: EPS 532: Knowledge, Learning and Pedagogy

This course investigates a number of policy and pedagogical paradigms, including the didactic, authentic and transformative. It develops the concept of a pedagogical repertoire, as a way of interpreting the ways in which learners engage in a variety of 'knowledge processes' or task types. The course introduces major philosophies or theories of knowledge. As a counterpoint, it also reflects on the practicalities of learner knowledge-making in informal as well as consciously designed learning environments.

Course 4: EPSY 400: Psychology of Learning in Education

Presented by the Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education.

Course 5: CI560: Trends and Issues in Language Arts

This course is designed to meet the needs of both masters and doctoral level students who are interested in understanding issues facing language arts teachers and teachers of other subjects requiring students to read and write. It will introduce the 'Multiliteracies' theory of literacy learning which recognizes that the contemporary communications environment is increasingly multimodal. Written language today is more closely connected with oral, visual, gestural, tactile and spatial modes. To remain relevant, effective literacy pedagogy needs to connect with the new communications media, and to explore their underlying 'grammars'. The most powerful and effective learning today involves learners switching modes, a process of 'synesthesia'. The course will focus on current trends in language arts instruction and explore current research and practice in reading, writing, listening and speaking through readings and assignments. Participants will examine teaching methods including reading, literature circles, process writing, and critical literacy while considering how to address the needs of students from diverse backgrounds within current social and political contexts. The course will also investigate the implications of new media of language and literacy and explore the implications of developments in the contemporary media, particularly the new, digital media.

Course 6: SPED 413: Using New Media to Address Learner Differences

An investigation of the dimensions of learner diversity: material (class, locale, family), corporeal (age, race, sex and sexuality, and physical and mental characteristics) and symbolic (culture, language, gender, affinity and persona). This course examines socio-cultural theories of difference, and considers alternative responses to these differences in educational settings-ranging from broad social, policy and institutional responses to specific pedagogical responses within classes of students.

Course 7: HRE 572: e-Learning Ecologies

An examination of emerging environments of e-learning, some of which set out to emulate the heritage social relationships and discourses of the classroom, others of which attempt to create new forms of learning. The course aims to push the imaginative boundaries of what might be possible in e-learning environments and educational policy.

Course 8: EPS 535: Assessment for Learning

An investigation of how we can we make assessment integral to the learning process, and the affordances in the new technologies which allow for the integration of formative and summative and assessment and evaluation.

PLUS

Courses 9a and 9b: EPS 500 NL: Capstone Projects

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The Capstone Project Sequence

Every participant will either singly or in a two or three-person group to write two Learning Elements over the two-year program. A Learning Element is a lesson planning tool consisting of

1. A plan, drafted before you start to teach,
2. A resource for teachers and learners as they undertake the learning task, and then
3. When the teaching is over and the authors have had an opportunity to revise, the Learning Element becomes a retrospective record based on what actually happened in the teaching process, and a resource that can be made available to peers.

For more information, visit the Learning by Design website: http://newlearningonline.com/learning-by-design/

The Learning Element should be about something (anything) that at least one member of the group is able to teach at some point during a six month period. Stages in the development of the Learning Element are as follows:

• 'Placemat' Plan
• Draft 1, to peer review
• Draft 2, redrafted in the light of pre-trial peer review feedback
• Draft 3A, redrafted post teaching, with 'Reflective Practitioner Commentary'
• Draft 3B, with links made to theory wiki in the 'Knowledge Objectives' section, to peer review
• Showcase presentation to class conference, with support of short video of class activities or PowerPoint etc.
• Final Draft in the light of class conference feedback and Draft 3 peer review

The schedule for the Capstone Projects is as follows:

Term 1

• Analysis of course participants' current practices
• Baseline data on learner responses
• An introduction to the Learning Element

Terms 2-4

• Create Learning Element #1
• Reflective Practice Weblog

Terms 4-7

• Create Learning Element #2
• Reflective Practice Weblog

Term 8

• Revise and complete Learning Elements 1-2
• Review data on learner responses
• Reflection on changing professional practice

Assessment

As the Learning Element will often be collaboratively written, both/all authors of the same Learning Element will be given the same mark, moderated by group members' assessments of the others' relative contributions. (Note: this leaves some latitude for extraordinary events such as illness during the course, when one author can cover for another. However, given the closely interlocked, reciprocal nature of the learning and evaluation process in this course, extended non-participation-beyond a week or two-is not possible.)

New Media Atelier

The following table illustrates the relationship between the eight 10-week substantive courses and the two capstone projects which are designed to span the entire academic year. Participants will collaborate to apply core concepts learned in the substantive courses by designing and testing Learning Concepts in actual classroom settings, as well as self- and peer-reviewing the Learning Concepts.

Term		Source Materials for Core Concepts	Multimodal Practices the relation of the medium to multimodal practices	EPS 500 - CAPSTONE PROJECT (full two years)
1	EPS 431: New Learning	New Learning book by Kalantzis and Cope: Preface Chapter 1: New Learning Chapter 2: Life in Schools - Teacher as researcher	PowerPoint/Keynote; follows e-probe Facebook/MySpace (e.g. special identities, privacy settings)	Digital primer pack: designed to last several weeks, in several stages Discussion in Elluminate sessions week by week Sessions in one-day conference - week 4
2	EPS 405: Historical and Social Barriers	Chapter 3: Learning for Work Chapter 4: Learning Civics Chapter 5: Learning Personalities Reading/analysing profile of students	Flickr Podcasting	Draft Learning Element 2; peer review of draft Intro rubrics and assessment
3	EPS 532: Knowledge, Learning and Pedagogy	Chapter 6: The Nature of Learning Chapter 7: Knowledge and Learning Chapter 8: Pedagogy and Curriculum Chapter 9: Learning Communities at Work Conclusion Futures of Education	Video YouTube	Learning Element 2; redraft, the reflective practitioner Showcasing second last draft of Learning Element 1 session at conference
4	EPSY 400: Psychology of Learning in Education			Final draft Learning Element 1
5	CI 560: Trends and Issues in Language Arts	Literacies Book, by Kalantzis and Cope Multiliteracies metanarrative with breakout boxes	Virtual worlds, e.g. Second Life	Draft Learning Element 2; peer review of draft
6	SPED 413: New Media and Learner Differences	Literacies Book, by Kalantzis and Cope	Comics, machinima, storyboards	Learning Element 2; redraft; the reflective practitioner
7	HRE 572: e-Learning Ecologies			Showcasing second last draft of Learning Element 2 session at conference
8	EPS 535: Assessment for Learning			Final draft Learning Element 2

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