This presentation looks at the affordances of technologies employed for teaching and learning in distance education. Specifically, it looks at LMS systems and their support for group learning. It then examines the need for networked and set-based learning and the tools that best support these in formal education and lifelong learning. Building on the ideas of our 2014 open access book, Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media, we illustrate with demonstrations of our Elgg-based social network, Athabasca Landing, a next generation of distance education tools. We argue that social networks create spaces that allow for generative learning that is owned by learners and persists beyond the end of a course. Rather than use commercial systems such as LinkedIn or Facebook, we argue that institutionally owned “walled gardens with windows” offer a more effective and more controllable environment to support networked and set-based learning.
Of Interest to: Online and distance education, Post-secondary education, Instructional designers, Researchers, Educational technologists
