Transformative Networked Learning : An Expanded Design Framework for Individual, Group, and Social Perspective Transformations

Lee, Kyungmee and Bligh, Brett (2023) Transformative Networked Learning : An Expanded Design Framework for Individual, Group, and Social Perspective Transformations. In: Sustainable Networked Learning : Individual, Sociological and Design Perspectives. Research in Networked Learning . Springer, Cham, pp. 169-187. ISBN 9783031427176

Abstract

There has been the growing effort within a research community of networked learning (NL) to re-define the notion of NL. Contributing to such a collective effort, the authors argue that there is a significant distance between the community’s political aspirations and everyday practices—subsequently, the com-munity has exclusively focused on the “network” part of NL while neglecting the “learning” part. The chapter demonstrates how the NL theory and associated design principles have failed to translate the criticality of macro-level critiques into micro-level design practices. To address this issue, the authors propose an expanded design framework for transformative NL, consisting of three levels of interconnected NL communities: (i) internal NL communities in online courses that aim to transform individual students’ perspectives, (ii) external NL communities in students’ real-life contexts that aim to transform group practice, and (iii) social NL communities in broader contexts that aim to transform social perspectives. Thus, the emphasis of transformative NL design should not be restricted to facilitating learner interactions and knowledge acquisition inside an online course but expanded to helping learners’ holistic development and leading to meaningful changes in their lives outside the course. The authors conclude the chapter by drafting new transformative NL design principles.