Designing participatory learning systems

Abstract

The knowledge society has opened up the possibility for people to design and construct the contexts of their own learning in entirely new ways and to cross the boundaries of existing communities and prevailing knowledge by creating novel and extended networks of learning. These new opportunities challenge educators to advance participatory pedagogy, and co-develop dynamic learning systems that connect students’ learning ecologies with multiple contexts and communities, their social practices, information resources, and tools. To meet these challenges, this chapter presents perspectives on participatory learning and introduces a design-oriented pedagogy (DOP) for connecting learning across spaces and communities. The presented research-based insights may help educators in different institutions to promote inquiry activities that enable students to participate in the co-development of the skills and ways of knowing needed in twenty-first-century society.