Howard Rheingold has written a case study using ds106 (UMW’s open, online version of the Computer Science Digital Storytelling course) as a model of participatory learning. The case study was published by the Connected Learning site, which is the community arm of the Digital Media Lab and Learning Research Hub at the University of California, Irvine.
ds106 was conceptualized, designed and taught by Martha Burtis, Jim Groom, and Alan Levine as part of the research and development they have been a part of at the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. The case study highlights a few approaches of the course:
- Faculty have to confront their discomfort with giving up some control to students, enabling students to help shape the assignments, set the tenor of the class, and even help form assessment criteria.
- Instructors must blog themselves. Groom finds that his blogging has particular benefits for him in terms of being a networked scholar, technologist, and teacher.
- Levine adds: “It’s more than blogging – as instructors, we do the same work we ask our students to do. This shifts the power dynamic of the teacher-student relationship.”
You can read the entire case study here, or check out the ds106 course here.