The purpose of the Working Sessions at is to bring together groups of people to work on issues relating to the future of the cyberlearning community. The session provides small groups time to learn from each other and plan potential collaborative work.

This year the working session groups will focus on sharing ideas generated at a series of NSF-funded workshops led by Cyberlearning researchers over this past year, as well as one session that is geared toward participants who want to learn more about producing a primer, design reflection, or workshop outcomes report for the Rapid Community Reports Series.

Working Sessions

Celebrate/Disrupt Cyberlearning

Jill Castek, Joyce Malyn-Smith, Laurie O. Campbell

At a series of workshops that Cyberlearning researchers conducted over this past year, participants discussed the current and future landscape of Cyberlearning research. Considering insights and findings from cyberlearning workshops in 2019/2019, participants will work together to conceptualize today’s model of cyberlearning research. In this interactive session, participants will work together to build out a model where we surface aspects of celebrating/disrupting and build toward common understandings. Active, participatory discussions will be anchored in a basic model and provide jumping off points for potential new inputs, factors, insights, and challenges that might disrupt the working model. Essential questions include: (1) What drives commitments to cyberlearning? (2) What is worth celebrating in our field? (3) What patterns might we let go of? (4) How might disruption advance our work? The ensuing dialogue will serve to strengthen our collective cyberlearning work and develop action plans for future research, practice, and networking.

Documenting Learning and Competencies across Settings and Longitudinally

Stephanie Teasley, Henry Kelly

In our NSF funded workshop, we invited participants to think about whether universities are doing an effective job in providing prospective employers with graduates who have the capabilities and competencies needed for today’s job market or providing employers with useful measures of these capabilities (e.g. what graduates can do, not just what they know). Given that new technologies can bring some powerful new ways to measure competencies and provide new forms of credentials, a major goal of the workshop was to bring together scholars with expertise that has not yet been closely connected with learning research. Foremost among these were data scientists who have made dramatic contributions in other parts of the economy, and people in the business community who have made major investments in areas like “people analytics” and various methods for defining and measuring workplace competence. In this Cyberlearning Summit, we invite participants to reflect on how their research– with learners of all ages– is most likely to leverage new forms of data about learning and to harness modern data analytic tools to address three critical questions in learning: (1) How can we define the educational outcomes, competencies, and habits of mind that are goals for higher education? (2) How can these competencies be measured and communicated? (3) How can innovations in approaches to learning (technology & pedagogy) be evaluated?

Design Principles for Cyberlearning

Sheryl Burgstahler, Lyla Crawford

In this session we will explore principles and practices that can be applied to cyberlearning technology and pedagogy to make it inclusive of all faculty and students, including those with disabilities. The group will discuss promising practices in both research and implementation as well as the role of stakeholder groups in promoting inclusive practices. Working group leaders will share ideas generated at a series of workshops that cyberlearning researchers conducted over this past year and their corresponding white papers that include literature reviews and recommendations for future cyberlearning research and practice. Participants will summarize design principles for cyberlearning research and practice that were identified in these white papers. Taking a gap analysis approach, they will then discuss further accessible design principles, if any, that exist or should be created to inform future cyberlearning research and practice. Participants will work together to identify important issues for the cyberlearning community to address going forward. The group will plan potential collaborative work, that may include producing a primer, design reflection, or workshop outcomes report for the Rapid Community Reports Series (rapidcommunityreports.circlcenter.org).

Towards a Framework for Interest-Driven Creators

Tak Wai Chan, Eric Hamilton, Jeremy Roschelle

Interest-driven learning is an important theme in cyberlearning research. In this working group, participants will consider how a broad theoretical framework for interest-driven learning might strengthen collaborations and accelerate research. To start the discussion, Tak Wai Chan (National Central University, Taiwan) will present the work of Asian scholars to build a unified framework called Interest-Driven Creators (IDC) theory. Jeremy Roschelle and Eric Hamilton will share thoughts on how IDC or a similar theory could be useful in US-based cyberlearning research. We will then invite participants to join the discussion. In particular, we’ll ask participants to consider the need for framework or theory at the level of IDC in our research community, what constructs should be featured, and how the community might use the resulting theory. We will invite participants to collaborate on ideas to advance cyberlearning research by articulating shared theories or frameworks for interest-driven learning.

Rapid Community Reports: Accelerating Knowledge Sharing across Stakeholders

Quinn Burke, Carly Chillmon, Patti Schank

Rapid Community Reports (RCR) is a new series –– parallel to conferences and journals –– for prompt and early dissemination of research-based ideas through brief (3-6 page), peer-reviewed, citable, open access publications that are expressly aimed at reaching wide audiences, including practitioners. Initially, we are focusing on three types of RCRs: primers (short introductions to a key topic in learning sciences and technology), workshop outcomes (resulting from a focused meeting on a certain theme), and design reflections (critical examination of an emerging research design). See the call for submissions at rapidcommunityreports.circlcenter.org for more information about each type. This session is for participants who want to learn more about producing a primer, design reflection, or workshop outcomes report for the RCR Series — or for those would like to help shape the RCR effort by joining the editorial board. The RCR series is co-sponsored by the ISLS and CIRCL.