This is a draft of the presentation that will be given at the HEA Social Sciences annual conference - Teaching forward: the future of the Social Sciences. For further details of the conference: http://bit.ly/1cRDx0p Bookings open until 19 May 2014 http://bit.ly/1hzCMLR or external.events@heacademy.ac.uk ABSTRACT This paper details an explorative and experimental project that is seeking to better implement virtual technologies of Web 2.0 into the pedagogy of higher education. Our project endeavours to position these technologies as a means of reorienting pedagogic practice within higher education around truly chaordic communities of practice that serve to develop digital citizens. We have undertaken this project with the belief that higher education should be concerned with answering the calls of our increasing digital society; that is to say become a place for foster digitally literate learners, who’s learning is not restricted to physical boundaries of the university but rather happens at all times over physical and virtual spaces.

1. Innovative
Pedagogies for the
Digital Age.
Will Roberts | Sean Longhurst | Daniel Newcombe
Oxford Brookes University | HEA Conference 2014

2. Introduction
.
+ The digital 21st century / The networked society:
- We inhabit different spaces, physical and virtual, sometimes simultaneously.
- We have new interfaces through which we experience the world, our self and the other (Zylinska, 2009).
- Epistemologically and ontologically our understanding of knowledge has changed; knowledge is multiple and how
we construct knowledge has changed in light of new technologies.
- The network society (Castells, 2010) has given us new ways of communicating (Turkle, 2010), and new
possibilities in terms of collaboration, identity construction and communication.
+ The McUniversity (Andrews, Silk and Francombe, 2013):
- Higher Education has experienced a McDonaldization (Ritzer, 1995).
- The University has become a corporate training ground focused on transferring specific skills for certain jobs
(Hayes and Wynyard, 2006).
- Not responded to the rise of the networked society or the evolution of digital citizens.
- Built upon principles of individualization, employment, competition, hierarchy and assessment.
+ Opposite trajectories.
- As society becomes increasingly based on collaboration and communication over social networks and more and
more of life is carried out within virtual spaces, where creation, collaboration and construction are guiding
principles, the university is becoming increasingly concerned with transferring specific predetermined knowledge
that is needed for specific industry roles positioning learning as a top-down, standardized and individualized
endeavor.

3. Learning
Theory.
+The context that learning is taking place in means Higher Education must change:
- Currently based on behaviourism and the transfer of industry defined skills.
- Currently ‘ learning’ is restricted to the physical space of the university and ‘learning’ is an activity chosen to engage with at certain times,
this conception of ‘learning’ is perceived as a process with a beginning and an end.
- Not facilitating the creation of digitally literate students prepared for life in the networked society as a digital citizen.
+ What we suggest it ought be:
- An education that is continuous and fluid within and through the university, making no distinction between beginning and end.
- An education that positions a cohort of students, and their teachers, in a democratic community where different knowledges are equally
valid and everyone in the community has ownership and agency over learning.
- The University has become a corporate training ground focused on transferring specific skills for certain jobs.
- Focused on digital literacy and critical thinking.
-Embraces the ontology and epistemology of knowledge within the digital 21st century.
- An education that places citizenship and collaboration with the other at the core
- We are not talking about E-learning or Moocs here, but rather harnessing the virtual spaces and communicative networks that students
use everyday; web 2.0 and social media.
+ Learning theory:
- Constructivist and non-linear pedagogy
- Embrace formal/non-formal and informal learning (Coombs and Ahmed,1974)
- Communities of Practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991)
- Zones of Proximal Development and scaffolding (Vygotsky)

4. Purpose
.
+ Explore and develop the theoretical concept of virtual or multi-realm chaordic
learning systems and their practical application.
+ Explore how we might reconfigure Higher Education learning around notions of
citizenship, digital literacy, collaboration and the appreciation of the other.
+ Explore how technology, practically social media networks and Web 2.0 can
enhance the learning experience of university students; a learning experience built
upon constructivist ideas of knowledge construction.
+ Better understand how we can equip students for life as digitally literate human
beings. By digitally literate we understand ‘being digitally literate’ not just as being
able to use new technologies, but also as understanding how they present new
interfaces through which to experience the world and new spaces to exist within,
which changes the way we understand the self, the world around us and how we
interact with the other.

5. Choardic Learning Systems
+ A Reconceptualising of Communities of Practice.
+ Problems with CoP in 21st Century Learning environment.
+ What is CLS and why is it different and more suited to learning in the 21st
century.
+ Diagrammatic illustration/explanation of choardic learning systems +

6. Implementation
.
+ Powerful Images Conference + Virtual
Seminars
+ Twitter + YouTube Video
Production
+ Google Hangout Tutorials +
Prezi
+ Google+ communities

7. The Student’s
Experience.

8. Google+
Communities.

9. Powerful Images
Conference.

10. Virtual
Seminars.

11. Twitter
.

12. Prezi
.

13. YouTube
Videos.

14. Google Hangout
Tutorials.

15. Reflections
.
+Digital citizenship + Facilitating (multi-realm) chaordic learning
systems
+ Reflective practice + (Digital)
citizenship
+ Developing collaboration and student ownership of learning +
Engagement
+ Assessment + Power
+ Digital trail +
Security

16. Moving
Forward.
+ What are the next steps?
+ Questions?
+ How can we improve these ideas?
+ New ideas?
+ How can we make this more grounding in learning theory
and give these ideas greater theoretical rigour?