Educational Technology Magazine

Special Issue

March/April 2002

 

The special issue of Educational Technology Magazine on the implications that broadening of the definition of learning would have for educators and educational technologists has come out. Yusra Laila Visser (Florida State University & Learning Development Institute), Gordon Rowland (Ithaca College), and Jan Visser (Learning Development Institute) are the guest editors who coordinated this special issue. The idea behind the issue is that narrow definitions of the past have, perhaps unconsciously, limited our thinking about the nature and range of options we consider in selecting or creating instructional methods, learning environments and tools. The initiative for this Special Issue came in the wake of the debate generated by LDI during two successive AECT meetings (Long Beach 2000 and Denver 2000). That debate is reflected elsewhere on this Web site, particularly in the framework of the Meaning of Learning (MOL) project.

For this Special Issue we gathered together a group of authors whose work is known to include keen insights on what a broad definition of learning might imply. Some articles report results of research; others are conceptual and/or theoretical. The following authors (listed alphabetically) contributed to this special issue. The titles of their articles as well as brief bio information are listed with their names.

Ron Burnett: Context, Technology, Communication and Learning.

Ron Burnett is President of the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design
and former Director, Graduate Program in Communications, McGill
University. He is the author of Cultures of Vision: Images, Media and
the Imaginary (Indiana University Press, 1996) and of the forthcoming,
How Images Think (MIT Press) and founder of Canada's first major Journal
in Communications and Cultural Studies, Ciné-Tracts.

 

Tina Grotzer: Expanding Our Vision for Educational Technology: Procedural, Conceptual, and Structural Knowledge.

Tina Grotzer is Principal Investigator in the Understandings of
Consequence Project/Cognitive Skills Group, Project Zero, Harvard
Graduate School of Education.

 

David Jonassen: Learning as activity.

David Jonassen is Distinguished Professor of Learning Technologies and

Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Missouri.

 

Jeroen J. G. van Merrienboer, Norbert M. Seel and Paul A. Kirschner: Mental Models as a New Foundation for ID.

Jeroen J. G. van Merriënboer is Professor in the Educational Technology
Expertise Center of the Open University of the Netherlands.

Norbert M. Seel, Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany.

Paul A. Kirschner, Open University of the Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands

 

Paul Nussbaum: Learning: Towards health and the human condition.

Paul David Nussbaum is a clinical neuropsychologist and consultant

on aging across the lifespan. He is Assistant Professor of Neurology

at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Deborah Perry: Profound Learning: Stories from Museums.

Deborah Perry is currently Director of Selinda Research Associates in
Chicago, and President of the international Visitor Studies Association.

She was formerly co-director of the Informal Learning Program at the
University of Chicago, and Project Manager for the Museum Impact and
Evaluation Study at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

 

Gordon Rowland, John Hetherington, and Jennifer Raasch: The individual nature of powerful learning experience.

Gordon Rowland is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of
Organizational Communication, Learning, and Design at Ithaca College.

John Hetherington is an adjunct faculty member at State University of
New York, Empire State College, and the SUNY Learning Network.

Jennifer Raasch is an instructional technology consultant at the
University of Redlands.

 

Gavriel Salomon: Technology and pedagogy: Why don't we see the promised revolution?.

Gavriel Salomon, past dean of the Faculty of Education at the University
of Haifa, Israel, is a professor of educational psychology there. He is
currently co-director of the Center for Research on Peace Education.
Salomon is the receipient of the 2001 Israeli National Award for Scientific
Achievements in Educational Research.

 

John Shotter: Undefining learning: "Participative learning" within dialogically structured activities.

John Shotter is a professor of interpersonal relations and chair in the
Department of Communication, University of New Hampshire. He is the
author of Social Accountability and Selfhood (Blackwell, 1984), Cultural
Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructionism, Rhetoric, and Knowing of

the Third Kind (Open University, 1993), and Conversational Realities: the
Construction of Life through Language (Sage, 1993).

Jim Spohrer: The meaning of learning from the perspective of rapid technological change.

Jim Spohrer is Chief Technology Officer with the IBM Venture Capital
Relations Group at the IBM Almaden Research Center as well as one of

the co-founders of the Educational Object Economy.

 

David Solomon: A Pirate's life: A model and a metaphor for learning.

David L. Solomon is a Creative Director in training operations at PentaMark

Worldwide, the agency of record for DaimlerChrysler. He is also Head Coach

of the Michigan Pirates Squirt AA Travel Hockey Team.

 

Jan Visser & Yusra Laila Visser: Undefining learning: Implications for instructional designers and educational technologists.

Jan Visser is President and Senior Researcher at the Learning Development

Institute. He is also the former UNESCO Director for "Learning Without Frontiers"

and a theoretical physicist by original vocation.
Yusra Laila Visser is Vice President and Researcher at the Learning

Development Institute as well as instructional designer for the Open and

Distance Learning program in Florida State University's Department of

Educational Research.