SUPPORTING SELF-DIRECTED LEARNERS AND LEARNING COMMUNITIES WITH SOCIOTECHNICAL ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Making learning part of life is an essential challenge for inventing the future of our societies. Lifelong learning is a necessity rather than a possibility or a luxury to be considered. Self-directed learning (often occurring as learning on demand in response to breakdowns) is the dominant form of lifelong learning. The power of the unaided individual mind is highly overrated. Although society often thinks of creative individuals as working in isolation, learning and creativity result in large part from the interaction and collaboration with other individuals. Much human creativity is social, and learning communities are needed to cope with the challenges of making learning part of life.

This paper articulates existing problems in our current and future world requiring lifelong and self-directed learning and learning communities. It defines conceptual frame- works and it describes four innovative computational environments: (1) domain-oriented design environments, (2) critiquing systems, (3) the Envisionment and Discovery Col- laboratory, and (4) Caretta. The paper concludes by providing a set of challenges for the future use of technology to enhance learning based on the conceptual frameworks and the experience and assessment of our system development efforts.