E-learning is much more than the use of an online learning system. It comes with a full package of social as well as technological innovations and a set of new practices associated with online, group and collaborative practice. In adopting new practices of online learning, we take on and adopt new concepts about what it means to be a learner including new roles, presence in multiple communities, new literacies, mobility across locations and platforms, and the practices of collaborative and participatory learning. To fully understand and manage in the midst of this transformation, we need to take an expanded view of e-learning, seeing it as interconnected with changes in where we learn, from whom, and from what resources.

This presentation discusses what is involved in learning ‘to be’ an e-learner, including the ability to learn in and with communities in the development of identity, new roles and relationships, and how to be distributed, technology supported and knowledge creating communities. Ideas of collaborative learning, expansive learning, communities of practice, social capital, and entrepreneurial learning inform this talk, as do the many studies of online learners. These perspectives contribute to understanding the dimensions of activity that encompass learning on and through the Internet, and the processes involved in becoming a fluent, engaged and ubiquitous e-learner.

Presenter Bio

Caroline Haythornthwaite is Director and Professor at SLAIS, The iSchool at UBC. She joined UBC in 2010 after 14 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. In 2009-10, she was Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London presenting and writing on ‘Learning Networks’. Her research concentrates on information and knowledge sharing through social networks and the impact of computer media and the Internet on work, learning and social interaction. Her research includes empirical and theoretical work on social networks and media use, the development and nature of community online, and distributed knowledge processes. Recent work includes exploration of motivations for participation in crowds and communities, and the development of automated processes for analysis of online learning activity. Her major publications include E-learning Theory and Practice (Sage, 2011, with Richard Andrews), the Handbook of E-learning Research (Sage, 2007, with Richard Andrews), Learning, Culture and Community in Online Education: Research and Practice (Peter Lang publishers, 2004, with Michelle M. Kazmer), and The Internet in Everyday Life (Blackwell, 2002, with Barry Wellman).