Unit 4: Overview

Unit 4 begins to capitalize on the work we’re doing together with our teams and pods. We are beginning to see how “thinking with authority” as we develop each new application scenario and analyze each new case also creates opportunities for our teams and pods to hold everyone accountable to the ideas that the readings “equip” us with  as well as the authentic real-world settings in which these ideas operate. Again these ideas are emerging within each unit and in relation to previous units. They include broad insights into how people learn featured in How People Learn as well as the specific perspectives on instructional design and the connections these insights and perspectives make to instructional design approaches and tools featured in Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology.

Unit 4 concentrates on a chapter concerning the design of learning environments in How People Learn, which begins to explicitly relate prior chapters about expertise, learning transfer, how children learn, and the brain and the mind to the ways we might design for learning based on these broad insights. Unit 4 also features two additional chapters from Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology:

• connectivism
• Learning communities as an instructional model