Jon Dron

Athabasca University · School of Computing and Information Systems

This manifesto critically examines the unfolding integration of Generative AI (GenAI), chatbots, and algorithms into higher education, using a collective and thoughtful approach to navigate the future of teaching and learning. GenAI, while celebrated for its potential to personalize learning, enhance efficiency, and expand educational accessibility...

This manifesto critically examines the unfolding integration of Generative AI (GenAI), chatbots, and algorithms into higher education, using a collective and thoughtful approach to navigate the future of teaching and learning. GenAI, while celebrated for its potential to personalize learning, enhance efficiency, and expand educational accessibility...

This paper presents the concept of technological distance, which describes a gap between technologies (broadly defined to include methods, tools, principles, and processes) available for a learner to learn, and those needed to complete that learning. This gap is a measure of both the participation and autonomy of learners in the process. Available...

This paper analyzes the ways that the widespread use of generative AIs (GAIs) in education and, more broadly, in contributing to and reflecting the collective intelligence of our species, can and will change us. Methodologically, the paper applies a theoretical model and grounded argument to present a case that GAIs are different in kind from all p...

This paper applies a theoretical model to analyze the ways that widespread use of generative AIs (GAIs) in education and, more broadly, in contributing to and reflecting the collective intelligence of our species, can and will change us. The model extends Brian Arthur’s insights into the nature of technologies as the orchestration of phenomena to o...

This collection of reflective essays is a treasure trove of advice, reflection and hard-won experience from experts in the field of open and distance education. Each chapter offers tried-and-tested advice for nascent academic writers, delivered with personal, rich, and wonderful stories of the authors’ careers, their process, their research and the...

The “distance” in “distance learning”, however it is defined, normally refers to a gap between a learner and their teacher(s), typically in a formal context. In this paper I take a slightly different view. The paper begins with an argument that teaching is fundamentally a technological process. It is, though, a vastly complex, massively distributed...

Governments, business leaders, educators, students, and parents realize the need to inculcate a culture of lifelong learning – learning that spans geography, time, and lifespan. This learning has both formal and informal components. In this chapter, we examine the conceptual basis upon which informal learning is defined and some of the tools and te...

Building on earlier work that identified historical paradigm shifts in open and distance learning, this chapter is concerned with analyzing the three broad pedagogical paradigms – objectivist, subjectivist, and complexivist – that have characterized learning and teaching in the field over the past half century. It goes on to discuss new paradigms t...

While ChatGPT has recently become very popular, AI has a long history and philosophy. This paper intends to explore the promises and pitfalls of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) AI and potentially future technologies by adopting a speculative methodology. Speculative future narratives with a specific focus on educational contexts are pr...

In online educational systems, teachers often replicate pedagogical methods, and online institutions replicate systems and structures used by their in-person counterparts, the only purpose of which was to solve problems created by having to teach in a physical environment. Likewise, virtual learning environments often attempt to replicate features...

E-texts have many advantages over their paper counterparts, especially when they are reflowable and available as open educational resources (OERs). Unfortunately, research suggests that e-texts are, on the whole, less memorable than p-texts, in part due to their relative lack of visual navigational landmarks that help to anchor recall. The Landmark...

E-texts have many advantages over their paper counterparts, especially when they are reflowable and available as open educational resources (OERs). Unfortunately, research suggests that e-texts are, on the whole, less memorable than p-texts, in part due to their relative lack of visual navigational landmarks that help to anchor recall. The Landmark...

To be human is to be a user, a creator, a participant, and a co-participant in a richly entangled tapestry of technologies – from computers to pedagogical methods - that make us who we are as much as our genes. The uses we make of technologies are themselves, nearly always, also technologies, techniques we add to the entangled mix to create new ass...

This theoretical paper elucidates the nature of educational technology and, in the process, sheds light on a number of phenomena in educational systems, from the no-significant-difference phenomenon to the singular lack of replication in studies of educational technologies. Its central thesis is that we are not just users of technologies but copart...

The rich promise of social software in formal education can be offset by a clash between hierarchical organisational structures and the bottom-up, distributed nature that characterizes network development and growth. Learners often experience confusion when using social networking systems within formal education systems, negating many of the potent...

It is fruitless to talk of smart learning environments unless we know what is meant by those that are not smart. All environments influence behaviour and, by and large, are in turn influenced by the behaviour of the agents of which they are at least partially comprised. If there were such thing as a neutral learning environment it would support all...

This paper reports on the utilization of an online communitynet-working platform designed to deliver a MOOC. The customized Elgg social software platform, implemented as the Curtin Learning Commons, was developed with social networking tools organized to support personalized learning. The MOOC, titled Participating in the Digital Age (PDA), engaged...

Since 2012 MOOCs have been heralded as a new way of learning outside of formal university programs of study and there has been much speculation regarding their impact. While MOOCs have provided millions of global learners with access to courses, they failed to deliver the types of learning experiences and completion requirements that were hoped for...

This chapter is concerned with the ways that people can and do learn together, from and with one another. After discussing the benefits of dyads (pairs of people), we explain our typology of social forms, categorizing social groupings as sets, nets, and groups, along with an emergent entity, the collective, which arises from them. We describe the p...

Many MOOCs rely on instructivist pedagogies, in which teaching follows a top-down transmission model. Whether they follow a behaviourist, cognitivist or constructivist path, teachers guide or dictate activities as well as provide information that learners use in learning. In most cases, learners are not treated as sources of knowledge but as recipi...

Many MOOCs rely on instructivist pedagogies, in which teaching follows a top-down transmission model. Whether they follow a behaviourist, cognitivist or constructivist path, teachers guide or dictate activities as well as provide information that learners use in learning. In most cases, learners are not treated as sources of knowledge but as recipi...

Throughout educational settings there are a range of open-focused learning activities along with those that are much more closed and structured. The plethora of opportunities creates a confusing melee of opportunities for teachers as they attempt to create activities that will engage and motivate learners. In this chapter, the authors demonstrate a...

In this paper we present a case study of a self-paced university course that was originally designed to support independent, self-paced study at distance. We developed a social media intervention, in design-based research terms, that allows these independent students to contribute archived content to enhance the course, to engage in discussions wit...

This paper presents two conceptual models that we have developed for understanding ways that social media can support learning. One model relates to the “social” aspect of social media, describing the different ways that people can learn with and from each other, in one or more of three social forms: groups, networks and sets. The other model relat...

Read/write social technologies enable rich pedagogies that centre on sharing and constructing content but have two notable weaknesses. Firstly, beyond the safe, nurturing environment of closed groups, students participating in more or less public network- or set-oriented communities may be insecure in their knowledge and skills, leading to resistan...

This chapter is concerned with the use of collectives, in which multiple agents interact leading to emergent behaviors, to support learning in virtual environments. Through social navigation processes, in which the activities of previous visitors to an immersive space are fed back through an interface to influence or determine the paths of future v...

p>Se presentan dos modelos conceptuales que hemos desarrollado para comprender las formas en que los medios sociales pueden apoyar el aprendizaje. Uno se relaciona con el aspecto “social”, que describe las distintas maneras en que las personas pueden aprender con otras y unas de otras en una o varias de tres formas sociales: grupos, redes y...

Throughout educational settings there are a range of open-focused learning activities along with those that are much more closed and structured. The plethora of opportunities creates a confusing melee of opportunities for teachers as they attempt to create activities that will engage and motivate learners. In this chapter, the authors demonstrate a...

Most research and practice relating to online and distance learning to date has focused on the social form of the intentional group, a named collection of people, typically hierarchically organized, with norms and/or explicit rules of conduct as well as inclusion or exclusion, membership, pacing and shared goals. The group provides a backdrop and i...

This paper presents an outline of 10 design principles that will be used to frame a case study examining the use and design of education experiences that incorporate social media tools. Educational designers have begun to adopt some of the newest digital literacy technologies and several are becoming mainstream (Hovorka & Rees, 2009) such as assess...

This paper is primarily about the nature of learning technologies, with a particular focus on social media. Drawing on W. Brian Arthur’s definition of technologies as assemblies of phenomena orchestrated to some use, the paper extends Arthur’s theory by re- specifying and extending the commonly held distinction between soft and hard technologies: s...

p class="MsoNormal"> Este artigo define e examina três gerações de pedagogia de educação a distância. Ao contrário de classificações anteriores de educação a distância, baseadas na tecnologia utilizada, esta análise centra-se na pedagogia que define as experiências de aprendizagem encapsuladas no design da aprendizagem. As três gerações de pedagogi...

Moore's theory of transactional distance describes the communications and psychological gulf between learner and teacher in a distance education setting. The theory was formulated in a correspondence era of distance learning and matured in an era where discussion forums and virtual learning environments reduced transactional distance in a closed-gr...

Social networking is revolutionizing the world in ways few imagined just a few years ago. The power of social networking technology can also be leveraged to improve education and enhance the instructor and learner experience. Unlike conventional learning management systems, social software environments such as Athabasca Landing provide a persistent...

** Invited as a paper from E-Learn 2009 ** There is a widely held belief in e-learning circles that pedagogy must come before technology. In this paper it is argued that, not only is that not true, but that it is a weak distinction as pedagogies, insofar as they represent a set of techniques and tools for learning, are as much technologies as the c...

This paper updates earlier work in which we defined three generations of distance education pedagogy. We then describe emerging technologies that are most conducive to instructional designs that evolve with each generation. Finally we discuss matching the pedagogies with learning outcomes.

p class="AbstractText">Existing research into motivation in online environments has tended to use one of two approaches. The first adopts a trait-like model that views motivation as a relatively stable, personal characteristic of the learner. Research from this perspective has contributed to the notion that online learners are, on the whole, intrin...

Use of mobile and sensor technologies in learning has emerged as a growing research area, and has given rise to a lot of research that takes advantage of learner's location, environment, proximity and situation to contextualizing the learning process. The adaptivity and personalization in these scenarios have taken a new meaning by bringing authent...

This paper reports on one aspect of a larger case study that explores the nature of motivation to learn in an online distance environment. The study adopts self-determination theory (SDT) as a theoretical framework and focuses particularly on the underlying concepts of autonomy and competence. These are used to investigate ways in which certain sit...

This paper defines and examines three generations of distance education pedagogy. Unlike earlier classifications of distance education based on the technology used, this analysis focuses on the pedagogy that defines the learning experiences encapsulated in the learning design. The three generations of cognitive-behaviourist, social constructivist,...

p>Este artículo se deriva de un trabajo previo, Three generations of distance education pedagogy , (Anderson y Dron, en prensa). Detalla las tecnologías y resultados sinérgicos del uso de pedagogía efectiva en combinación con tecnologías emergentes, para la creación de oportunidades de aprendizaje poderosas. En forma contraria a clasificacio...

Immersive spaces are innately flexible. However, for learners, some constraints and scaffolding may often be valuable. This paper looks at immersive spaces as soft and hard technologies. Soft technologies are technologies enabling creative and flexible use, while hard technologies embed processes that limit creativity but provide efficiency and fre...

This paper reports on one aspect of a larger case study that explores the nature of motivation to learn in an online distance environment. The study adopts self-determination theory (SDT) as a theoretical framework and focuses particularly on the underlying concepts of autonomy and competence. These are used to investigate ways in which certain sit...

The rich promise of social software in formal education can be offset by a clash between hierarchical organisational structures and the bottom-up, distributed nature that characterizes network development and growth. Learners often experience confusion when using social networking systems within formal education systems, negating many of the potent...

Understanding the affordances, effectiveness and applicability of new media in multiple contexts is usually a slow and evolving process with many failed applications, false starts and blind trails. As result, effective applications are usually much slower to arise than the technology itself. The global network based on ubiquitous Internet connectiv...

The Internet has long been touted as an answer to the needs of adult learners, providing a wealth of resources and the means to communicate in many ways with many people. This promise has been rarely fulfilled and, when it is, often by mimicking traditional instructor-led processes of education. As a large network, the Internet has characteristics...

In this paper we define collective applications as those that employ the aggregated behaviours of individuals in a crowd to shape their environment and to provide structure and influence in that environment. Collectives occur in most systems that aggregate user-generated content, whether or not that is the intention of the designers or contributors...

Understanding the affordances, effectiveness and applicability of new media in multiple contexts is usually a slow and evolving process with many failed applications, false starts and blind trails. As result, effective applications are usually much slower to arise than the technology itself. The global network based on ubiquitous Internet connectiv...

The Internet has long been touted as an answer to the needs of adult learners, providing a wealth of resources and the means to communicate in many ways with many people. This promise has been rarely fulfilled and, when it is, often by mimicking traditional instructor-led processes of education. As a large network, the Internet has characteristics...

The design of learning environments should cater for the needs of diverse online learners and give learners control over their own learning, but it is not enough simply to provide choices: without the associated power to make informed decisions too many choices are, if anything, worse than no choice at all. Without guidance, bad choices may be made...

This paper presents an infrastructure for developing problem-based pervasive learning environments. Building such environments necessitates having many autonomous components dealing with various tasks and heterogeneous distributed resources. Our proposed infrastructure is based on a multi-agent system architecture to integrate various components of...

E-learning in higher education is usually either a small scale cottage industry or the product of a production line. Neither approach is perfect: production-line models of distance education suit relatively few learners while the craft approach, though more tailored, is expensive and hard to re-use. However, this picture of the e-learning craftsper...

If we wish to cater for diverse needs then we need a diverse environment. Mainstream learning management systems impose structural, technical and organisational constraints that limit the ability of teachers to control them and, typically, constrain learners even more. Personal learning environments (PLEs), offer an alternative flexible and adaptab...

Online learning environments increasingly provide opportunities for interaction with and among individuals from diverse cultures. The more we acknowledge and understand the nature of diversity amongst online learners, the greater the opportunity to build effective, supportive learning environments for all. Given the almost limitless diversity betwe...

Social software, such as blogs, wikis, tagging systems and collaborative filters, treats the group as a first-class object within the system. Drawing from theories of transactional distance and control, this paper proposes a model of e-learning that extends traditional concepts of learner-teacher-content interactions to include these emergent prope...

Recent developments in technology and access have offered the opportunity to improve online learning environments through increased communication, interactivity among participants, and incorporation of pedagogical models to evaluate the quality of learning. Resulting advantages of the different features for the distributed online learning environme...

The quality of a learning process is not something that is delivered to a learner by an online provider but rather constitutes a process of co-production between the learner and the learning-environment. Embedding the technologies into the fabric of an institution enables sustainable advances in educational practice for the benefit of our learners....

If we assume that learning is best achieved in a social setting, then a vital aspect of any learning environment is its ability to support the development of trust. Trust takes many forms, from helping to identify the validity or the effectiveness of a learning resource to feelings of safety and reliance on support from fellow learners and teachers...

Understanding the affordances, effectiveness and applicability of new media in multiple contexts is usually a slow and evolving process with many failed applications, false starts and blind trails. As result, effective applications are usually much slower to arise than the technology itself. The global network based on ubiquitous Internet connectiv...

This paper deals with techniques for tapping processes of self-organisation in adult learning. It looks at systems that make use of evolution and stigmergy (communication through signs left in the environment) to generate a kind of group mind, which both influences and is influenced by the actions of its constituents. Such systems exhibit both high...

While most existing online learning environments cater for needs identified during the 1990s, a new generation of digital students has emerged in the developed world. Digital students are young adults who have grown up with digital technologies integrated as an everyday feature of their lives. Digital students use technology differently, fluidly (a...

Every learner is on a trajectory, an individual path that involves choices about what to do next in order to learn, choices that are bounded by intrinsic and extrinsic constraints. In some cases the learner controls those choices, sometimes they are made by someone or something else, sometimes control is negotiated, or it emerges from complex inter...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...

This book offers an exploration of the ways that a learning trajectory is determined, and, in particular, how an online learning environment can affect that trajectory. It provides suggestions about how, primarily through technologies that underlie what is vulgarly known as “Web 2.0,” networked learning environments should be constructed to give co...