Open and Integrative: Designing Liberal Education for the New Digital Ecosystem

Posted by Association of American Colleges and Universities on September 19, 2016

Open and Integrative: Designing Liberal Education for the New Digital Ecosystem

The ongoing digital revolution has created a complex and interconnected ecosystem that is fundamentally reshaping how we learn and communicate. Yet, despite its transformative potential, this digital ecosystem has so far had less of an impact on formal education than on other sectors of our society. Authors Randy Bass and Bret Eynon explore the implications of emerging digital capacities and culture for higher education, arguing that any discussion to reinvent higher education that begins with technology is doomed to a diminished vision of learning. Bass and Eynon begin instead by reimagining the core purposes of liberal education in this new context and ask: What is the role of the digital ecosystem in making a quality liberal education available to all, equitably?

Going beyond “unbundling,” the authors propose that we use networked and adaptive systems to “re-bundle” higher education by connecting learning experiences that have typically been disconnected, opening the boundaries of institutions, and creating new integrative contexts for transformative learning. Open and Integrative includes examples of digital innovations that advance liberal education outcomes and is ideal for campus discussions on using digital technology to improve undergraduate teaching and learning.

Read an excerpt online.

https://secure.aacu.org/AACU/pubExcerpts/GMSDIG.pdf

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