Creative Learning Designs: Students as Co-creators of Texts and Content

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Traditional university culture is an instruction-centered, location-specific, and static, textbook-driven experience. These legacies of what we call a “brick-and-mortarboard” learning culture hampers rather than develops attributes requisite for the new economy (which places a premium on creativity, mobile learning, access to current information and dynamic instruction (i.e., rich media), real world problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and learning-to-learn for a rapidly changing global environment).

To be more relevant, universities should become learning-centered, incorporate the dynamism of the latest ePub technology, and co-create learning for the mobile lifestyle of the 21st Century. New idea technologies (e.g., constructivism and connectivism) and new media technologies (e.g., Web 2.0 applications including Wix and iBook Author – see http://www.wix.com/phoga7/cohl322createdtextf11 and see http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/ ) can be powerful tools for developing and leveraging creative potential, and can contribute to and enable the manufacture of new learning cultures. The authors present a workshop designed to help educators to do new things (i.e., co-create texts and content with students) in new ways (i.e., through Wix and iBooks). How to leverage course work to exhibit that education mission-central outcomes are being developed in students is also demonstrated (e.g., see http://www.wix.com/phoga7/pattioutcomeswix).

Stream: Teaching and Learning

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Dr. Craig Rademacher is an Assistant Professor of Outdoor Recreation Leadership & Management at Northern Michigan University (NMU) as well as a consultant in and producer of new media. His experience as a university level instructional designer and then as an Apple Creative has honed his skills and understanding of new media production, distance and informal distributed learning, and new media architecture and design. His interest in mobile media in interpretation led to his publication of Borrego, a digital brochure for California's largest state park. Dr. Rademacher is the recipient of the ANGEL Impact Award (ANGEL Learning Inc. 2006), the Instructional Technology Council Award for Excellence in Distance Education (2005) and the NMU Faculty Technology Innovation Awared (2011). He is currently co-creating with his students an iBook Author text.

Dr. Patricia Irene Hogan is a Professor of Management of Health & Fitness at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan, USA. Dr. Hogan publishes and presents in the areas of developing Professional Intellect in university students, Inquiry-Based and Problem-Based Learning, professional ethics, prosumerism, Social Media (especially wiki and wix) applications in education mission-central learning, and in Social Media for Sport and Fitness Business. Her current scholarly interests involve experimenting with promoting a connectivist approach (Siemens, 2009) to enhance learning for relevant literacies and skill-sets in her classes and to teaching for integrative and abductive or design thinking (Martin, 2009).