Good Practices to Substantiate Digital Learning with Textbooks

Introduction

The classical construct in pedagogies, known as the didactic triangle, in which student, teacher, and content form the vertices (or nodes) of a triangle, is used to conceptualize modern learning (Stenberg, Karlsson, Pitkaniemi & Maaranen, 2014; Vollstedt, Heinze, Gojdka & Rach, 2014 etc.). However, in the Age of Globalisation and Social Media the meaning of the didactical content is changing. Now, is more important the construction of the content as a personal construct. Most teachers and students have accepted this change as unavoidable. However, research has indicated that “knowledge is growth exponentially. In many fields the life of knowledge is now measured in months and years“(Siemens, 2004). Therefore, behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism cannot be used as a learning theory.

Globalization and Social Media “affect” the classical construction in favor of post-modern architecture. To understand the nature of learning in postmodernism, firstly should be emphases the role of design and technology. Secondly, learning is socially constructed by individuals with different intellect, power and energy to investigate the world. Thirdly, the Instructional System Design ADDIE technology is rapidly changing to Learning Design. The Learning Design is inclusive of a variety of disciplines, research areas and domains including, but not limited to philosophy of learning, quantum psychology, and competence pedagogy, cybernetics and knowledge management.

The postmodernism architectural approach for learning design differs from other approaches in many fundamental ways. Now, the rationality and logics could be ignored. The knowledge have the contextual nature. The truth is not valued as much as in Industrial Age. The sustainability for educational represents the practice about how to archive personal and community goals. That is why the leadership in knowledge creation and sharing have valued more than passive listening and answering and the metacognitive strategies – valued more than cognitive intelligence. The requirements for openness witness new forms and models of teaching, assessment and learning triggered by digital textbooks. Despite the classical printed school textbook, based on fixed and pre-defined curriculum, the learning in postmodernism don’t require to use the same textbooks and to process the same didactic content. Therefore, the most important thing is the process of learning instead of content.

On the other hand, the didactic triangle is placed in “a more learning environment” (Frick, 1998). Such environment provides the new opportunities for digital textbook use and development. The most accepted are: “autonomous, small/short, continuous, on demand, social and anywhere on ant device” (Hart, 2014). These help teachers and students to take the advantage of designing own learning. This is a case of Polyphonic Teaching. According to Edutopia (2013) in the polyphonic form, the objective is for students and teachers to gain mutual understanding and knowledge through dialogue and collaboration where both parties act as co-learners. Knowledge is created through an exchange of many different individuals' perceptions of the world, and learning is seen as the student's participation in this mutual exchange. Communication is initiated and controlled by both teacher and students. The teacher has the role of an equal collaborator with the student and share equal responsibility. Thus, to keep the didactic triangle for learning process more important is to design the processes instead of content.