A digital learning environment provides the opportunity for students to develop both academic skills and 21st century skills. The digital learning environment is conducive for all students by expanding the classroom beyond the four walls into the community. Students are engaged in authentic tasks that have a connection to the real world. In addition, the digital learning environments involve all partners of the learning community such as instructors, students, business partners, and higher education experts. The common thread in this type of environment entails instructors providing students with the opportunity to be engaged in the learning process.
Published in Chapter:
Re-Imagining and Re-Structuring Scholarship, Teaching, and Learning in Digital Environments
Melissa Layne (American Public University System, USA) and Phil Ice (American Public University System, USA)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8170-5.ch020
Abstract
This chapter explores how digital scholarship, teaching, and learning is dramatically changing the educational landscape. New pedagogies are being reimagined and restructured in ways never before conceptualized. Despite the need to transform current models of scholarship, scholars and publishers have been sluggish to do so. The review of literature sheds light upon this hesitation, revealing two themes: 1) the lack of incentives for moving scholarship beyond the traditional criteria for promotion and tenure and 2) lack of technical skills to create digital works. The remainder of the chapter explores these themes further by highlighting topics including the democratization of digital publication, paradigmatic shifts, and digital spaces. Contemporary and future pathways are proposed in accessibility, following magazine publishers' lead for digitizing scholarship and including analytics in publication. The conclusion reiterates that although new communication methods will yield new methods of society's organization, the essence of scholarship will remain constant, academics will continue to converse, address problems with evidence, and disseminate findings.