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The drive to turn education digital has riveted our attention over the last ten years. But what exactly is digital pedagogy? How does one get started in it, and how is it different from regular pedagogy?

Broadly defined, digital pedagogy is the use of electronic elements to enhance or to change to experience of education. This can be anything from the simple use of powerpoint in the classroom, to the Khan Academy's exhortation to " flip the classroom," and the growth of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) such as Udacity and Coursera offering free online education to the general public. Examples of digital pedagogy also include blogging assignments, the use of social media in the classroom, "forking" syllabi with GitHub, and getting students to use digital tools to test ideas. In sum, digital pedagogy is an attempt to use technology to change teaching and learning in a variety of ways.

Academic interest in digital pedagogy has grown by leaps and bounds. Late 2011 saw the launch of digital-pedagogy centered journals such as Hybrid Pedagogy and the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. A specialized THATCamp, or an unconference on the humanities and technology, was held on Pedagogy in 2011, and a corresponding THATCamp Hybrid Pedagogy will be held in 2012. And MLA interest on the subject has also been growing: at the 2012 Convention in Seattle Katherine D. Harris and Brian Croxall and Kathi Beerens organized two extremely popular electronic roundtables on digital pedagogy.

Importantly, some argue that simply using electronic elements in your teaching does not mean that you are practicing digital pedagogy. Paul Fyfe (@pfyfe) thinks, for example, that simply incorporating a technological tool without reflecting upon pedagogical change isn't digital pedagogy. He argues: " if the tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat problems as nails." In other words, this means that a simple incorporation of a tool (say Powerpoint) in a lecture, without any reflection on how the lecture form itself should evolve, is pretty much the same as a lecture without Powerpoint (which leads to the well-known Death by Powerpoint meme). Jesse Stommel (@jessifer) argues that digital pedagogists should consider the importance of "hybrid pedagogy," or " think holistically about the various hybridities of the modern pedagogue, to think about how we live our real/digital lives in both academic and extra-academic spaces."

To sum up: digital pedagogy is not merely a way to teach, but also makes up a rapidly expanding field hosting multiple debates and schools of thought. Any and all of these debates are up for discussion at our unconference. See our Suggested Topics page for ideas on what you could propose!

Image credit: Evers Project 365 Blog / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0//

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The drive to turn education digital has riveted our attention over the last ten years. But what exactly is digital pedagogy? How does one get started in it, and how is it different from regular pedagogy? Broadly defined, digital pedagogy is the use of electronic elements to enhance or to change to experience of education.

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The digital humanities is as much about reading humanities texts with digital tools as it is about using human tools to read digital text. We are better users ...

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Digital Pedagogy is about Breaking Stuff: Toward a Critical Digital Humanities Pedagogy

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Pedagogy is not just a delivery device for the digital humanities. It should be at the core of what the digital humanities is as an academic discipline.

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Scott McLeod Keynote Speaker - Education Technology and Digital Learning Speaker

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Scott McLeod Keynote Speaker - Trudacot - Collaborative Agency Group Technology, Leadership, and the Future of Schools

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american society for training and development

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ATD Nebraska Chapter - 2018 Regional Conference

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We are not ready to teach online. In a recent conversation with a friend, I found myself puzzled, and a bit troubled, when he expressed confusion about digital pedagogy. He said something to the extent of, "What's the difference between digital pedagogy and teaching online? Aren't all online teachers digital pedagogues?" Being a contemplative guy, I didn't just tip over his drink and walk away. Instead, I pondered the source of his question. Digital pedagogy is largely misunderstood in higher education. The advent of online learning and instructional design brought the classroom onto the web, and with it all manner of teaching: good and bad, coherent and incoherent, networked and disconnected. Whatever pedagogy any given teacher employed in his classroom became digitized. If I teach history by reading from my twenty-year-old notes, or if I lead workshops in creative writing, or if I teach literature through movies, I bring that online and - boom! - I'm a digital pedagogue. Right?

But that's not right. For starters, not every teacher is a pedagogue. Pedagogy is a scholarship unto itself, a study of learning and the many ways it is fueled - in classrooms, in workshops, in studios, in writing centers - wherever learning is poised to occur. Pedagogy is also different from the study of education. Those with backgrounds in education understand the institution, and its relationship to students, in ways I expect I never will. Pedagogy has at its core timeliness, mindfulness, and improvisation. Pedagogy concerns itself with the instantaneous, momentary, vital exchange that takes place in order for learning to happen. That exchange may be between teacher and student, or between student and student; it can also occur between teacher and teacher, administrator and CEO, journalist and educator. The etymology of pedagogy reveals that leadership is at its core; and thus it is not limited to classroom practice in the same way that it is not limited to institutions of learning.

Pedagogy experiments relentlessly, honoring a learning that's lifelong. A pedagogy of writing, for example, recognizes that a teacher is not trying to pull essays like pulling teeth for fifteen weeks; instead, she is cultivating a desire to write that will last well beyond the end of the semester, well beyond graduation. And there are few limits to what can be attempted in the interests of meaningful, sustained learning. If it works to blindfold students and walk them around campus to add dimension to their sensory writing, or if it works to play hopscotch in order to stir memories in new writers, then the pedagogue will try it.

As Jesse says in his article, " Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain ":

Pedagogy is not synonymous with teaching or talking about teaching, nor is it entirely abstracted from the acts of teaching and learning. It is ... "the place where philosophy and practice meet (aka 'praxis')." It's a surprisingly difficult line to toe, or wall to teeter upon: meta-cognitive reflection on, and investigation of learning, which is by its nature emergent.

Not all teaching happens like this. Not all teachers are pedagogues, nor need they be. There is a place for all styles of classroom practice, I think, just as there is a place for learners of all capabilities and approaches. I am not here arguing for a particular teaching philosophy. What is important is seeing the difference - a difference that becomes much more acute when learning goes online.

The Relic of the LMS
The invention of the LMS (Learning Management System) was a mistake. And here I'm not going to make the same frustrated argument made numerous times before now that LMSs are limiting structures, that their interface and functionalities control how teachers teach online ( although those things are true). The LMS was a mistake because it was premature. In a world that was just waking up to the Internet and the possibility of widely-networked culture, the LMS played to the lowest common denominator, creating a "classroom" that allowed learning - or something like learning - to happen behind tabs, in threaded discussions, and through automated quizzes. The LMS was not a creative decision, it was not pushing the capabilities of the Internet, it was settling for the least innovative classroom practice and repositioning that digitally. As a result classes taught within its structure generally land with a dull thud. No matter how creative and inspired the teacher or pedagogue behind the wheel, the LMS is no match for the wideness of the Internet. It was born a relic - at its launch utterly irrelevant to its environment and its user.

And worse, the LMS convinced us that teaching online was not only possible, it was easy - that digital pedagogy was a mere work of relocation. Take your lectures and your assignments, create a slideshow or a video or a piece of audio, load it all up, and there you have it: online learning. Many early instructional designers believed that if we employed interactive Flash exercises and scaffolded learning according to Bloom's taxonomy, we'd end up with robust learning that engaged students in a way duplicate to classroom interaction. (I was once one of these instructional designers. Mea culpa.) Sure, it took a little longer to set up your course, but once you did, it practically ran itself. Plus, you could reuse the content again and again! Design the course once, teach it ad infinitum. (Only a benefit when the instructor is not compensated well for course design, or not compensated at all.) The LMS largely erased mindfully aware teaching, and made excuses for unconscionable practice.

The real problem here is not that quality suffered, but that people mistook what they were doing within the LMS as pedagogical. It may be teaching - in the same way that reading from a handout is teaching - but simply slotting your pre-written materials into an online framework and calling it a class is not interesting or sound pedagogy.

The persistence of the onerous LMS, and the ways learners have already adopted the patterns and habits of the learning within it, indicates that we are not ready to teach online. Many talented instructors complain about the limitations of LMS-based teaching, and yet in the same breath discard all their best, most innovative pedagogies. Very few are using the approach of the digital to innovate further instead of innovate less. But just as the pedagogue will enter a room and rearrange the tables and chairs to suit his purpose, so too will the digital pedagogue happily hack the LMS, opening it to the wider web, or using it as a portal to a more expanded learning environment.

Pioneers on the Digital Plain
Digital pedagogy is important because it is willing to improvise, to respond to a new environment, to experiment. The digital pedagogue is not the same as an online teacher. The digital pedagogue looks at the options, refuses the limitations of the LMS, invites her students to participate in - indeed, create - networked learning. Her practice is mindful of the landscape.

Questions that the digital pedagogue asks regularly include:

What tools are available for me and my students to play with?

How can improvisation occur online to reinforce learning?

Does digital learning end when the course ends, or is it sustained perpetually by the online learning environment (aka, the Internet)?

Who are my students, and where can they be found? What are my students' URLs? What is mine?

Do disciplines matter online? Do canons exist? What is the point of rote memorization when everything is available online all the time?

Where is my authority now that all authority is a Google search away?

And most importantly: What happens when learning is removed from the classroom and exposed to the entirety of the digital landscape?

For some, teaching begins with authority and expertise. For the digital pedagogue, teaching begins with inquiry. And that's why digital pedagogy is so important. It reminds us that the new landscape of learning is mysterious and worth exploring. The techniques of on-ground learning do not translate well. The LMS fails. Only an attitude of pioneering exploration will make heads or tails of the potential for online learning; and it is the digital pedagogue who will lead that charge.

Read the second part: " Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain "

[Image by The hills are alive]

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Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 1: Beyond the LMS - Hybrid Pedagogy

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We are not ready to teach online. In a recent conversation with a friend, I found myself puzzled, and a bit troubled, when he expressed confusion about digital pedagogy. He said something to the extent of, "What's the difference between digital pedagogy and teaching online? Aren't all online teachers digital pedagogues?"