Designing for deep learning in the context of digital and social media

Abstract

There is today a great deal of controversy over digital and social media. Even leaders in the tech industry are beginning to decry the time young people spend on smartphones and social networks. Recently, the World Health Organization proposed adding “gaming disorder” to its official list of diseases, defining it as a pattern of gaming behavior so severe that it takes “precedence over other life interests”. At the same time, many others have celebrated the positive properties of video games, social media, and social networks. This paper argues that a deeper understanding of human beings is needed to design for deep learning. For the purposes of this study “design for deep learning” means helping people matter and find meaning in ways that make them and others healthy in mind and body, while improving the state of the world for all living things, with due respect for truth, sensation, happiness, imagination, individuality, diversity, and the future. In particular, fifteen features related to human nature are suggested based on recent scientific developments to answer the question: What is a human being? Consequently, proposals that are linked to learning and transformation, as well as social improvement, should fit with the ways in which humans, as specific sorts of biological and social creatures, learn best (or can learn at all) and can change for the better. En la actualidad existe una nutrida controversia en relación a los medios de comunicación sociales y digitales que ha llevado, incluso, a censurar la utilización de las redes sociales y los móviles por parte de líderes en la industria tecnológica. En este sentido, la Organización Mundial para la Salud ha propuesto añadir el «desorden del juego» a su listado de enfermedades, definiéndolo como un modelo de comportamiento de juego tan severo que se impone como «preferencia sobre otros intereses». Al mismo tiempo, distintos académicos han enfatizado los aspectos positivos derivados de las redes sociales y los videojuegos. En este artículo se argumenta que es necesaria una mejor comprensión del ser humano para poder implementar lo que aquí se define como diseño para el aprendizaje profundo. El «diseño para el aprendizaje profundo» está encaminado al reconocimiento de las personas y el desarrollo de sentidos saludables, individual y colectivamente, así como la mejora, en general, del estado del mundo para todos los seres vivos, según principios de verdad, felicidad, imaginación, individualidad, diversidad y futuro. En particular, se sugieren quince características basadas en desarrollos científicos que responden a la pregunta: ¿Qué es un ser humano? Consecuentemente, propuestas vinculadas al aprendizaje y la transformación y mejora social deben ser coherentes con dichas características que permiten definir cómo las personas, en tanto que organismos biológicos y sociales, aprenden o pueden aprender óptimamente, así como cambiar para mejorar.

Sustaining Students’ Identities within the Context of Participatory Culture. Designing, Implementing and Evaluating an Interactive Learning Activity

“…The term participatory culture [11,12,17,19], as an object of study, is not strictly linked to the study of how digital devices can improve learning processes, but rather to the analysis of new cultural forms of media convergence, production and participation, as well as forms of social organization and social change [4]. These subjects appear in informal spheres, and can teach us how learning can be improved both inside and outside of formal contexts, as well as in the transformation of society in general [14].…”

“…In recent decades, digital media has facilitated the emergence of new ways of creating, sharing and organizing knowledge, often unknown of and ignored by schools and the formal contexts of teaching and learning [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Many of these digital practices revolve around popular youth culture, and take the form of affiliations in online communities such as Facebook, expressions such as creating videos, multimodal and transmedial forms of writing, collaborative problem-solving to complete tasks-including certain collaborative video games-or developing new shared knowledge, such as Wikipedia, as well as the dissemination of content in a blog, etc.…”

“…Indeed, educational practices have been transformed by digital media into active methodologies that allow the student to have an active role in the learning processes, interacting with peers and technologies over time [13,14]. In particular, social online networking communities can be considered a public space for socialization, interaction, creation, and diffusion of culture and identity; a place where people can participate, learn, and bring about social transformation [4,15,16]. In this context, the term participatory culture refers to new ways in which the cultural product or media, and the consumer or user, relate to one another as a result of the emergence of Web 2.0. technologies [11,12].…”

Meaningful Learning Experiences in Everyday Life During Pandemics. A Qualitative Study

“…In recent decades, the impact information and communication technologies have on the transformation of both learning processes and educational practices has been documented (Jenkins, 2009;Coll, 2013;González-Patiño and Esteban-Guitart, 2014;Bender and Peppler, 2019;Gee and Esteban-Guitart, 2019). In particular, recently, different studies have documented the impact of remote education, as well as the emergence of hybrid models (online-offline), on educational inequalities, as well as teaching and learning processes (Arora and Srinivasan, 2020;Iglesias et al, 2020;Jena, 2020;Paudel, 2021).…”

Sustaining Students’ Cultures and Identities. A Qualitative Study Based on the Funds of Knowledge and Identity Approaches

“…It is in this sense that education for cultural sustainability involves going beyond mere tolerance or recognition of the cultural fact. It also entails, from the perspective of funds of identity, incorporating the voices of learners through artifacts created by them that allow the objectives, subjects and curricular content to be contextualized and personalized [27][28][29]. This, in addition, could facilitate processes of transcultural or hybrid construction that broaden the repertoires of significance and meaning, often reduced in school practice and activity [30,31].…”