Dr. Lisa Marie Blaschke is program director of the Master in Management of Technology Enhanced Learning (MTEL) at the Center for Lifelong Learning (C3L), Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany. Previously, she was program director and an associate professor (adjunct) within the Master of Distance Education and E-Learning (MDE) at the University of Maryland Global College (UMGC).
She is a former vice-president of the European Distance Education and E-Learning Network (EDEN) and an EDEN Senior Fellow; currently, she serves as Chair of the Board of the EDEN Council of Fellows. She holds an MDE from UMUC, and an MBA and PhD from the University of Oldenburg. For nearly two decades, Lisa worked for SAP in Walldorf, Germany, leading and implementing enterprise-wide knowledge management processes and solutions. Lisa is an editorial/advisory board member and peer reviewer for numerous ODL publications. Her research interests are in self-determined learning (heutagogy), online collaborative learning, and pedagogical application of social media. (http://lisamarieblaschke.pbworks.com)
Lisa will present a keynote presentation titled: Heutagogy and the power of learner agency
Description of presentation
Students need jobs, and employers want independent and creative employees who have the necessary skills to onboard quickly and be productive in a changing and complex workforce. Faced with these demands and the ever-growing insurgence of technology within the classroom, educators must reach into their instructional toolboxes to find the right mix of pedagogy and technology to address these needs. One such pedagogical approach that can help instructional teams in navigating this dynamic new educational environment is that of heutagogy, or self-determined learning. Heutagogy is a learner-centred teaching and learning theory that is based in the central principles of learner agency, capability and self-efficacy, reflection and metacognition, and non-linear learning. In a self-determined learning environment, learners decide what they will learn and how they will learn it. When combined with today’s technologies and social media, heutagogy is a powerful pedagogy that can be used to empower and transform the learning experience, helping learners build personal learning environments (PLEs) and to better transition to the workforce. Heutagogy can be best understood as an extension of andragogy (self-directed learning) as part of a pedagogy-andragogy-heutagogy (PAH) continuum, guiding the student from passive to active learning. This presentation will focus on the use of heutagogy in distance learning environments and introduce examples of how the use of social media skill builders and e-portfolios can be used to build PLEs for self-determined and lifelong learning.