Abstract: Traditionally, much institutional self-paced distance learning has been a largely individual activity, offering limited opportunities for teacher-student interaction and almost none for student-student interaction. This is because, when students are all learning different things at different times, unless enrolment is extremely high, it is difficult to engage in any form of meaningful social learning. This paper reports on a self-paced course at Athabasca University that is designed to provide both the freedom of self-paced learning and the pedagogical benefits of social learning. At the same time the approach deals effectively with issues of plagiarism and the different needs, skills and interests of diverse learners.

Abstract: This paper reports on the development and utilization of an innovative learning platform developed to support the flexible delivery of a connectivist-style Massive Open Online Course or cMOOC. The social media platform, implemented as the Curtin Learning Commons (www.curtincommons.com) was developed as a customized Elgg social software instance on a cloud-hosted server. The Participating in the Digital Age (PDA MOOC) was designed to utilize a wide variety of the social media tools available, providing learners with inquiry style learning tasks over a six-week period. Innovations in the learning environment on the institutional side include the presentation of a fully open learning space with almost limitless combinations of configurable tools available for the designers to present resources and activities to learners. Innovations on the learner side include detailed customization of the learning space and choice of tools, spaces, and open-ness of content posted.