MOOCs, the Flipped Classroom, and Khan Academy Practices: The Implications of Augmented Learning

Abstract

Learning paradigms and practices are currently undergoing enormous transformations. Online learning is a reconfiguration of pre-Internet approaches. Peer-to-peer, non-hierarchical learning is made possible by the emergence of a mobile Internet that permits shared distance learning through “ubiquitous connectivity.” Many universities and educational institutions around the world feverishly investigate and pursue the promises of new forms of technology-based online learning. Heralded examples are Massive Open Online Courses, the “Flipped Classroom” (also called the “Post-Lecture Classroom,” the “Condensed Classroom,” and even the “Hybrid Classroom”); and the methods employed by the Khan Academy (form-based learning incorporating a digital audiovisual tutorial mode and initially free online access). These new learning models do not replace their traditional counterparts but rather recombine them in a hybrid pattern we propose here to call “augmented learning” that includes significant components of informal as well as horizontal and self-organized learning.