The advent of new tools that give students more control over their learning will not necessarily change their need for a structured educational experience.

owever, many students are not, at least initially, independent learners (see Candy, 1991). Many students come to a learning task without the necessary skills or confidence to study independently from scratch (Moore and Thompson, 1990).

9.1.6 Strengths and weaknesses of social media Some of the advantages of social media are as follows: they can be extremely useful for developing some of the key skills needed in a digital age, such as digital communication skills; they can enable teachers to set online group work, based on cases or projects, and students can collect data in the field using social media such as mobile phones and apps such as Questogo; learners can post media-rich assignments either individually or as a group; these assignments when assessed can be loaded by the learner into their own personal learning environment or e-portfolios for later use when seeking employment or transfer to graduate school; learners can take more control over their own learning, as we have seen in connectivist MOOCs in Chapter 5 Section 3.2 through the use of blogs and wikis, courses and learning can be thrown open to the world, adding richness and wider perspectives to learning.

professional communities of practice route (see for instance Carvalho-Fino et al., 2019), which is more culturally acceptable to university faculty

ALT (Association of Learning Technologists), UK, provides professional accreditation of learning technologists, operating at three levels (novice, career, advanced) through certified membership of ALT (Association of Learning Technologists).

port sites focus on the technical operatio

We need to walk the talk, and use technology to support professional development. Increasingly, centres for teaching and learning are creating web sites with ‘on-demand’ resources for faculty and instructors, such as best practices in using video, podcast production, or designing a course with technology.