Innovating Design for Learning in the Networked Society

The transition from the industrial to the knowledge or networked society has, together with the worldwide digitalization and e-permeation of our social, political and economic lives, brought challenges to the educational systems. The changes call for new key competences in terms of self-initiated and lifelong learning and digital literacy. At the same time, the implementation of new public management in educational institutions put pressure on students’ available time for studying and the qualitative outcome of learning processes. These conditions give birth to emerging tensions at the organizational level between effectiveness, quality and summative evaluation and at the individual level between personal cost-benefit-based choices of study approach and the demands for study activities related to problem-based project pedagogy within a (social) constructivist paradigm. What the authors meet in their practice are students who are (if at all) only familiar with the curriculum at a surface level and who expect the teachers to present digested versions of the curriculum. This chapter presents a design for teaching and learning approach in the shape of a design for learning model that aims to scaffold students’ self-initiated and reflective study practice that matches learning in the networked society and at the same time bypasses the consequences of the emerging tensions in the learning context. We believe that the model can be operationalized various specific educational activities.