Agile learning

Draft

Definition

Agile learning is a relatively recent buzzword that can take several mearnings. There seems to be quite a confusion between "agile planning of instruction" (as one may find on commercial e-learning web sites), introducing "agile design methodology" in the project-oriented and/or reflective classroom and finally introducing "agile thinking" in a given population (e.g. a company).

• Using agile design methodology for instructional design, as for example in the rapid prototyping approach. I.e. we talk about an "agile professor" who will design and redesign a course in function of emerging "parameters". E.g. see the R2D2 model.

• A similar idea is to favor dynamic planning of learner activities in teaching. Many inquiry-based learning settings require dynamic (agile planning) for both the teacher and his students. An very typical example would be the knowledge-building community model.

• Agile learning also can to refer to running a class like a development group. This implies that one has to provide students with practice in agile development, regardless of their subject area and to use agile principles in working together with students to achieve the learning objectives of the module.

• Agile learning also can refer to supporting emerging individual learning path, i.e. how students progress through a set of learning objects in traditional e-learning. From the teaching perspective, this can be summarized as "give students what they need when they need it".

• Agile learning can refer to introducing agile thinking in companies. This perspective is frequently found in talks and papers that deal with innovation and organizational learning.

Links

Agile learning as proposed by CS and management people

• Agile learning - an alternative learning model Agile learning and teaching with wikis: building a pattern Marija Cubric,
• PDF of the Poster

Agile development

• Agile Manifesto
• Open Agile is a simple agile method designed to be broadly applicable to many different types of work. It includes a basic definition of a process, roles, artifacts, and basic practices as well as a glossary and comparisons to other methods of working.
• Agile software development (Wikipedia)

Bibliography

• Bork, Alfred (2002). Agile learning with highly interactive computer modules, Library Hi Tech News, 19 (4).

• Novak J.& Patterson E. (1998). Just-In-Time Teaching: Active Learner Pedagogy With WWW, IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education,May 27 -30.

• Cohn M.2006.Agile Estimating and Planning.NewJersey: Pearson Education (An introduction to agile development principles)