A number of schools, organizations, researchers, and foundations are currently exploring how to redesign high school to reduce the dropout rate and encourage students to pursue higher education in some form. Much of this research focuses on online teaching practices and the technologies that support them.
However, the growing body of research on learning environments in higher education currently being conducted by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative suggests that research on revolutionizing high school is missing an important component.
The missing component? The fact that we are social animals with a need to come together to learn. While expanding online learning certainly plays a role, physical meeting spaces are still important.
So, what might we do if we truly want to revolutionize the high school to college experience. One possible solution is to take the high school and higher education environments and meld them together into one learning ecosystem where we can create fluid learning opportunities based on prior student learning and their readiness to advance.
The purpose of this section of DNSL is to explore the physical and virtual environments necessary to support such an ecosystem.