What is The Connected Learner?

The Connected Learner is a re-orientation of undergraduate computing education. We want to rethink the lecture, lab, assignment model and focus on active learning in the classroom where students are connected to their peers, the profession, and socially relevant purpose. We think that learning how to learn from others, building strong collaborative and communication skills, and feeling that you are part of a community of computing professionals is as important as learning the knowledge, skills and theory of computer science.

We are planning to change the way we teach computer science course so that students are learning from each other as well as from professors and the profession. We are building on our development of lightweight teams, flipped classroom strategies, and service learning for community projects. We have already started bringing real world challenges into the curriculum by engaging our business partners.

We can share our successes as examples of course materials, pedagogical design patterns, and assessment strategies so that others can change their approach to teaching computer science.

This project is funded by the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments. The project is funded for 5 years with $2M to create organizational change around teaching innovation.

The Principle Investigators on this project are Mary Lou Maher, Bojan Cokic, Larry Mays, Celine Latulipe, Jamie Payton, Audrey Rorrer, and Steven Rogelberg. We are the authors of this blog and we invite you to follow, like, share and comment on our blog posts. And then join our Google Community!