A Learning Paradigm Shift: Cybergogy

I was doing some research for an article and ran across a new (to me) term: cybergogy. It’s way cooler than pedagogy or andragogy, no? I’m think I’ll start calling myself a cybergogy strategist. Kidding.

The cybergogy literature references date back to 2003 and it seems most of the conversation has been in the higher ed area vs. corporate ed. (Probably since we’ve all but banned the ‘gogy’ words from our corporate vocab.)

My first thought was why didn’t you all tell me about this term? Second, I’m not reading enough.

So here’s the definition, from the cybergogy entry on the edutech wiki:

One of the central elements of cybergogy is the intent to combine fundamentals of both pedagogy and andragogy to arrive at a new approach to learning (Carrier & Moulds, 2003). Cybergogy focuses on helping adults and young people to learn by facilitating and technologically enabling learner-centered autonomous and collaborative learning in a virtual environment. At the core of cybergogy is awareness that strategies used for face-to-face learning may not be the same used in the virtual environment.

It was coined by Dr. Minjuan Wang, Assistant professor, Educational Technology, San Diego State University. You can follow her on twitter @minjuan.

Here’s Dr. Wang’s cybergogy model for engaged learning. (click to make larger) I like seeing the emotive factors.

Also, from the entry:

The Cybergogy model values affective learning as highly as cognitive learning, and sees the two as interwoven. The authors (2006) argue that current educational systems must value the learner over the curriculum, and must tolerate learning outcomes that may be less predictable but highly worthwhile.

Dean Groom has some nice posts about this learning paradigm shift. Just search the term “cybergogy” on his website or choose the the “pedagogy shifting” category. In this post you’ll find some interesting infographics.