GENESIS – Generating e-learning systems in schools: School-university e-learning research partnerships for scaling up innovation

Abstract

Despite optimism about new technologies for learning, e-learning innovation has been slow to scale up. This research set out to investigate whether an e-learning environment designed by students themselves would scale easily in schools. To do so, the GENESIS Project, a collaborative undertaking between three schools and a University, created the opportunity for students as researchers to conceive, prototype, and test an e-learning environment in which they and other students could explore ideas of interest to them. Preliminary findings show that students are able to design e-learning environments that provide good contexts for learning. Furthermore, such an approach appears to set in motion deep and lasting change in schools in ways that align with Coburn’s (2003) four ways of thinking about scaling up. The Project demonstrates, in all its phases, a way in which students themselves can take information leadership of curriculum in a culture of change.