Learning OS: The 'Now' Generation Digital Learning Environment

In today's Educause Review, Dartmouth Instructional Designer Mike Goudzwaard, along with colleagues Adam Finkelstein of McGill University and Rebecca Petersen of Northeastern University, envision a new digital learning environment that supports, rather than encumbers, the teaching and learning process. The article discusses the design-thinking collaboration they facilitated with colleagues at the 2017 Educause Learning Initiative Annual Meeting, and proposes a solution: the LearningOS. The LearningOS would serve the purpose of a learning management system, like Canvas or Blackboard, but in a simpler, more flexible, and elegant fashion.

The authors have developed the idea over the course of the last year, and propose four next steps for turning the vision into reality:
1. Approach learning technologies as part of a diverse ecosystem designed to support multiple pedagogies. 
2. Do better at creating and adopting standards.
3. Pick the right tool for the right purpose.
4. Focus conferences on challenges, problems, and questions, not exclusively disseminating solutions.

Read the article, "LearningOS: The Now Generation Digital Learning Environment" in the Educause Review.