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In FutureLearn's MOOCs, Conversation Powers Learning at Massive Scale: Personalized learning has to get social. Students

In FutureLearn's MOOCs, Conversation Powers Learning at Massive Scale: Personalized learning has to get social. Students learn better through conversation.

Nice overview of FutureLearn's approach to MOOCs by Professor Mike Sharples highlighting the potential of personalization of learning through conversation. It includes a potted history of Gordon Pask's Conversation Theory.

"For the layperson and even for a lot of experts, Pask’s Conversation Theory is impenetrable. But for those who manage to grasp it, it’s quite exciting. In essence, it explains how language-using systems, including people and artificial intelligences, can come to know things through well-structured conversation. He proposed that all human learning involves conversation. We converse with ourselves when we relate new experience to what we already know. We converse with teachers when we respond to their questions and they correct our misunderstandings. We converse with other learners to reach agreement."

Source: spectrum.ieee.org

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