Connected Learning

Connected learning is a model of learning developed by the Connected Learning Research Network, a group of scholars led by the digital-media researcher Mimi Ito, and set out most fully in the 2013 report Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. The model holds that learning is most effective, durable and meaningful when it is socially embedded, interest-driven and oriented toward a real educational, economic, political or civic opportunity, rather than confined to a single classroom or a single interest treated in isolation. It describes three core properties that connected learning environments should provide: production-centered learning, in which learners make and share things rather than only consume content; a shared purpose, in which learners work alongside peers and mentors around a common interest across differences of age, class or background; and openly networked structure, in which learning resources are accessible across the various settings of a young person's life, including school, home, and out-of-school programs. The theory emerged from research into how young people learn through participation in online affinity communities and interest-driven networks such as fan communities, gaming groups and maker communities, and it argues that connecting a learner's personal interests and peer relationships to academic content and future opportunity, through the support of caring adults, produces stronger and more lasting engagement than interest and academic learning kept separate.