‘Re-mediating’ Learning

Abstract

Building on our own and others’ research about productive features of non-school learning environments, we describe a new experimental infrastructure for the organization and mediation of learning called FUSE. Activity in FUSE is mediated by a website and supported by an adult facilitator (typically a teacher, librarian, or other youth educator). Based on emerging research from the more than 4000 young people that have participated in FUSE in 30+ schools, libraries, and summer camps in the Chicago area, we have begun to characterize how the affordances of the FUSE website are supporting a shift in the material organization of learning in the in-school classrooms in which it is implemented. We describe how FUSE ‘re-mediates’ learning by providing individualized learning pathways, dynamic arrangements for learning, alternative forms of ‘assessment’, new roles for the teacher, and a rethinking of how curriculum materials are produced.