AgileLearningDefinition

= What is is agile learning? = Agile learning is a response to a set of circumstances common across many forms of learning in all sectors. **Budgets are tight** but, for anyone with a broadband internet connection, there's an **abundance of opportunities to learn**. The range of open resources for learning and **tools for self-organising** with other learners now make it viable to create low-cost, flexible learning experiences across an ever-widening range of contexts.

Agile learning can involve **a range of pragmatic steps**, rooted in the challenges of achieving a lot with a limited funds. As such, it isn't really //one thing//; it's an attempt to bring together lots of things that might help learning become more agile. There is **no manifesto, no commitment to a particular form of pedagogy or technology**. If it's learning, and it's agile, then it's agile learning. That said, there are a few core principles that lend themselves to agility, and which most cases of agile learning share to some degree.


 * 1) **Open** -- **Silos are expensive** to build and maintain. The materials in them can be hard to find and hard to use in new contexts. By contrast, the learning materials that are developed as **Open Educational Resources** (OERs) or **Open CourseWare** (OCW), and the materials that are freely available on blogs, wikis and other websites, **lend themselves much more easily to agile learning experiences**.
 * 2) **Embedded in everything** -- For learning to be agile, you should be able to do it almost anywhere, and without serious interruption to the rest of your affairs. **Broadband** access to the Internet, **mobile** connectivity and everyday objects with **built-in learning resources** help make this possible. While the [|digital divide] will still be with us for some time to come, access is slowly reaching all areas. With open materials and open technology, **you can learn wherever you have Internet access**.
 * 3) **Collective** -- Learning becomes more agile as learners have the power to direct and drive their own learning. Internet access brings a range of tools for **finding, organising and creating with people who share the same learning goals**, thus making peer learning much easier. This doesn't mean that teachers have less value, but frees up teachers to focus on how they can **nurture and augment emergent learning behaviours** in a group or network.
 * 4) **Flexibility and flow** -- Learning is agile if there is scope for **improvising and adapting the learning experience as it unfolds**. If learning is like a train, with a fixed destination and limited opportunities for getting on or off, it cannot be as flexible as if it is like a cycling expedition where everyone adapts to each other's direction and speed, while retaining the option to go off on their own. Sometimes cycling is faster than going by train.

=**What is this wiki?**= This wiki is intended to be an open, collective and flexible collection of resources for people who want to make their learning more agile.

Contents

 * Examples of agile learning in action
 * Open resources
 * Tools and methods
 * Sources, theory and inspirations