A couple years ago, a colleague and I posited an instructional-design approach to improving learning and performance when utilizing Web 2.0 technologies. This approach was built upon the socio-constructivist philosophies of learning and emphasizes three dimensions in designing learning for the Web 2.0 environment—social/collaborative elements, user-generated design, and knowledge management. The motivation for this approach stemmed from the recent emergence of approaches to learning that are based on self-determination and networked contexts such as heutagogy (Phelps, Hase, & Ellis, 2005) and connectivism (Siemens, 2005), which help us understand learning as making connections with ideas, facts, people, and communities.

I just had an interesting experience related to a pure distance-learning class I am teaching. I’m relating this to broach a subject near and dear to my instructor heart. As I was getting the same old take-out sandwich at the same old Subway today, a student came up to me and said with a big smile that he was taking his first online course and that he liked it. It took a minute for things to register for me since I was right in the middle of figuring out if I wanted mustard or mayo or both . The student was talking about the course I am teaching! And it hit me that he recognized me from the short videos I make and post to establish a rapport with my students. What warmed the cockles of my heart was the fact that I was succeeding in my attempt to establish a connection with my distance-learning students with video.