CGScholar

Abstract

Technology is pedagogically neutral—it may change everything, or it may change nothing–it is the pedagogy that makes the difference. The challenge then for new technologies is to disrupt traditional paradigms of teaching, and to promote an entirely different kind of pedagogy. In development since 2009, CGScholar, a cloud-based writing and assessment ecosystem responds to this challenge. This article discusses the theoretical basis of CGScholar, reflexive pedagogy, which is embedded into the design of the environment around seven key principles of learning and assessment: ubiquitous learning; active knowledge making; multimodal meaning; recursive feedback; collaborative intelligence; metacognition; and differentiated learning. Also articulated are the components of the learning ecosystem and the ways that the various applications of CGScholar bring these principles to life. Empirical studies conducted on CGScholar are reported and future developments are described.