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This paper demonstrates the impact of recognition and valuation of youth interest on potential career trajectory and future pathway choices.

This paper presents data from two ethnographies. The first ethnography is of an online professional wrestling fan community, which took place between October 2012 and May 2013. The second ethnography is of the online Scratch community, Scratch is a free online coding program. Observations of the community took place between October 2014 and October 2015, with interviews ongoing as of the writing of this paper.

This paper details the importance of valuing youth learning and the impact that receiving recognition and valuation can have on youths’ future choices.

This research focuses on two online communities and presents four examples of the phenomena of valuation and recognition described in the paper. To draw broad conclusions, a wider sample would be required.

This paper can offer examples to practitioners and researcher alike as to what the impacts of valuing youth learning in interest-driven contexts can be for youth long-term learning and career trajectory and forms that the valuation of interest to support growth and interest can take.

The paper demonstrates the importance of valuing learning in all parts of youths’ lives and the impact that the valuation can have on the future pathways and career trajectory of youth.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how preservice teacher’s beliefs change over time in a literacy methods elementary licensure course that encourages critical literacy and connects learning. The authors were interested in the interplay among identity, agency and structure within this process and how this connected with other literature on teacher beliefs and technology use.

Utilizing data from a larger ethnographic study and mediated discourse analysis (Scollon and Scollon, 2004), this paper follows preservice teacher’s use of digital tools and beliefs about using digital tools in the classroom over a semester-long hybrid course.

Findings show changes in preservice teacher’s beliefs about technology use, interest-driven learning and her own agency. These changes were influenced by the framework of the course and course practices.

This research study offers practical ways to support preservice teachers’ implementation of digital tools with an emphasis on equity. Ultimately, preservice teachers’ experience shapes the opportunities students have with digital tools in schools.

Recognizing the competing discourses and pressures preservice teachers’ experience, the results of this study offer tools to support preservice teachers’ agency through the implementation of connected learning principles and critical literacy theories in preservice education courses, leading to the potential to expand equity in school settings.

While there is research around connected learning in classrooms, there is limited research on a connected learning framework in preservice education programs. Additionally, this paper brings a new perspective on how pairing an emphasis of equity to a connected learning framework supports teachers’ implementation of digital tools.

This response paper aims to comment on specific aspects of the position paper.

In this paper, the author presents a response to Fischer et al.'s contribution on “The Challenge for the Digital Age: Making Learning a Part of Life.” While imperatives and narratives of learning in the future have been well articulated in the literature, their paper provides insights into lifelong learning in the digital age.

The author raises comments on the comprehensiveness of the lifelong learning perspectives and the calls to action. Over the years, with multiyear efforts on the research-based evolution of the design, implementation and adoption of technology-supported learning environments in some parts of the world, the author believes well-researched innovative pedagogy and design principles have already to some extent impacted transformation of learning and teaching in normal schools. By referring to the work in the running of a model school in Taiwan, the author demonstrate some of the pathways that can guide innovation and work towards operationalizing a futuristic vision that is resonant with the one painted in the paper. The paper will end with some comments on how narratives on the future of learning will evolve.

In trying to understand the lens that the vision would bring to learning on the digital edge, the author has provided commentaries to probe into the comprehensiveness of their vision of future learning. From an Asian perspective, the author describes one effort that can help make progress in moving towards this vision. It involves realizing the vision by grounding our designs in real experiments or instantiations, such as the interest-driven creator (IDC) experimental school in Taiwan, and highlight past research efforts which have been successful in transformation of classrooms and schools such as developing seamless learning for connecting learning in different spaces afforded by mobile digital devices.

This article makes a case for the importance of brokering future learning opportunities to youth as a programmatic goal for informal learning organizations. Such brokering entails engaging in practices that connect youth to events, programs, internships, individuals and institutions related to their interests to support them beyond the window of a specific program or event. Brokering is especially critical for youth who are new to an area of interest: it helps them develop both a baseline understanding of the information landscape and a social network that will respond to their needs as they pursue various goals. The paper aims to describe three critical levers for brokering well in informal settings: creating learning environments that allow trust to form between youth and educators and enable educators to develop an understanding of a young person’s interests, needs and goals; attending to a young person’s tendency (or not) to reach out to educators after a program is over to solicit assistance; and enabling potential brokers to efficiently locate appropriate future learning opportunities for each young person who approaches them. The authors also include a set of program practices for providers who wish to increase their brokering impact, as well as recommendations geared primarily toward organization leaders. The authors hope that this paper brings clarity and enhanced significance to the practice of brokering as a strategy to support youth pathways toward meaningful futures.

Insights presented here are the result of a participatory knowledge building and sharing process with a community of after-school providers known as the Mozilla Hive NYC Learning Network. The topic of discussion was how these providers might continue to support young people in their intensive project-based programs after the program was over. The authors of this article, acting as embedded research partners to Hive NYC, contributed insights to these discussions based on ethnographic fieldwork and case studies of high-school-age youth in the Hive NYC context.

The authors articulate a set of brokering practices and a conceptual model that communicates how brokering might lead to valued long-term outcomes for youth, including increased social capital.

The intent is that information and perspectives from this article will inform youth-serving practice and serve as a catalyst for further conversations and activities geared toward promoting youth pathways of learning and identity development.

This paper aims to investigate an information literacy perspective on learning and new media, specifically virtual worlds and online affinity spaces. It aims to cover the potential of information literacy as an educational linchpin in the age of new media education.

This conceptual paper explores an information literacy perspective for learning and new media through previous research and prediction.

Information literacy provides a framework for addressing the explosion of information available, as well as a way to encourage self‐sufficient learners in the digital age.

Whereas previous studies have neglected information literacy as a lifelong skill, this paper recognizes the importance of research in virtual worlds which unveils the potential of new media as sites of learning independent from formal spaces. Recognizing the impact of information literacy on an information‐dependent society, it contributes to a body of literature about individual practices which allows for the creation of new instructional strategies.

The main argument behind this paper is learning in the digital age should not be restricted to creating digital infrastructures for supporting current forms of learning nor taking schools in their current form as God-given, natural entities, but changing current forms of education by developing new frameworks and socio-technical environments for making learning an integral part of life. The authors provide a framework for this argumentation as well as a call-to-action for research on the co-evolution of learning, media, and learning organizations.

This paper theoretically and argumentatively explores the core assumption that the digitalization of society results in challenges and opportunities for learning and education based on fundamental transformations (Collins and Halverson, 2009; Fischer et al., 2020).

The digital age greatly enhances the opportunities and supports the necessity for “making learning a part of life”. But while the growth of technology is certain, the inevitability of any particular future is not. The impact of schooling goes beyond that new information about computers, the Internet, and social media are integrated into the schools of today. The transformation of schools needs to be informed by an understanding of the impact of mindset formation that will determine people's approach to learning for the rest of their lives. The authors’ framework is focused on moving “beyond gift-wrapping” by not only fixing and existing systems but to change them and not only reforming but transforming them.

It is the authors’ hope that this article will be of interest to many stakeholders (including learners, teachers, curriculum designers, technology experts, parents, and politicians) and provide a foundation for an ongoing debate and informed actions for “Making Learning a Part of Life” in the digital age.

Internet technology in the classroom has become the primary demand of every student in this era. Moreover, information and communication technology aids students' learning involvement and progress by providing learning assistance by improved instructor, pupil and interactions with fellows. Using an asynchronous Web-based learning environment (WBLE) is one way to manage such assistance. This study aims to identify to what extent the asynchronous WBLE affects students' interest and motivation in learning mathematics at Shah Abdul Latif University (SALU), Khairpur.

This research uses a survey research design under a quantitative approach. Therefore, data are collected through a questionnaire about students' motivation and interest in learning mathematics via asynchronous WBLE. Data are collected from the students of four departments (BEd, BSCS, BBA, BS Mathematics) of SALU, Khairpur. However, as the nature of this study is quantitative, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the results and discussion, and a one-way ANOVA test was used. The Cronbach alpha test was also used to assess the item's reliability, and the items were found to be acceptable.

The findings of this study discovered that asynchronous WBLE has a significant impact on students' intrinsic, extrinsic and interest levels. The results indicated that there is a positive impact based on the level of mean range of asynchronous WBLE on mathematics students.

The outcome of this study can be used as a guideline to understand and further plan or develop educational interventions based on the level of motivation and interest of mathematics students towards asynchronous WBLE in other contexts.

This is first study of its nature in the context of Khairpur district of Sindh that emphasizes on the motivation and interest of mathematics students toward asynchronous WBLE.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact a games-based curriculum can have on library and information science (LIS) curriculum.

This is a worked example, using a case study and iterative design approach. Each iteration of this course and the reports are from the respective opinions of the instructors.

The authors found that once students looked past games as being pleasant distractions and were able to see them as both context-rich and well-designed learning environments, they were conducive in bringing games to libraries to spur interest-driven learning. Some students tackled analog and digital game design, while others would play historical games and tie those back to available books, and still others used board and video games to bring parents and their children together through play. While these findings do not dictate that this would work in all situations, presenting games and play as an inclusive practice that spans topics and interests was successful.

This research focuses on an LIS course and its development. Research and best practices in this course better inform future designs on how to take games-based design and interest-driven learning into broader areas to use games to spur interest and learning. The authors do not claim that our individual approaches to this class are the best methods in any course using games-based learning. Yet instructors in other fields can take what the authors learned, and the different approaches used to teaching games-based learning, and augment based on the authors’ experiences.

This worked example demonstrates that a games-based curriculum can help generate interest in informal learning spaces, such as in libraries.

The value of this paper is to emphasize the impact that games and games research can have on other disciplines. Games-based and interest-driven learning are broad enough that their usefulness in other fields is worth consideration. Libraries have been commonly looked at as “old” spaces to acquire knowledge. Combining “old” and “new” technologies to serve a more technologically savvy demographic not only helps the field of games-based learning, but also helps those in LIS how to better service a new generation of learners in collaborative relationships.

The purpose of this commentary is to comment on Fischer's et al. (2022)

This commentary responds to Fischer's et al. (2022) call on envisioning alternate conceptualizations of learning for the digital era. In doing so, the author argues for reconsidering learning in its socio-material condition, situated and made of a web of social and technological relations. In this context, the author takes a relational lens on learning to interrogate taken-for-granted views of (1) personalizing data increasingly used for student learning, (2) emerging educational infrastructures for higher education and (3) the student–teacher relationship mediated by data and algorithms.

In this commentary, the author suggested unpacking assumptions about learning that get reflected in the design and discourses about socio-technical arrangements and transformations in education. Taking the example of personalized learning, the author has illustrated a relational mode of thinking that leads the author to argue that, renewed definitions of learning must be discussed multidimensionally and, most importantly, situated in the material world that learning is already part of.

Following Fischer et al. (2022, this issue), the author agrees that the focus should be on finding “new ways of organizing learning by exploring opportunities for radically new conceptualizations and practices.” In order to do that it is of utmost importance to problematize the social and material conditions that actively configure learning today and infrastructure tomorrow's learning. Hopefully, these observations will entice others to discuss further the educational transformations at stake in the age of datafication and algorithmic decision-making.

The author argues for reconsidering learning in its socio-material condition, which is situated and made of a web of social and technological relations. In this context, the author argues that any attempt to reconceptualize learning from a transformational perspective in the 21st century, as mentioned by Fischer et al. (2022), needs to interrogate views and assumptions about the socio-technical relationships researchers, practitioners and educators are contributing to via their practices and discourses.

Empirical investigation into the e-learning innovation, FUSE Studios, is both timely and relevant because FUSE is rapidly expanding domestically and abroad and there is continued interest in the interdisciplinary fields of information and learning sciences in the constructs of choice and interest as they relate to the provision and design of learning experiences. In particular, this paper aims to contribute to scholarly and design-based conversations on how e-learning innovations – especially those situated within the digital youth and constructionism strands of research – can be designed in ways that support robust opportunities for learning for young people (Reynolds et al., 2019).

Drawing upon a large corpus of mixed-methods data including computer-generated activity log data, youth survey data and studio facilitator interview data, this paper examines patterns of use and interest-related experience among young people in a range of FUSE Studios settings across the USA.

The results suggest that student choice within FUSE’s curricular and Studio model tends to support a broad exploration of interests across a wide range of youth, rather than a deep dive into particular Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) content areas.

Alongside the broad exploration that was found to characterize the patterns of student choice in FUSE Studios, a striking number of students from those surveyed reported that FUSE supported their interest development: they liked the FUSE challenges, were always able to find something of interest to do in the FUSE Studios and saw the FUSE challenges are supportive of their current and future interests. (See similar findings in Stevens et al., 2016). We understand these student self-reported experiences as evidence that the FUSE Studios model did well to encourage meaningful, interest-driven learning experiences for youth.

Committed to making research usable for practice, this paper offers implications for future e-learning designs that seek to make choice and interest central to the organization of activity and environment.