George Siemens has posted an article on elearnspace about extending the classroom through understanding Learning Ecology, Communities, and Networks.

"Learner-centered, lifelong learning has been the cry of knowledge society visionaries for the last decade. Yet learning continues to be delivered with teacher-centric tools in a twelve week format. Society is changing. Learners needs are changing. The course, as a model for learning, is being challenged by communities and networks, which are better able to attend to the varied characteristics of the learning process by using multiple approaches, orchestrated within a learning ecology."