When we consider the changes in scholarly practice, it is perhaps in teaching that we see the greatest potential for a radically different approach to emerge. The three key elements of digital, networked and open converge most significantly around the production, pedagogy and delivery of education. In this chapter I will examine some of the implications, focusing on the shift to abundant content as one pertinent issue. As with the preceding chapters, this is intended as one perspective that illustrates the impact of the digital, networked, open approach and not as the only issue of relevance.

The intention here was not to set out a how-to guide for teaching or even to evaluate the effectiveness of these theories. We are witnessing a fundamental change in the production of knowledge and our relationship to content. This is producing an abundance of content which is unprecedented. Google CEO Eric Schmidt claims that society produces more information in two days than was created from the beginning of human history until 2003, stating ‘the real issue is user-generated content’ (Siegler 2010). Many of our approaches to teaching and learning were developed in a different age, and this basic shift from moderate scarcity to excessive abundance constitutes a challenge to higher education and to individual information processing abilities. It may well be that the existing theories are sufficient; they just need recasting or reimagining for a world of abundance. Bill Kerr (2007), for example, argues that ‘the new territory which George Siemens connectivism and Stephen Downes connective knowledge seeks to claim has either already been claimed by others or has been better done by others’.
Abundance does not apply to all aspects of learning; indeed the opposite may be true, for example, an individual’s attention is not abundant and is time limited. The abundance of content puts increasing pressure on this scarce resource, and so finding effective ways of dealing with this may be the key element in any pedagogy. However, I would contend that the abundance of content and connections is as fundamental shift in education as any we are likely to encounter, and there has, to date, been little attempt to really place this at the centre of a model of teaching.

In seinem Artikel A pedagogy of abundance aus dem Jahre 2011 erwähnt Martin Weller "Content" und "User Generated Content", aber verständlicherweise noch nicht "Machine Generated Content" als Ursache einer "Pädagogik des Überflusses".