Viral Professional Development: June 2 - 22, 2008

I've been lurking (as this is my busiest time of year) and pondering the various threads and comments.

I'm with Liz on this one and generally avoid the "-gogies" as much as possible although I do use the term "anthrogogy" and define it as adult learning principles and practices that support life long learning (see David Mars, 1978 http://www.jstor.org/).

I believe that Transformative Learning (Jack Mezirow, 1978) will be the result of this co-construction of meaning through communities of practice. Cranton (1994), describes this as "a comprehensive and complex description of how learners construe, validate, and reformulate the meaning of their experience".

In terms of viral, I think that the basics have to include what Sharon has described - "brainstorm together, seek advice, and peer review each other's work" rather than worker bee knowledge accumulation. This is where learning communities can exchange those knowledges to build and grow. I also agree that it is not first about the technology, but rather about the people and how they interact.

best thoughts to all.

I hear you Liz. As a promoter of collaborative learning (some on this list may have participated in a past seminar with me about it...), I am all for "co-construction of meaning through the interchange of knowledges in the plural." However-- my view is that I want to add to my toolkit of teaching and learning possibilities and I don't necessarily want to throw out anything. I want all the colors of the rainbow so I can mix and match. I think there are cases where "instruction" is needed-- all exploratory or team or problem-based learning would be just as ineffective as all instructor-lead learning.

I advocate better matching of teaching and learning style with content, context (online or f2f), learner characteristics, social and cultural factors, time available, etc. What is needed to teach accounting procedures is different than what is needed to teach a class on leadership or literature. 

For example---recently I participated in an online professional development 5-week course at Capella on the topic of mentoring doctoral learners through the development of their research designs... within the system used by the university. As a relatively new doctoral mentor (what some schools might call "dissertation chair") I welcomed this chance to learn more. In this case, the others in the class were similarly new to the role of mentor. Those in the class were not going to "co-construct" the content because a) we were all in the same boat in terms of limited prior experience with the content and wouldn't really be able to teach each other and b) we are not in a position to change the world in terms of what dissertations must include, what different styles of research designs are, or the university policies and procedures at each stage, etc . We needed an instructor who is an experienced researcher and mentor, who also understood the specific protocols. (Not surprisingly he had a very "mentoring" style, not a top-down instructor for sure!)

In this case the "co-creation" was about co-creating a friendly learning environment, giving each other moral support, providing examples of how we'll work with our learners, sharing resources, etc. The mix of peer support, clear content and instructor guidance made it a very valuable class.

Janet

Absolutely! I would love to see the discussion move in this direction!