Stephanie Chu

Greetings Chris and welcome to our discussion on student learning communities.

I've read through your listed resources and considered the more global issue of educational reform. In particular, a couple of points stand out in your posting for me:

1. "I believe if we trained people early to use the net to find deep mentors through life and help others do likewise that would be a great start."
2. "Almost every profession seems to me to be more interested in siloising its own complex expertise rather thahn enabling people to innovate collaboratively."

In the postings over the past week, there have been discussions around communities that build relationships among peers and professionals in order to support academic and continued learning. These include communities across disciplines, geographical boundaries, and different expertise. Communities of practice/working professionals may help to enable professionals to innovate collaboratively.

We are perhaps still far from an ideal revolutionization of learning, but learning communities such as student learning communities or professional learning communities may be a step forward. I'd also add that revolutionizing learning would also entail revolutionizing expectations and perceptions about learning, including those held by the learners themselves. These are long-held beliefs which take time, patience, thoughtful consideration and reflection and positive experiences to change, if they can be changed at all.

You've mentioned some examples for different learning experiences such as Owen's open space and activities that harnesses collaborative and emotional energies, rather than exams. Can you help us to identify how learning communities (for students and/or professionals) can move us towards more ideal learning experiences? How do we deal with factors such as beliefs about learning, motivation, scaffolding, and roles, to name a few?

Wow! Are we in our second week already? I hope you all had a nice weekend and welcome back to those of you who were travelling.

Over the past week, we've started to define learning communities, similarities and differences. I'd encourage you to read the postings from last week, especially if you're just joining us this week. There's a lot of wonderful food for thought. I'll also try to cover factors in community-building/development in my next posting. In any case, a brief synoposis of our definitions of learning communities:

1. Academic/course learning communities (examples shared by many such as Derek, Bruce, Paul, Barb E.)

• For class work (students and instructor)
• Social interaction serves a specific purpose or focus in a particular domain
• Different views:
  • Contrived or created/designed by the instructor (imposed motivation?)
  • Informal, social, collaboration among students (self-motivated?)
• Different views:
  • Exchange is not voluntary (related issues include the frequency, quality and depth of responses) and may be assessed
  • Exchange is voluntary (interaction is informal and students help each other) and students are not assessed
• The common tie being that the members of the course are working towards a focus or within a subject domain together over the period of the course
• Students generally have little expertise or experience in the discipline
• Communication may serve social, communal and collaborative functions
• Short-term longevity

2. Student life/Non-academic learning communities (e.g. BCcampus initiative by Paul)

• Independent of courses and academic programs
• Potential to cross institutions, courses and time
• Focuses on social networking, general student life/experiences
• May complement students' academic learning experience
• May provide distance or online learners with a shared space and opportunities for interactions with others that could happen on campus if they were there
• Voluntary participation
• Longer-term longevity
• My note: I've also heard some discussions around SFU about residence life and student life community-building (not necessarily online, but to support these aspects of student life which contributes to academic life and learning)

3. Program level/Integration with academic learning (e.g. Barb E., John G.)

• Integrates or supports a students' academic learning experience
• Cohort-based (e.g. External graduate programs in Education, TechOne) or domain-specific (Co-op)
• Activities are less structured
• May include opportunities to connect with academic learning (i.e. panel discussions or debates on a particular topic that's being covered in a course/across courses)
• Voluntary participation
• Community-building activities and events

4. Business communities/Communities of practice/professionals (e.g. postings by Derek, Bruce, Barb B., Sandy)

• Usually voluntary participation, possibly non-voluntary such as in the case of re-accreditation
• Professionally oriented
• Members may have a high level of expertise or experience
• Members rely on the resources and strengths of others
• Fluid membership and participation by members depending on their needs and interests and topic relevancy

These definitions of learning communities aren't clear-cut either. In many of our examples, they cross two or even three of these "definitions". For example, in Andrew's paper (posted on April 26), the WBSI participants were in courses together, within a Management and Strategic Studies program and were working professionals. In one of Derek's examples (posted on April 29), he describes how he works with pre-service teachers who start off as novices and transition into their profession; their shared focus to become a teacher/be employed as a teacher. How would we define this community?

Thoughtful points were also raised about creating learning communities and whether our efforts to foster learning communities and its potential artificiality may not yield expected results.

I'll work on summarizing our thoughts about factors related to creating and maintaining learning communities in another post -- All of us delved into this theme including questions and insights from Elizabeth L. and Liz W. and oh! I just saw a posting from Wendy too about roles (welcome Wendy).

In the meantime, please continue with any of the existing postings (such as the conversation on longevity and Afsaneh's questions about whether longevity is a goal) and I'd really appreciate if you'd expand upon or refute points in this synoposis. Thanks.

Btw, if you're reading and haven't yet posted, please jump in with even a short posting or single idea. We'd love for you to join us.

Okay, I think my next posting will happen tomorrow. G'night!

Hello Elizabeth and Welcome!

Your questions resulted in me thinking about an online experience of mine and how the sense of community was affected:

We were a group of about 6 graduate students who met online and f2f  throughout the semester -- f2f at the start and end points of the semester and the remainder was online. The group was small enough for us to get to know each other fairly quickly. I would say that we were a typical group of students, but we had one person who played as you've called, the "brown noser" and I'd also add, the "sniper".

As the semester progressed, the instructor was relatively absent and popped in online to indicate that he/she would be away or had just returned from a trip. Each time, the brown noser was quick to flatter the instructor, etc. Meanwhile, during online interactions with peers, the person "sniped" through comments such as, "It's nice that you're making an attempt at answering the question, since you have no expertise in the area" or "glad that you were able to finally join us as the deadline has past" (when that wasn't even the case). Even when we tried to clarify what the person meant or tried to raise awareness (with this student and later, to the co-instructor), nothing changed. It progressed to the point that we were rallying around in defence of the person's latest "victim". (Interestingly, the person never said a word in our f2f meetings and yet, displayed a completely different side online).

After a short while the situation became unbearable for the rest of us. The sense of dread and negativity in our learning space was beyond repair and even though some of us did communicate, it was outside of the forum and did not have much to do with what we were learning. Though the students, aside from the "brown-noser+sniper" bonded as a result of this experience; I'm not so sure if bonding to maintain sanity is really a positive outcome of this learning experience.

The roles that students play can negatively affect the sense of community among students and the associated learning if the behaviours are not addressed by the instructor or facilitator. As many people have noted in this forum, the facilitator's role is integral for a successful community. In this case, the instructor was relatively absent and evidently not moderating the discussions.

It seems that in this case, time was an important variable. Given the asynchronous nature of the discussions, perhaps more of the "behaviours" were left unchecked by peers (and definitely by the instructors). We also may have hesitated, questioned and analysized our own responses and feelings towards the postings. However, given the amount of energy it took to try to interact, be supportive and learn, it became too much. After it became evident nothing would change, the community's breakdown was imminent and very quick.

Do others have experiences with the different roles students play (either as their "usual" selves or as learning strategies) and their effects on student community? I'm curious to other people's experiences about the different roles students can have and what happens to them in an online environment as Elizabeth asks...

Greetings,

Below are the resources for the second webinar titled, "Creating Learning Communities to Enhance Student Success" which was facilitated by Jodi Levine, Temple University.

Link to Webinar Recording (available for 30 days)

(this will take a few minutes to download due to size)

http://www.projectstreamer.com/users/vkisiel/jodi_nofp_bg/ - With video

http://www.innovativeeducators.org/jodinovideo.html - No video

PowerPoint Presentation

http://www.innovativeeducators.org/creating.ppt

I agree that the faciliator role is important for online communities. I'm curious though, to everyone's thoughts about the faciliator's role in a student learning community -- whether it be academic such as in a classroom or program level (such as in examples of courses we've been sharing or like TechOne or the Co-op community), or a broader community for students (such as what Paul exemplified), but not directly related to academics.

Who needs to be the facilitator? Would it be beneficial for the community discussions to be facilitated by a student or group of students, because they are peers? For example, both TechOne and the Co-op community have "student hosts" who are hired to help with community-building? Or in the case of the classroom community, is the role initially the instructor's who models facilitation and then scaffolds the transition to the students?

I look forward to your thoughts about this. Does anyone have resources to share about student learning communities and the roles and related processes?