Module 4 Week 1 Discussion

Palloff, R.M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Online learning communities in perspective. In R. Luppicini (Ed.) Online learning communities. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 3-15.


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In this chapter, the authors highlight the centrality of community to online learning and suggest that the evolution of community in online learning environments has been effective in the development of online education.

In education, the acquisition of skills, knowledge, and information is less important than matters related to identify and belonging/shared values because these relate to the creation of community. What drives learning, according to Wenger, is social identity.

Scholars have defined “online community” in various ways over the years, but several common themes emerge from the research:

• the ability to build mutual trust
• a connection of the spirit
• a sense of belonging
• a sense of membership
• a sense of support
• an ability to share in the educational journey together

Other researchers add the following themes:

• willingness to share resources
• regular communication
• systematic problem solving
• sharing in the success of individual members
• a common sense of responsibility (toward tasks; toward peers)
• a joint vision (goals and artifacts equally shared)
• a safe environment
• a degree of structural dependence (need for members to interact and share resources)
• mutual support

The authors suggest several indicators that reveal when community has formed:

• active interaction
• collaborative learning (primarily student to student)
• socially constructed meaning
• resource sharing
• expressions of support as well as willingness to be critical

 
The authors believe two characteristics distinguish the online learning community from other online communities: “Engaging in collaborative learning and the resultant reflective practice involved in transformative learning differentiate the online learning community and lend it its power in the learning process” (pg. 6).

The process of collaboratively and reflectively constructing knowledge is a five-stage process:

1. Sharing and comparing information: occurs early on where participants test each other out to determine each others’ strengths and knowledge;
2. Discovery of areas of potential disagreement, dissonance, or inconsistency of ideas (conflict phase);
3. Negotiation of meaning;
4. Testing ideas against experience: the “disorienting dilemma”—“by comparing current knowledge against what has always been known, a door opens to the development of new knowledge and meaning.”
5. Evidence of metacognitive thinking—i.e., evidence that students’ thinking on a topic has evolved.

In order to “achieve learning outcomes, attain higher levels of thinking, promote satisfaction … and solidify the sense of community,” designers of online courses should be cognizant of the necessity to build opportunities for groups to engage in the five phases and facilitate group engagement in each of the five phases.

Three forms of presence create the online educational experience:

Social presence refers to social context, communication, and interaction, and contributes to greater learning outcomes and learner satisfaction. Thus, including collaborative activities enhances not only online community, but also the emergence of social presence. Social presence (facilitated by the creation of collaborative tasks) also reduces the potential for learner isolation.

Cognitive presence is “the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication … [it] is a vital element in critical thinking, a process and outcome that is frequently presented as the ostensible goal of all higher education” (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, 2000, pg. 4)

Teaching presence includes two functions: i) selection, organization, and design of content; 2) facilitation. Teaching presence is predominately that of the instructor, but students also develop teaching presence in a collaborative learning environment.
 
The authors define the elements of online community as

1. People: students/faculty; social presence;
2. Purpose and Policy: course content, organization, policies, goals, and shared agreement to the aforementioned;
3. Interactivity:  interaction, communication, team-work, collaboration; attention to technology to facilitate aforementioned;
4. Reflective/Transformative Learning: “development of a social constructivist context that allows for reflection and the active creation of knowledge and meaning.”

The authors suggest that the most critical element to the online community is social presence because it “is essential to collaborative work and undergirds the ability to establish the other components” (pg. 10).

Course designers and instructors must make the creation of community central to their course designs. And the creation and sustenance of online community is more than participation. Exercises that rely on collaboration and encourage reflection are essential to facilitate knowledge development and create community—these exercises must be constructed specifically to elicit high levels of interaction, to guide students through the five aforementioned phases of knowledge development, and to form community.

The authors suggest that “…students need to be invited and encouraged to join the community and then, through good modeling by the instructor about what it means to learn in community, be encouraged to gradually take on the responsibility for sustaining it” (pg. 11).
 
Research related to the value of online learning communities suggests a number of possibilities related to higher education and the development of online community. The authors suggest some promising new applications beyond the classroom:
 

• online student services;
• a multilayered approach to community;
• the use of the learning community as part of disaster response and recovery efforts;
• the use of learning communities in faculty development.