Module 4 Week 3 discussion

Grainne Conole paper on Learning Design

The five overarching themes on design approaches and methods

In a nutshell, the challenges faced by teachers while designing for learning are:

1. the rapid pace of technological change and range of pedagogical approaches causing confusion in adoption of suitable technologies and pedagogical approaches
2. the increasing size and diversity of the student body
3. the increasing requirement for quality assurance
4. technophobia
5. lack of time to explore the use of technologies resulting in lack of awareness of different possibilities
6. aversion to the risks inherent in experimentation
7.  fear of being supplanted by the computer
8. low levels of dissemination of ICT-based learning projects
9. lack of ICT-based learning examples to model
10. lack of support and training

Priya: "All the four users I interviewed [for her Module 1 project on Cloudworks] believed that learning designs are heavily dependent on the context and so, they cannot be shared or reused much"

Seema: "Learning Design Tool provides a more standardised framework allowing designers to pick the right tools considering range of factors such as level of learning outcome (Knowledge acquisition-understanding-problem solving), level of guidance(high –medium-low), content focus (information-application-evaluation), content application (procedural-interpretive-creative), learner freedom (low-medium-high), learning form (practising-choosing-designing), learner preference (teacher centered - working with peers- learner-centered) and different type of engagements.

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Daniel paper on Social Capital

Michelle: [social capital] has been described as a composite of norms, trust and networks that enable participants to work together effectively to pursue shared goals...Daniel suggests that for virtual learning communities that it is conceptualised as ‘a common social resource that facilitates information exchange, knowledge sharing and knowledge construction through continuous interaction, built on trust and maintained through shared understanding’

Benefits/Drawbacks of Social Capital

Benefits have been identified in terms of traditional communities that include

• Resolving collective problems more easily
• Facilitation of community advancement
• Making interactions more enjoyable
• Facilitation of dissemination of information
• Reducing selfish behaviour
• Encouraging behaviour that is socially acceptable
• Improving educational and health outcomes
• Minimising cost and bureaucracy
• Bridging cultural differences
• Enhancing trust and solidarity

Drawbacks

• If the social capital is high within communities, it may limit inter-community communication as allegiances to one’s group may be negative e.g. criminal organisations.
• They may be so cohesive that they exclude others from entering e.g. nepotism
• Sometimes the reach of social capital is overstated resulting in the inappropriate analysis of the potential benefit/limitations

Virtual Learning Communities vs Distributed Communities of Practice

The future potential role of research using interdisciplinary research approaches to research social capital in online resources is described and a list of 8 future research points is included.

1. Social capital lacks clear definition and consequently, it is difficult to develop concrete measurement scales.
2. Social capital is a complex construct that is a mixture of more primitive variables like trust, reciprocity, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding. There is lack of a clear, concise and consistent framework for understanding which of the contributing variables are most influential, and how they interact with each other.
3. Studies have shown that social capital emerges from interaction and it depends on the characteristics of individuals and groups. Nonetheless, it is not clear what the key characteristics of individuals and groups might be that can contribute to the development of social capital.
4. Research on social capital mainly assumes that social capital is correlated to positive, pro-social outcomes, but such research ignores the negative ways that social capital may be manifest.
5. Social capital depends on different levels of trusting relationships. However individuals in virtual communities are geographically and culturally distributed and often have different levels of knowledge and skills. Since these individuals span space, time, and cultures, they have little knowledge of others beyond assumptions and stereotypes. A lack of sufficient information about others hinders individuals' abilities to develop trust.
6. Trust primarily develops through interaction in face-to-face encounters. There are limited computational tools that can augment, promote and maintain trust in virtual environments.
7. Social capital has been applied to understand different social issues but there is no work done on the effects of social capital on learning in more traditional environments, technology-based environments or "blended learning" environments.
8. Social capital depends on other variables such as cohesion among individuals, but few studies correlate the influence of cohesion on the overall social capital in a group.

Ayman: I agree that we're somewhere in the middle because virtual learning environments with all the technology available could not bridge the gap (f2f) from the social perspective.  I think that's exactly one of the researchable areas mentioned at the end of the precis.  Research in this area is still not mature enough to compensate for the social effect from face-to-face interactions.  I can prove that by how our own relationships changed dramatically after the first residential and then the second residentail.  We felt so good we asked for a third didn't we?  Technology is so great in automating routine tasks of the learning process, but has it never made it up for how we trust one another just by being over the wire.

Michelle: (from her Module 2 paper) Virtual learning communities are formalised, focus on learning goals, often have a defined and limited lifespan and fixed goals. Distributed communities of practice are commonly associated with higher levels of trust, shared understanding, informal learning goals, a life-span that is determined by the value of the outcomes for members.

Sean:

VLC

• • We begin as individuals with a goal
  • Join the PhD in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning programme
  • Programme has pre-planned and fixed goals
  • Domain specific
  • Individual learning needs
  • Social interaction based on learning needs and/or community requirements and support by VLE.
  • VLC exists in pre-defined VLE

Social capital

Trust, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding maintain(?) VLC.

Influences participation

F2FCoP

• • Temporal (physical)
  • Required residential
  • Student/faculty adhoc meet ups
  • Lancaster University Faculty & Admin Staff
    • Interactions with students
    • Interactions with other staff members

Social capital

Trust, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding built in VLC, encouraging further means/needs for interactivity.

Leads to possible formation of new communities.

Feeds back into VLC

DCoP

• • Informal learning goals
  • Life spans determined by value community provides its members
  • Multiple VLEs & F2F meetups
  • Moodle, Mahara, Edumodo, international F2F meetups

Social capital

Trust, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding built in VLC and F2FCoP, encouraging further means/needs for interactivity.

Leads to possible formation of new communities (i.e. F2FCoP, DCoP).

Feeds back into VLC and F2FCoP

 

Sheila: "I'm thinking very specifically of an online course I taught last year where three or four individuals had much greater social privilege than others in the class (who were more typical of the usual student population of this first-year introduction to literature class). The individuals with greater social privilege were engaging on a much more critical level than the other students, most of whom were still struggling with basic literary analysis. The central characteristic of this online environment became much more critical and competitive than similar courses I've taught in past semesters. And I'll admit that it was a pleasure as an instructor to have students engage at this level, but I did think that it served to alienate many other students in the class who could not contribute at the same level. "Alienate" may be too strong a word, but the gap in that particular class was quite profound.

"Daniel does note, ““Lave and Wenger (1991) and Brown and Duguid (1991; 2000) observed that shared language and codes facilitate individuals' abilities to gain access to people and information, but when individuals do not share language and codes, they can fail to come together…they also warned about the dangers of having well defined community boundaries, which can make it difficult for a community to integrate new members and assimilate new knowledge into the community from other communities (Wenger, 1998).”


Sean: "I am also beginning to see the importance of temporality as just clarified by Don (perceptions and focus on time). Is temporality an issue for individuals in a DCoP or the DCoP itself? I would assume that a DCoP as an entity would have medium- to long-term goals, but does that mean participants in the community need to? If membership is fluid or has a high turnover rate, would there be an impact on the temporality of the DCoP". 

Module 4 Week 2 discussion

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.


Copied directly from Sheila's precis:

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.