I love collaborative learning!
Topic 3. Learning in communities, networked, collaborative learning. Oh, my goodness. I feel like I'm in my element. I was so excited to jump head first into this topic. So excited in fact that I put my hand up to lead our group's efforts when engaging with the content.
So let's break it down. Communities, networking, collaboration, and learning, all of the things I live and breathe in my everyday life, both personally and professionally. With an interest in professional identity formation (particularly healthcare professionals), and the social context in which it forms, two main theories that I see applying to this topic are Wenger’s Communities of Practice theory(Wenger, 1998); and Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986). Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (Wenger, 1998). At the heart of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) is the social context in which an individual learns and maintains behaviours (Bandura, 1986).
For more on the work of Wenger click here
I engage in my professional society through a lot of online platforms and I find that networking has really helped me get where I am today. In fact, it may even be responsible for the job that I currently have and collaboration is something that I just live and breathe. I really appreciate the concept of collaborating with others, learning from them, teaching them, moving forward together to create a product. So this topic, the concept of networked, collaborative learning, really engage me. The thing that was going to be slightly new to me was what did it mean in the digital age? How was I going to embrace communities of practice, networked based, learning to collaborate and facilitate education for my students in the digital age?Looking at the experience of PBL Group #3 we successfully demonstrated, through the use of an online mind map tool (see the video below) how we could synchronously and asynchronously collaborate . I found the experience really powerful as each member taught and learned in the same session. As an outcome of our collaboration we even created a "tips sheet", which we think could be used to guide educators who are thinking of engaging digital collaborative activities with their learners
In terms on my personal learning networks - these are strong, mostly due to the fact that living in Australia as meant that I have been physically distance from my simulation colleagues around the world.
Thank you to my PBL group members for really living and breathing the concepts of digital collaborative learning.
I agree Kirsty, I think we all learned and enjoyed lots these weeks' topic, thanks for a brilliant leadership :)
ReplyDeleteI wanted to pick up on the personal leaning networks you mention, and the geographical distance as a factor to engage more deeply. I have the same experience, leaning communities are crucial for my professional and personal learning process, but having lived in a different countries, meant that my need for building or joining learning networks felt strongly. It might be a bit tiring at times, building and joining new networks, and then trying to maintain them! but the experiences are quite enriching I think.
I enjoyed reading your post, Kirsty. Thanks for sharing! Sounds like your PBL team has been having a blast! I got excited too when I read that you referred to Wenger. I've always been referring to both Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in various discussions on learning theories/models. It's interesting isn't it that they first coined the term COP when they were discussing apprenticeship. It's excellent that discussions on COP are now longer restricted to novices. That's an assumption there in itself that COP will only benefit novice learners. In a module I teach on Critical Thinking and Communication in Community Leadership, it's inspiring to see passionate students getting together to identify a problem in their community and seek ways to resolve it. In fact, the discussions they have in their mini communities (of practice) illustrate a domain of interest where a community of practice can build competency through the acquisition of soft skills, as well as the development of discipline-specific literacy (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This is because they use the time together to develop critical thinking and communication skills while at the same time harnessing their various specialization's knowledge and skills in order to see to it that at the end of the day they have appropriate solutions to propose . Very rewarding indeed!
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