Creating a Learning Community
What is a learning community?
A learning community is a virtual community (in other words, not a face-to-face community) of persons who are interested in studying a common interest. The community might gather in an online discussion forum, a LISTSRV, via video teleconferencing, or use any other technology that allows learners to gather without being in the same physical location. I feel that the purpose of a learning community is to construct meaning. We do this by bringing our views and experiences on various topics out in the open for everyone to read, reflect, and respond. The learning community is a place where we can gauge, after a fashion, our progress as a lifelong learner. I was reading some bits out of Peter Jarvis’ book Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Learning (2006) where he broke down the term “lifelong learner.” I’ll just quote the good bit as I just love his writing :-) :
Human beings exist in the world – in space – but they have life, they are beings-in-the-world, and our existence is about being-for-itself. That is, we exist of ourselves, we have a sense of self, self-concern and we can reflect upon ourselves. In this sense, we are intelligent beings and our life vibrates with the intention and the capacity to respond to the world in which we are, to adapt to it and also to see and to change it. Life, then, is intelligent existence, about our being, covering the breadth of our being, and so it is almost tautologous [linguistically redundant] to talk about life-wide learning. Life is about being: human being is about learning…Throughout our lives we have the capacity to learn and without learning it is hard to conceptualize human life as we understand it. Lifelong is about being in time. Learning, then, is intrinsic to living…It is about the changing person – it is about becoming. ‘Lifelong learning’ is about being and becoming.
Is a learning community a requirement for online/distance learning?
Members of a learning community support each other as they study their common interest. The community can help answer questions, carry on debates, work out differences of opinion. In the end, hopefully, there is a consensus of opinion about the topic under discussion, but this is not a requirement. Since members are separate from each other, the learning community also acts to encourage and motivate each other. But for a learning community to succeed, its members must feel that it is a safe environment. For me, online communities, in general, can be a two-edged sword. They bring us together, but they also expose us.
Jarvis goes on to talk a bit about how lifelong learning is a journey, one that requires landmarks. The most fundamental of these landmarks is whether we learn to trust, or whether we have only experienced mistrust. This is where I see a learning community as being that two-edged sword. Someone coming to online learning with a history of mistrust may find our openness overwhelming. This person may have developed compensating skills (like how a blind man hears the steps in the night 3 blocks away) such that he can construct the meaning he requires without interacting with anyone else. They may prefer the isolation that online learning can afford them – they feel no need to connect to others. Requirements, such as what I put into my discussion policy that everyone must participate in the discussions at a fairly high level may be such an obstacle for this type of learner that he would withdraw and not come back to online learning.
I have to wonder what the correspondence courses our grandmothers and grandfathers took have to teach us about the need for community. The lesson I see, which of course probably has no backing, is that they were able to succeed in their learning goals without any feedback other than the “instructor.” So I guess I can sum up my thoughts by saying that learning communities online are a “nice to have”, but not a requirement for every learner.
I’ve seen a maturation in my own needs, and expectations, as I’ve progress through my study of the adult learner. During undergrad work, I know that I focused on learning facts – memorizing, categorizing – or learning a bit about investigative science. There was little emphasis on reflective thinking or output. And of course, it was teacher-centered, so there was a huge dependency there. As I have studied learner-centered learning, I’ve seen myself develop into one. The online discussion forums I’ve participated in have been a substantial part of that transformation away from teacher-dependency. As my confidence relying on my own learning styles grows, I can foresee that I’ll have less need for discussion forums as part of the reflective thinking process. I’m sure that the dominance of Solitude as a learning style (my most dominant style…even above Verbal) has a lot to do with this vision of myself.
How do you create a learning community?
A learning community requires two things: an agreement between the participants that it is a “safe haven” and a topic to study. Other ingredients, such as participation and a willingness to share your own experience, are needed from the majority of participants. For the most part, the learning community develops in the discussion forum, or in teleconferences sessions.
Rivers, et al(2009) in the electronic journal Kairos describe a pilot project on how they introduced first-year English composition students to a learning community while discussing the historical question of “What is a university?” Initially, the T/F/Ts presented questions based on assigned readings, but gradually gave that role over to the participants. The participants were assigned to one of four roles, each lasting a week. These roles were:
- Launch – On a Monday, the participant presented a 250-word post that presented the baseline answer to the question
- Query – On a Tuesday, a 2nd participant requested clarification or ask a question
- Extension – On a Wednesday, a 3rd participant pushed the conversation in a broader direction, using their own thoughts about either the original question, the launch post or the followup query post
- Connection – On Thursday and Friday, the remaining participants draw connections between the ideas put forward in the discussion, or other influences such as current events.
The use of these four roles demands that participants not only participate, but learn to take a 360-degree view of the topic. It also prevents any one participant from posting to the forum with the easy list of bullet points, leaving the rest of the participants to carry out the heavy lifting. With this structured, balanced approach, all of the participants have a hand in creating the learning community.
