The Teachers Guide to Online Learning Communities
Introduction
This book describes Online Learning Communities, the different categories, how they work, the benefits of participation for teachers and students and some suggestions for joining Online Learning Communities for educators and teens.
What is an Online Learning Community?
An Online Learning Community is “a group of individuals who collaboratively engage in purposeful critical discourse and reflection to construct meaning and confirm mutual understanding.” (The eLearning Guild, 2014). The key idea of a learning community is for members to engage in conversations of common interest in a social environment. Participants engage in the learning process not necessarily to only socialize in the community.
Online Learning Communities Categories:
Knowledge-based: a group of people that come together to produce knowledge.
Practice-based: a group of people who share a common interest and come together to share and discuss.
Task-based: a group of people who come together to accomplish a specific task.
How do Online Learning Communities work?
Online learning communities provide a social environment for members to interact, collaborate, innovate and grow. The communities offer a new way of learning, exchanging points of view and negotiating meaning of new knowledge (knowledge-based), share a common interest (practice-based), or come together with a specific goal in mind (task-based).
How Online Learning Communities use technology:
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Asynchronous (such as message boards and internet -discussion- forums)
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Synchronous (such as instant messaging)
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Blogs (such as Blogger-(service))
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Course management- created by schools/universities and professional sites (such as OpenLearning, Dokeos, Moodle, etc.)
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Collaborative (such as wikis)
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Social learning
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Social networking (such as Flickr, Facebook)
- Professional networking (such as Linkedin)
Benefits of participation
Online Learning Communities offer participants the opportunity to learn to be leaders and also teachers. By participating the learner takes responsibility of their own sharing and publishing and learn how to define their interests. Participants develop higher order thinking skills as they need to analyse, synthesize and evaluate information and knowledge sharing.
There are Online Learning Communities for every topic and some are more formal than others. A teacher can join an online learning community already established for professional development or can join an online learning community for education, for art, for making friends or helping in the community. The same is available for teens where students can join communities based on their interests and talents.
Click to see an example of a Professional Learning Community:
EdWeb Professional Learning Community
Click to see an example of a teen learning community:
Teen Ink - A teen learning community for Writers and Artists.
References:
EdWeb LLC (2014). EdWe.net. Retrieved from http://home.edweb.net/professional-learning-communities-with-free-webinars/
Harlan, M.A., Bruce, C.S. & Lupton, M. (2014). Creating and sharing: teens' information practices in digital communities. Information Research, 19(1) paper 611. [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/19-1/paper611.html]
Online Learning Insights. (N.P) A Blog about Open and Online Education. Retrieved from
Revere, L., & Kovach, J. V. (2011). ONLINE TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENGAGED LEARNING A meaningful synthesis for educators. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 12(2), 113-124.
Sunburst Digital (2014). Simple K-12. Retrieved from http://simplek12.sunburst.com/
The eLearning Guild (2014). Learning Solutions Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/761/building-an-online-learning-community