EMT1-1.2

  EMT 1 Assessment 1 Part 1 – Analysis of selected learning community 

Describing and analyzing experiences as a learner/participant in my selected learning community.

(word count: 1495)

1. A concise description of my community – including the technological environment, and the participants.

The community assists developers with PHP/MySQL. Participants are web coders – around 62000 members. On daily average there are 280 members online, 727 posts, 2382 views, and male-to-female ratio of 11:1. The technological environment is mainly forums, dedicated to particular coding issues, but there are also sections with tutorials, articles, code examples and manuals.

2. A description of the learning events/activities occurring in this community.

The most prolific learning activity is posting of solutions to specific problems. Participants are eager to share their knowledge and debate which solution is the most effective – not only the person who posts the question is learning. The tutorials also have a high access rate and the majority of the tutorials are designed and posted by members. Clearly tutorials have improved over time as members learn what works and what doesn’t from previous posts. The nature of the participants as coders means they are solutions focused preferring to deal in specific problems rather than abstract philosophical discussions.

3. A description and analysis of your role as a learner/participant in the learning activities.

My first step as a learner in this community was taking time to explore the site. I read the guidelines, reviewed posts, completed tutorials – browsing the site to see what was available and the style of the community. I began my interaction by posting a question about coding database connections. Within a few hours I had three possible solutions. Over the next day, through subsequent discussions posted by members, it became clear which was the favoured solution – and it worked! For the first weeks I mainly posted questions or kept up with threads of particular postings that were of interest to me. As my confidence grew, I then began to post my opinion on posted questions (despite restrictions caused by my limited knowledge compared to most members). I then posted a small tutorial and received great feedback which boosted my confidence to make further contributions.

4. An analysis of the community as a vehicle for learning. What aspects of the community’s structure or function support (or hinder) learning?

As a vehicle for solving coding problems or learning more about coding, the community seems quite effective – mainly because of the nature of its members. The community thrives because of a large group of people passionate about PHP who enjoy helping others solve technical problems. Kuh (1996) emphasizes the need for a common vision for a successful learning community. Whether the enthusiasm is purely altruistic or ego-driven behavior (or both) isn’t clear. But the consistent work of these members supports the wider majority who really are just looking for answers to their specific problems.

Although Andrade (2008) indicates it is difficult to determine which characteristics of learning communities account for their success, aspects of the communities structure that seem to support learning are:
–  user friendly forum system with categorized topics
– welcoming ‘feel’ of the site
–  laissez-faire approach to moderation (while some areas are locked the majority of the site has no moderation – but it works)
– search facility
–  statistics provided (an active site encourages enthusiastic participation)
– sort facility on forums on a number of fields
– clarity as to what type of issue should be posted where and good compliance with this in the community.

Given that the community is by and for a group of technically minded web designers, it makes sense that the structure of the community is well designed and has lots of features to make learning easier.

Aspects that hinder learning are:
– amount of content and posts on the site initially seems overwhelming
– time needed to feel confident in navigating site could be off-putting to some users
– time needed to read through the multitude of previous posts to see whether an issue has already been raised
– no facility for email alert for posts
– so much information that at times you forget what you found out when you first started – given that Heller (1998) states that learning communities should increase retention this is a problem!
I found the majority of barriers to learning were related to the size of the community.  With such a large group you learn little about other members so while there is a strong sense of community around the topic of PHP, there is little interaction at a more personal level.

5. My interpretation of my experiences in relation to my research and readings on learning communities.  

It was interesting having spent some time in the community prior to researching learning communities, as after having more of a conceptual framework to analyse, my perspective on what was taking place was irrevocably altered from that of the wide-eyed newbie. I also felt it was at this point in time that all the earlier readings tended to coalesce into a coherent whole.

My first thoughts were there was clear evidence of the cyberage shifts that Seely Brown and Duguid (1999) discuss in this community. The learning taking place is definitely experiential as opposed to authority based and information navigation literacy is the key to success given the huge amount of information available (over half a million posts). This community is not using manuals or training courses, they are self-taught and demonstrating qualities Seely Brown and Duguid outline of the cyberage learner. They try different things to discover what works. In some ways this community is a good match with the learning ecology concept: this is an open, complex, adaptive system which is partially self-organising. There are part-producers and part-consumers of knowledge within this community.

At this point in time I was feeling quite impressed with my community.  It seemed it was a good example of Seely Brown and Adler’s (2008) concept of social learning – learning was being constructed through conversations about the content, there were grounded interactions taking place with others around problems and the naturally occurring knowledge assets were being captured (with the search facility taking the place of an additional tag structure). The community also reflected the concept of Web 2.0 – there is demand pull learning in a passion-based learning community built around a practice.

But then I began to have doubts. While some elements of Saunder’s (1999) social learning theory were demonstrated with learning clearly being influenced by previous posts, norms and conventions within the community and through the observations of others, applying some of Cornford’s (1999) conceptual frameworks did cause me to stop and take a deeper look at the community.

There was definitely evidence of effective use of modeling – as Cornford points out modeling is important in explaining the abstract rules that underlie much of the behaviour in a learning community particularly with respect to self-regulation. This is a community with very little moderation, yet very few problems – norms are clearly established both through explicit documentation and through members following conventions set by previous members. I think there is collective realization that for such a large group to function cohesively, members must all work together and follow certain conventions or chaos will reign.

But it then occurred to me there was very little self-disclosure in the community.  Although there were lively debates on the relative merits of different solutions, this did not lead to much personal disclosure.  If we apply the Johari model of disclosure, it is clear the majority of participants are not demonstrating evidence of increasing levels of trust or disclosure. There is little reduction happening in blind spots, facades or the unknown and with only a small arena exposed. This perhaps contributes to the lack of feeling of belonging to something larger than oneself which Downes (2008) puts forward as one of eight principles to creating a successful learning community.

Wenger (1999) states that our identities should be transformed by the social experience of this learning and we should be engaged in an imaginative process connecting us to other members in the community. I concluded that although I felt welcome in the community, there were not enough elements of the social perspective of learning present for this to be a community that also benefits from relationships built and disclosures made.  Love (1999) emphasizes that part of the benefit of learning communities should be to help students form social networks among their peers.

Contrast this with a PHP course I attended recently. Even though we were there to learn coding, it wasn’t long before we knew why each wanted to learn it and what backgrounds we came from; this definitely influenced and added depth to our interactions.

Kilpatrick et al (2004) state that learning communities are consistent with a constructionist approach to learning that recognizes the importance of social interactions in the learning place. Unfortunately in my community this was only really taking place on a superficial level.

I came to the conclusion that while learning was definitely taking place, the community was not taking advantage of the power of social interaction and engagement to enhance learning. There is definitely potential for deeper, richer learning to take place in this community by building greater facilities or creating norms for disclosure and relationship building. This would create a more meaningful experience for members, a deeper level of engagement and greater immersion in their learning.

I am looking forward to understanding the principles of how you would create such an environment in the next assignment, particularly when taking into account the inherent problems with such a large community.

References

Andrade, M.S. 2008, ‘Learning Communities: Examining Positive Outcomes’, Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, vol. 9, no. 1 pp. 1-20.

Cornford, I.R. 1999, ‘Social Learning’, in James Athanasou (ed.), Adult Educational Psychology, Sydney Social Press, Katoomba, pp. 73-80.

Downes, S. 2004, Learning in Communities, Australian Flexible Learning Community, viewed 21 April 2008, <http://community.flexiblelearning.net.au/GlobalPerspectives/content/article_5249.htm>.

Heller, R. 1998,  ‘Learning Communities: What Does the Research Show?’, AAC&U Peer Review, vol. 1, no.1, pp.11.

Kilpatrick, S., Barrett, M. & Jones, T. 2004, ‘Defining Learning Communities’, AARE Conference, ed. P. Jeffery, The Australian Educational Researcher, Melbourne, viewed 20 April 2008, <http://www.aare.edu.au/03pap/jon03441.pdf>.

Kuh, G. D. 1996, ‘Guiding Principles for Creating Seamless Learning Environments’, Journal of College Student Development, vol. 37, March/April, pp. 135-148.

Love, A. G. 1999, ‘What are learning Communities?’ In J. H. Levine, ed., Learning Communities: New Structures, New Partnerships for Learning, Columbia, South Carolina: National Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, pp. 1-8.

Saunders, S. 1999, ‘Social Psychology of Adult Learning’ in James Athanasou (ed.), Adult Educational Psychology, Sydney Social Press, Katoomba, pp. 26-71.

Seely Brown, J. & Adler, R. P. 2008, ‘Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0′, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 16-32.

Seely Brown, J. & Duguid, O. 1999, Learning, Working and playing in the digital age, Transcript from a conference on Higher Education of the American Association for Higher Education, viewed 14 April 2008, <http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/seelybrown/seelybrown.html>.

Wenger, E. 1999, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge University Press, USA.

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