Creating communities: developing, enhancing and sustaining learning communities across the University of Bedfordshire (original) (raw)
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Communities in practice: A community dimension for the UNSW Learning & Teaching Exchange (2008)
An online learning and teaching exchange, integrating a range of communities of practice with a showcase of good practice, and the tools to develop sound teaching approaches - it sounds a fine venture, but what should it encompass? How will it be framed and contextualised? How will it be managed? And – most importantly – whom is it for, and how will it engage users in a meaningful way, embedded into the context of their current practice? This is not an untrodden path, there are numerous examples of exchanges, repositories and communities developed on a grander scale than the one planned for UNSW, most recently the ALTC (formerly Carrick) Exchange, designed and developed under the auspices of ascilite. The designers of the UNSW Learning & Teaching Exchange have learned from and built on these developments, with an intention to eventually complement those wider initiatives. Our Exchange will provide an environment for UNSW academics to share their learning and teaching practice and develop their academic career in a local context, aiming to integrate local activities with wider initiatives in learning and internationally. This paper draws on the literature on communities of practice and the scholarship of teaching and learning, and reviews some recent online developments in higher education that informed the planning of the UNSW Learning & Teaching Exchange.
Learning Communities Research and Practice Learning Communities Research and Practice
Learning Communities Research and Practice, 9(1), Article 4. , 2021
Research around learning community models often shows a structured and defined model to follow with the underlying assumption being if the steps are followed, the results will come. The model we offer in this paper is rather counter-cultural as it was not a specific process or practice we followed; rather, we found ourselves in a highly engaging, safe, kind, and productive learning community unlike most we have encountered in academia. We asked ourselves, “Why?” and engaged in reflection, questions, and research to define our unique community. Six themes emerged that form our ecological learning community; these themes are in motion, intertwined, and co-dependent on one another. Our model is not linear, instead, it is fluid and organic, moving from firm boundaries to more porous edges or shapes that respond to the needs of the group and communities around us to create an inclusive environment. The six themes are: 1) organic trust, safety, and belonging, 2) shared collective vision; 3) cultural humility; 4) inclusion--a commitment to diversity of perspectives; 5) shared leadership; and 6) practices in alignment with values. We offer suggestions for practices for learning communities that similarly aim to be responsive and adaptive.
Learning Communities in the English Classroom
In recent years, grants have been awarded to various science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs focusing on inquiry-based learning in a learning community format. After working for one such program for nearly three years (Igniting Streams of Learning in Science, hereafter ISLS), I returned to the classroom, determined to put what I had learned into practice in English. The learning community format confers benefits to students in courses such as composition and technical writing. In composition, learning communities offer students opportunities for connection and networking, practice in negotiating workload, and the ability to contribute to a more self-directed classroom experience, while emphasizing critical thinking through the process of raising, and collaborating to solve, problems. In technical writing, learning communities work together by developing businesses; this semesterlong experience gives students the chance to try different careers, build working relationships, practice real-world writing, and be creative. Most of the challenges involve students not carrying their own weight; while requiring learning community members to review one another's performance usually discourages slacking, dealing with such students is good practice for real-world work situations, where these challenges often exist. Feedback from students indicates that the majority see writing in a learning community as an opportunity to gain practice in workplace writing, teamwork, communication, and negotiation, helping prepare them for their eventual careers.
Teaching in Higher Education, 2014
The focus of this article is on the experiences of staff members involved in a student support programme. The experiential, social, and student-centred approaches incorporated in this programme provided not only students, but also academics with pathways to lifelong learning. Functioning in a community of practice (CoP) (with students and also with like-minded colleagues) created an enabling environment for the development of effective teaching and learning approaches, as well as practical skills. Additional positive results relate to the fact that academics are aware of the importance of and more equipped with the competence to scaffold students towards becoming more effective in the learning process.
Building learning communities: foundations for good practice
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2005
The School of Health Sciences at the University of Birmingham provided opportunities for the development of student learning communities and online resources within the neurological module of the BSc Physiotherapy degree programme. These learning communities were designed to facilitate peer and independent learning in core aspects underpinning clinical practice, thus laying the foundation for the development of effective clinical reasoning.This paper examines some of the problems that staff encountered, including the lessons that they learnt through the design, development, and implementation processes of the module, and the subsequent modifications that were made. Student experiences of this course are also included, as they provided staff with further insights into the ways in which these problems impacted upon their preparation for clinical practice and how the module might be improved for future cohorts. From an analysis of the problems that staff encountered and then sought to resolve, and of student experiences of the course, this paper identifies foundations for good practice in the development and delivery of innovative learning and teaching methods.
Learning Centre Roles in Facilitating Learning Communities at the Tertiary Level
Online Submission, 2006
Tertiary learning centres are generally considered as having the primary function of teaching students how to be most effective in their learning and performance so as to achieve success in their courses of study. Instruction provided by such centres are delivered through group work (courses, workshops), one-to-one work, and through materials that come in the form of print and electronic resources. What is often not well known is that the success of such centres in meeting student learning needs depends considerably on the development of effective learning communities within the tertiary institutions where these centres operate. Important features of such learning communities include students who are active (rather than passive) participants in the development of their learning capabilities, students helping each other, faculty and departmental staff who are actively involved in the development and provision of support mechanisms to cultivate desired student skills, and effective communication channels that allow instructors to learn as much from their students as the students learn from them. This paper examines some of the ways in which staff working in learning centres can contribute to the development of these learning communities. Specific examples are drawn from activities and programs provided by the Student Learning Centre at the University of Auckland. The ways in which the success of many of the Centre's activities and programs depend on these learning communities, and the measures used to assess the impact of these programs on student performance, are discussed. Learning communities in brief The essence of a learning community is that all of its members acquire new ideas and take responsibility for making sure the organization works (Hiatt-Michael, 2001). In the tertiary education environment, a learning community can be defined broadly as "a subgroup of learners from a larger cohort, who work[ed] together with a common goal to provide support and demand for group commitment and collaboration" (Davies, Ramsay, Lindfield, & Couperthwaite, 2005, p. 615). There are different forms of learning communities. The learning communities that Edwards and McKelfresh (2002) described, for example, were "living learning centers" which were structured, highly involved residential colleges that included classes and teaching staff living arrangements. In contrast, Knight, Dixon, Norton, & Bentley (2004) had a broader, less structured view: their references to a learning community basically pertained to a school and the wider community of professionals it linked with via videoconferencing. Levine (1998, n.d.) acknowledged that there is a debate about what exactly constitutes a "learning community". She referred to the five models (i.e., linked courses, clusters, freshman interest groups, federated learning communities, and coordinated studies) that Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews, and Smith (1990) put forward, and noted that more recently these authors had reduced their model categories to three: paired or clustered courses, student cohorts in larger classes, and team-taught programs. Paired or clustered courses, the 1 Manalo, E. (2006). Learning centre roles in facilitating learning communities at the tertiary level.
A Workbook for Designing, Building, and Sustaining Learning Communities
2016
To address the professional development needs of learning community instructors at Kingsborough Community College, faculty coordinators and program directors developed a workbook for instructional teams. This workbook walks instructors through the collaborative process of creating and sustaining successful links and focuses on what we believe is the heart of learning community work—transparency, relationship building, integration, assessment, and reflection. It both emerged from and encourages a backward design approach—starting with student learning outcomes and working backward to provide the collaboration, integration, and knowledge-construction that define learning communities and make the learning outcomes achievable. It further reflects the ongoing and cyclic nature of the collaborative process necessary for strong learning communities (Graziano & Kahn, 2013), taking collaborators from initial meetings through the development of deep and sustained integration, to assessment, r...