Learning in Informal Online Networks and Communities (original) (raw)
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Review of Learning in ICT-enabled Networks and Communities
2009
This report is part of a project launched by IPTS with DG Education and Culture to study the innovations for learning, which are emerging in the new collaborative and informal settings enabled by ICT. The report gathers and analyses evidence from learning opportunities that are emerging in ICT-enabled networks and communities. In these new virtual spaces, participation is motivated by an interest to a topic, by creative production and by search for social connection. Online networks and communities emerge both within and across organisations as well as in a completely open and bottom-up manner. Accessing, following, and contributing to the communities can lead to a range of learning outcomes. New technologies afford tools and means for people to participate in communities in a personally meaningful way. However, not all individuals are necessarily equipped with skills or knowledge to benefit from these opportunities for their lifelong learning. Major challenges relate both to the initial barriers for accessing online communities with confident and critical digital competence and skills for self-regulated learning. Finding ways to identify, assess and certify relevant learning and new skills that can be obtained and practised in these environments is a major task. The report argues that educational institutions should find ways to connect with and learn from these new learning approaches and settings in order to bring about their own transformation for the 21st century, and to support competence building for new jobs and personal development with a learner-centred and lifelong perspective.
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Connecting through Educational Technology. Proceedings of the European Distance and E-Learning Network 2019 Annual Conference, 2019
Technology is with us everywhere which validates the horizontal-holistic approach for imperative questions of the period. For the transforming education landscape, challenges come increasingly from the socio-cultural-economic, structural and policy fields. Education has to be visionary to reach efficiency gains, new sources -and to offer sustainable services, reflecting the complexity of modern societies.
2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2011
The work presents our experience as designers, developers and administrators of an e-Learning system (LMS) used by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Trento. The system started its work in the late 90s and was then rewritten under the increasing need of the users to promote new more collaboration-oriented forms of teaching / learning, compared to traditional ones. Currently we are managing the evolution of the system in the direction to provide a better support for cooperative activities among users. In the work we will describe the evolution of this system, showing why the cooperation in an educational environment requires coherent architectural choices.
2018
Online learning using communities of practice as a model for learning is fast becoming a new landscape for educational institutions. In constructing online communities of practice (CoP), the most obvious approach has been for academics to set up the CoP on a university system integrated with a formal teaching programme, located in the same place. We take the view that Place is a social construct, derived from the people that contribute to it and imbue it with meaning. Our position is that the places in which formal and informal learning occur need to be distinct and should have different feelings of ownership, governance, purpose and meaning. Providing for informal learning experiences in a place clearly owned and managed in an academic presence is counter-productive to learning that is intended to be owned by practitioners and located in their work space. We suggest that educators do not belong in communities of practice, do not belong in informal learning communities and that form...
Connecting through Educational Technology. Proceedings of the European Distance and E-Learning Network 2019 Annual Conference, 2019
Technology is with us everywhere which validates the horizontal-holistic approach for imperative questions of the period. For the transforming education landscape, challenges come increasingly from the socio-cultural-economic, structural and policy fields. Education has to be visionary to reach efficiency gains, new sources -and to offer sustainable services, reflecting the complexity of modern societies.
Title: Learning Communities for Framing Lifelong Learning Futures: Pressures and Possibilities
2008
Learning communities are increasingly posited as vehicles for reflecting on and harnessing successes in lifelong learning and for framing equitable, productive and transformative futures that will generate substantial and sustainable outcomes for all their members. In view of these claims, it is timely to hold learning communities up to scrutiny in relation to lifelong learning -what are they, what are they for, do they work and how do we know?
This report is part of the research project on "Pedagogical Innovations in New ICT-facilitated Learning Communities" (LearnCom), 1 under an Administrative Arrangement between IPTS (IS Unit) 2 and DG Education and Culture. The aim of this study is to review and assess the new social and pedagogical approaches to learning that are emerging in new ICT-facilitated collaborative learning settings. In addition to formal education, such communities are increasingly emerging in informal and non-formal lifelong learning environments where learning is happening in a freely organised manner, bringing together learners, experts, and other parties. This study aims to examine these new learning communities in order to find innovative pedagogical and organisational practices that support lifelong learning in different settings and foster innovations in the interaction of teachers, learners and organisations. The methodological framework for the LearnCom project includes desk research on the existing literature about learning communities; 3 the present in-depth case study of 12 different types of learning communities; a validation workshop 4 in which 20 external experts discussed and provided further input to the research; and a final report. 5 This report presents the results of the in-depth study of 12 online learning communities. The case analysis examines features, impacts and outcomes of learning in ICT-facilitated learning communities, as well as factors for failure and success, highlighting what lessons can be learnt from online learning communities that could benefit education and training systems.
Boosting Lifelong Learning Through Digital Online Education
Proceedings of the First Transnational Webinar on Adult and Continuing Education (TRACED 2020), 2021
Informed by professional practice, practitioner research represents an important contribution to public discourse and research and development in many fields. This paper presents a practitioner-based overview of lifelong learning in Australia, its historical roots, development within public policy, relationship to various skills frameworks, the impact of emergent agendas such as Industry 4.0 and the recalibration of systems following the worldwide disruption of Covid-19. With disruption comes opportunity and a critical feature of lifelong learning in emerging futures is the role of digital technology in enabling it, and perhaps in transforming how lifelong learning will soon be understood.
—the purpose of this paper is to present a review of sample papers that have been published from 2003-2013 regarding lifelong learning and ICT. The use of ICT in lifelong learning is viewed in relation to different settings of learning i.e. formal, informal and non-formal learning, with special reference to the third-age. A special focus is also given on the technologies and specific tools which are used for the provision of lifelong learning. The role of ICT networks , web technologies in e-learning, mobile learning tools and virtual worlds as facilitators of knowledge sharing in all types of learning settings is examined.