Week 4 Communities of Practice

Week 4 Blog Virtual Teaching and Learning

What lessons might we take from successful (and unsuccessful) OCL Institution Innovations and from the concept of Community of Practice (CoP)?

            A community of practice is a group of people who have the same common goal. There are many online communities that have a focus on obtaining knowledge by having communication with each other and digesting the information individually. Knowledge is a special thing to obtain because it can’t be obtained by just reading information or being told information. Harasim found that “Knowledge lives in the human act of knowing. Knowledge is tacit as well as explicit. Knowledge is social as well as individual. Knowledge is dynamic.” (2012) Communities of practice sharing and growing knowledge between each other so it is important that the group has a way to address each part of knowledge to be successful. An online community of practice that has been very successful is Wikipedia. Data is collected regularly to improve the effectiveness of the OCoP so this means that reflection on the community helps the community learn more and grow.

            Online Communities of Practice are found/created for situations where physically meeting is impractical or impossible. This is true for the OCoP called telemedicine which “enable the diagnosis and treatment of patients at a distance, but may also be used as a long-distance training tool for health care professionals.” (Sims, 2016) In the study done by Sims, there were 500 health care professionals who are members of the OCoP. The community was centered around blog and email lists of which members would comment on each other’s blogs or send emails to each other. Sims had a questionnaire and one of his questions was “Does membership facilitate enhanced quality of care?” and all responses except one responded affirmative and that it reflects reflection and questions of each other (2016). Another successful CoP was done by ergonomics in France and Barcellini et al discovered what made the group successful was that there were novice and expert members of the community to help share and learn the knowledge.

            My last thought on this week’s topic is about how can I be more a part of our class’ OCoP. Sometimes when I respond to other’s blogs, I really have to dig deep on what to respond with. With this said and you are reading this, I will gift you a question that you can respond to that might help guide or bring up ideas about this week’s essential question. What CoP’s or OCoP’s that you have been a member of have been successful for you? List two exact (small or big things) that contributed to this success. Can you apply this to this class or in your classroom?

           

Barcellini, F., Delgoulet, C., & Nelson, J. (2016). Are online discussions enough to constitute communities of practice in professional domain? A case study of ergonomics' practice in France. Cognition, Technology & Work, 18(2), 249-266. doi:10.1007/s10111-015-0361-z

Harasim, L. M. (2012). Learning theory and online technologies. New York, NY: Routledge.

Sims, J. M. (2016). Communities of practice: Telemedicine and online medical communities. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2016.08.030

Week 3 Reflection

This week I did not post my blog on time which affected my collaboration in this class. I did comment on a few other students' blogs. I learned how collaboration and discourse are different in the three main learning theories. Sometimes a learning theory provides a better environment for students to have discourse to learn a concept better. Next week my goal is to post on time or before Thursday so that I am learning in this course by discourse.

Week 3 Discourse, Collaboration, and Technology

Essential Question: What is the role of discourse, collaboration, and technology for distributed learning online courses?

            Discourse is the main way people learn new concepts and this is done by communicating with others. A student will learn better if they have a way to connect with others to share ideas and knowledge about a concept. Then the group will collaborate to come up with an idea and make an intellectual thought or conclusion. Technology is key to how students will be able to make discourse with others in online learning courses. Technology provides the means to communicate with others in sharing ideas and coming to conclusions of new learned concepts. (Harasim, 2012) A few examples of that students can communicate in online courses are through texting, online blog, messaging systems, skype, etc. The most important thing when it comes to online courses is to overcome the obstacles that are made from not being a traditional class.

I find that discourse is very important in learning mathematics and some of the best learning is when a group of students have the chance to explain and fight for the rules of mathematics. One of the eight mathematical practices found in Alaska’s Common Core Mathematics Standards is “Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.” (2012) Students can take each other’s work and explain the reasoning of each step in a logical way. A great way that we can do this is having each student send in a photo of their problem to the teacher using the Remind application that the teacher has already set up. Then the teacher can pick one randomly and model critiquing the work. Then send these phots randomly back to the students. Now the students are using technology to have discourse about the concept of mathematics.

            Online courses do have challenges when it comes to communication because of the restrictions of being not near each other. Boling et al. explains that “one of the major complaints about computer-mediated communication is the lack of social cues” (2011). By keeping in this in mind, other cues can be created such as the use of emojis but this means that the students need to be diligent in using them to provide feedback to their classmates and teachers.

Alaska Department of Education & Early Development, (June 2012). Alaska Mathematics Standards. Retrieved from https://education.alaska.gov/akstandards/math/akstandards_math_081312.pdf

Boling, E. C., Holan, E., Horbatt, B., Hough, M., Jean-Louis, J., Kurhana, C., Krinsky, H., Spiezio, C. (2011, December). Using online tools for communication and collaboration: Understanding educators’ experiences in an online course. Paper presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Literacy Research Association (LRA). Jacksonville, FL.

Harasim, L. M. (2012). Learning theory and online technologies. New York, NY: Routledge.

Week 2 Reflection

This week our class on Thursday night was very helpful in getting my thoughts and definitions of the three learning theories more concrete. The three classmates who ran the class did a great job with the kahoot and I was encouraged to see that other teachers use the game themselves. The input to the class I had this week was to point out specific situations of each learning theory during a distance course. In my blog post I pointed out that because of technology in education, constructivist learning theory is used more frequently because of its computer-esque input, output basis of the theory.

Other students gave me more ideas on what computer programs can assist in long-distance learning courses that have the different learning theories in them. I am excited to use these programs in my own classroom but I see how they connect with long-distance courses.

Week 2 Learning Theories in Online Courses

 How do learning theories manifest themselves in online courses?

            There are three main learning theories called behavioral, cognitivist, and constructivists. Behaviorist learning theory is where a student is given a stimulus and then it leads to a response. In the past there has been teaching machines that spit out a question and then you had to pick one of four buttons that connect to the responses of the question. If you had the correct response then you were given reinforcement. Cognitivist learning theory is a process where a teacher gives instruction to students and then asks lots of questions to help guide students in learning. The primary role of the learner is to make sense of the information that the instructor provides. An example of the cognitivist method is to provide an artificial tutoring system that seeks for the level of student and then asks or provides problems for the level of the student. Constructivist learning theory is when the learner discovers the new knowledge through experiences and experimentation. For example, students might learn that a plant needs water and sun to grow by only noticing that a plant will not grow without these things. (Harasim, 2012)

            Computer-assisted curriculum can be a great connection to teaching mathematics based on the cognitivist learning theory. “The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has become an important part of the everyday life, work and learning.” (Moradmand et al, 2012) When it comes to mathematics there can always be a limitation on how much feedback and questions can be asked using a computer based and distance learning course. Moradmand, Datta, and Oakley have created an interactive computer based curriculum called My Maths Story to teach primary level students mathematics by the use of online literature that looks like kids books. The story can be generated over and over to become more exact to what students need when they have or have not mastered a topic. (2012)

            After researching a bit about constructivist and mathematics learning, I have come across what is called the Moore Method. The Moore method of teaching is “the understanding of his objective, namely, to train a student to do mathematics rather than to learn a predetermined amount of content knowledge.” (2012) This method is more applicable than the truest sense of constructivism but it forces the teacher to look at mathematics as just a set of rules. The Moore method is helpful in distance courses because it takes a lot of logic and problem solving when it comes to learning in a distance course and that is exactly what mathematics is.

            When it comes to distance learning it is very important to realize that a mix of the three learning theories creates the best learning environment. I personally think it is very easy to lean on the behaviorist learning theory as practice in the distance courses because it is teacher-centered and does not require deep thoughts.

Barrett, L. K. & Long, B. V. (2012) The Moore Method and the Constructivist Theory of Learning: Was R. L. Moore a Constructivist?, PRIMUS, 22:1, 75-84. http://egandb.uas.alaska.edu:2052/doi/pdf/10.1080/10511970.2010.493548?needAccess=true

Harasim, L. M. (2012). Learning theory and online technology. New York, NY: Routledge.

Moradmand, N., Datta, A., & Oakley, G. (2012). A computer-assisted Framework based on a cognitivist learning theory for teaching mathematics in the early primary years. Australian Educational Computing, 27(2), 39-45. http://acce.edu.au/sites/acce.edu.au/files/pj/journal/27_2A_Computer_Assisted_Framework_p39_0.pdf