Learning in Communities

Learning in communities is of course nothing new. Nevertheless it may be a very efficient way of learning [1].  First, learning in a community is fun ! One gets to share the knowledge, clear misconceptions and gain deeper understanding through discussions. 

A good example of learning together is our ability to solve the Covid-19 virus spread together; together as the whole world. Learning together will increase our social network or personal learning network (PLN) [2,3]. This will increase the ability to work together with people from various backgrounds and one learns various perspectives to the same topic from course mates. This creates a greater awareness for the learning process. Also, if help is needed, is will be close. The course mates are probably able to help. Furthermore, arguing together will increase skills to a higher level.

There are also ways to make the joint effort easier as many times there are also some challenges in working in a group (cooperation vs collaboration). It is easy to just share tasks between the persons in a group and 'then be done with it'. However, real collaboration should be more than that. People should be working together in the same topic and adding value in this way. Great many ways are existing that may help in getting into the collaborative working mode instead of cooperation, see Liberating Structures [4]. For example, the group may search (by asking) a profound reason for the existence of the task and its goals (why, why, why...). Or the group may search for the Purpose of the task (Purpose-to-practice, P2P). Working together is strongly connected to social behavior and as such, any good advice on how to make it work better should not be undermined.

On the other hand, not everyone is for learning in communities. Or are we .. ? Someone may learn better alone. Perhaps this is also depending on the topic and not only the person. Traditionally, at least in Finland, learning in communities has not been a highly appreciated topic. Of course this has always taken place but it has not been promoted. The idea has basically been that 'do your homework and study alone and then you learn'. Now, with the available social network, also strongly related to mobile phones, learning in communities and PLNs have skyrocketed. This raises the question that is this now the main thing, all learning together ? During ONL course, this kind of became the message. Of course, 'when you have a hammer in your hand, you only see nails'. So it is kind of natural to look this topic through the ONL eyes at the moment. However, I feel that in a similar fashion as with Blended Learning (BL), we should also be interested on Blended Communities (BC). This is my own terminology ;) Effectively I mean that some persons and some topics might be better off learning in communities but similarly some persons and topics could benefit from learning just by themselves.


[1]    Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in
         an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3)

[2]    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8mJX5n3IEg

[3]    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqSBTr9DPH8

[4]    Henri Lipmanowicz, Keith McCandless, The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple 
         Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation, 2013


Kommentit

  1. Svenja Bruenger29. toukokuuta 2021 klo 5.36

    Hi Ossi! You wrote: "Traditionally, at least in Finland, learning in communities has not been a highly appreciated topic. Of course this has always taken place but it has not been promoted. The idea has basically been that 'do your homework and study alone and then you learn'. Now, with the available social network, also strongly related to mobile phones, learning in communities and PLNs have skyrocketed." That surprises me. In my eyes Finland is one of the most progressive countries in the world - especially in the educational sector. I thought that you a practicing this approach already for a long time. But you are the expert. You know the system form inside.

    VastaaPoista
  2. Svenja Bruenger29. toukokuuta 2021 klo 5.42

    Hi Ossi! You wrote: "Traditionally, at least in Finland, learning in communities has not been a highly appreciated topic. Of course this has always taken place but it has not been promoted. The idea has basically been that 'do your homework and study alone and then you learn'. Now, with the available social network, also strongly related to mobile phones, learning in communities and PLNs have skyrocketed." That surprises me. In my eyes Finland is one of the most progressive countries in the world - especially in the educational sector. I thought that you a practicing this approach already for a long time. But you are the expert. You know the system form inside.

    VastaaPoista
  3. Rajesh Panicker3. kesäkuuta 2021 klo 12.18

    Indeed, I am also a bit surprised that learning in communities is not appreciated in Finland. I believe a lot of our learning happens through communities (the theory of social constructivism) though we many not always feel so explicitly.

    VastaaPoista

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