REACT: AN EMERGENT ONLINE LIFELONG LEARNING
MODEL FOR PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN HIGHER EDUCATION
AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
Alex Bell, Louise Emanuel
School of Business, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Carmarthen, Wales, U.K.
Hans Öberg
IT and Campus Department, University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden
Ralitsa Zhekova
Department of International Economics and Politics, Varna Free University "Chenorizets Hrabar", Varna, Bulgaria
Keywords: Communities of practice, Online learning, Lifelong learning, Social learning.
Abstract: 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 formal and informal learning communities need to be
distinct in terms of place and membership. In this paper we present an alternative model for Lifelong
Learning that we are developing through out Transfer of Innovation project, RE:ACT.
1 INTRODUCTION
We have recently been successful in gaining
Lifelong Learning Programme, Leonardo da Vinci
Transfer of Innovation funding to pilot this
innovative approach to technology enhanced
learning within the workplace. The project,
involving five partners across three nations, is
entitled RE:ACT – Relating Experience: Advancing
Collaborative Tourism. We are now in the process of
developing an online programme in social media for
the European tourism industry. The potential to
effectively transfer to different contexts is based on
the premise that as the combination of formal and
informal collaborative online learning has, at its
core, people, and the specific contexts offered by
them, it is organically shaped by the context, rather
than being imposed uncomfortably on it. The
transfer implicit within the project operates at both
geographical and sectoral levels and within the
project we are working with partners from Wales,
Sweden and Bulgaria to test and develop this
approach.
Lifelong learning is now at the heart of the
development of a knowledge economy. In adapting
to the needs of the knowledge economy, higher
education often responds by providing online
learning courses for professional practitioners.
Online learning technologies are claimed to augment
learning by providing improved flexibility of access;
greater opportunities for learner-to-learner and
learner-to tutor communication and shared electronic
resources. More recent research suggests that the
66
Zhekova R., Bell A., Emanuel L. and Hans Ö. (2011).
REACT: AN EMERGENT ONLINE LIFELONG LEARNING MODEL FOR PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN HIGHER EDUCATION AND COMMUNITIES OF
PRACTICE.
In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT, pages 66-70
DOI: 10.5220/0004471800660070
Copyright
c
SciTePress
technology can not only create further opportunities
for learning, but can also enhance learning, through
the adoption of collaborative or cooperative methods
(Hew and Cheung, 2007; McConnell, 2006; Jones et
al., 2007; Booth and Hulten, 2003). We adopt a
socio-cultural theory of learning (Vygotsky, 1978)
that can be seen as a basis for cooperative and/or
collaborative learning methods. Dyke at al., (2007)
show how its characteristics can be coupled to
online learning technology, describing the learning
as primarily:
“dialogic with emphasis on interpersonal
relationships involving imitation and
modelling; language as the primary tool for
learning used for sharing and development of
personal and shared understanding; making
using multiple forms of asynchronous and
synchronous technologies offering the
potential for richer and more diverse forms of
dialogue and interaction between learners and
learners and tutors and learners and their
resources for vicarious forms of learning.”
(Dyke et al., 2007 p.86).
We also benefit from the work of Etienne Wenger
and Jean Lave on their development of learning seen
through the lens of communities of practice. This
paper focuses on the development of these informal
learning communities in partnership with formal
higher education courses. We concur with much
reported activity (Fuller et al., 2005; Ponti &
Hodgson, 2006) that learning needs to focus on
placing the learner and their context at the centre of
the learning activity and on work-place problem
solving. We also agree that online communities need
to be supported through a process of enculturation
and community support.
In previous work, constructing professional
online communities (Bell & Samuel, 2009), data
taken from interviews in the field indicates that
‘externally managing an online community, takes
from that community its own sense of identity and
self determination’ (Bell et al., 2011). Evidence
from this earlier work has now led us to take a new
position in relation to community of practice
formation and development in terms of membership
and place in which formal and informal online
learning occurs. Here we explore this model for
online lifelong learning and report on our work in
progress on learning activity design. 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.
2 CONTEXT
The focus of the learning is the development of
social media skills, for learners who are part of the
European tourism industry in Bulgaria, Sweden and
Wales. This focus evolved from our understanding
that it has now become the ordinary, rather than
extraordinary for tourists to participate in social
media. Consequently, engagement with new
information technologies has become increasingly
important for competitiveness of the European
tourism industry. The European Commission
advocates that use of new technologies by tourism
enterprises, particularly SMEs should be
strengthened (EC, 2010). However, with 94% of the
European tourism industry employing less than 10
employees, and many of our tourism businesses
being small, family run enterprises, the way in
which ICT is used within their businesses is
unsurprisingly far from uniform, varying with basic
skills, their size and their relative position in the
tourist chain (EC, 2010).
The industry already has the disposition to
collaborate, such collaboration generally taking the
form of Tourism Associations, trade groups and
informal networks and as such already participates
in communities of practice, although very rarely is
this within an online context. Although it may not be
recognised as such, informal learning already exists
within these groups but can be hampered by the
challenges and barriers to effective networking
activity, such as inadequate resources in terms of
finance, time and manpower (UNWTO, 2003). Our
learners in Bulgaria, Sweden and South West Wales
are primarily small scale accommodation and
attractions owner/ operators with little time to
participate in learning which is not specific to their
context, or which takes them outside their normal
sphere of activity. The key to developing lifelong
learners within the tourism industry is, we feel, to
ensure that the learner is at the centre of activity,
where academia and industry work in partnership.
REACT: AN EMERGENT ONLINE LIFELONG LEARNING MODEL FOR PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN HIGHER
EDUCATION AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
67
3 DEVELOPING LIFELONG
LEARNING COMMUNITIES OF
PRACTICE
3.1 The Changing Landscape of
Formal Education and Lifelong
Professional Learning
Communities of practice (CoP) are groups of people
who have a shared purpose for a common activity
(Wenger, 2000). In our context for our lifelong
learning project, the tourism industry is seen as the
community of practice. CoPs can be local or global,
can be physical or exist in a digital environment, a
‘digital habitat’ or exist across both these boundaries
(Wenger, 2009). Learning in a CoP involves sharing
of knowledge and practice. Knowledge in this
situation occurs unsytematically, as a response to the
day to day goings on in the tourism industry context,
through issues and problems that arise with
customers, suppliers and other allied industries that
interface with the tourism industry. Learning in a
CoP involves engagement in solving real problems,
to gain a ‘working knowledge’ of it. Wenger’s
(1999) community of practice view of learning is
centred around the concept of apprenticeship where
new members or in-service members improve their
practice through a process of enculturation into the
community. Membership of a community of practice
is seen in terms of ‘belonging’ to the community. To
belong requires members to have or to be working
towards a level of ‘competence’. It is this
competence that gives meaning to the community
and helps it construct its purpose.
Lifelong learning is now seen as a core goal of
any knowledge economy. Higher Education (HE),
who traditionally serves more abstract theoretical
learning, has been turning its attention to
professional learning, learning that occurs within the
workplace for the workplace. This change in the
landscape of educational institutions from formal to
more informal learning is registered by the increase
in interest for designing learning for professional
practitioners amongst both teachers and researchers.
The increase in online learning aligns very well to
lifelong learning, as it provides the access and
flexibility that technology can offer in terms of time
and place independence. This, coupled with a rise in
popular use of social media technologies, has drawn
attention to a more learner centred approach to
learning online. Groups of practitioners can now be
offered formal learning courses ‘any place and any
time’ and professional learners can come together to
fill gaps or advance their knowledge. In this context
learning design is centred more on social learning
approaches using collaboration through dialogue as
the basis for learning. Learning is less focused on
theoretical concepts, acquired through a teacher and
more on practical knowledge or workplace
knowledge that is relevant to practitioners’ work
(Goodyear, 2002). The implication of this is that
universities who now wish to engage with
professional learners need to consider a new
approach to learning that focuses on an
apprenticeship in knowledge work.
Evidence (McConnell, 1994, 2006; Scardamalia
& Bereiter, 2003; Farmer, 2008; Ponti & Hodgson,
2006) from research into online learning of this form
suggests that much of the attention in this area has
been in relation to the central aspect of community
formation, maintenance and development. Many of
the ideas generated focus on how to facilitate
learning, on the instruction, support, mentoring and
fostering of the online learning community. The
focus has been on instructors acting as a guide,
facilitator or a partner in the learning community.
The intention is to reduce the power differences
between the learners and teacher, to reduce the focus
on the authoritarian figure of the ‘academic expert’,
so that a more authentic practice learning model
ensues. Farmer (2008) describes a model in which
learning involves gaining competence in the
language, rules, customs and culture of that
community. He describes how in an online
environment “supportive, mentoring relationships
can happen in discussion boards and chats, and
through individual reflection and encouragement”
p.230. Ponti and Hodgson (2006) have also
developed an online learning model which “seeks to
foster dialogue and collaboration between managers
[practitioners] and educators to leverage work and
life experience” p.3.
In these and other examples there are two areas
that we often find ourselves taking issue with. First,
is that in most examples of higher education,
learning design using online CoPs place the learning
community only in a university environment.
Secondly, membership of the CoP is not just
practitioners but also academics. Our experience
tells us that too often educators using the CoP model
alongside more formal approaches make use of a
university learning environment only, a formal
place, to conduct informal learning which belongs
with practitioners. From our work in developing
practice based learning communities (Bell &
Samuel, 2009) we posit the idea that academic
educators do not belong in communities of practice,
INNOV 2011 - Second International Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT
68
do not belong in informal learning communities and
that formal and informal communities need to be
distinct in terms of place and membership. This
raises issues about how the community of practice
would be initiated and supported.
3.2 The Riddle of the Liberating
Structure
These issues centre around the question of what
makes someone eligible to be a member of a
community of practice and draws on Pedler’s (1981)
work on learning design models for use in
community based learning. He identifies “the riddle
of the liberating structure” p.77 in which learning is
almost always organised and staffed by an outside
agent, the educator, who clearly is not a peer,
identifying the irony in the problem of “guiding
people towards self-direction”. He suggests that
power should be altered to ensure a more equal
footing.
Descriptions of communities always describe
membership of communities as groups of people
who share a place to undertake a common purpose.
The ‘place’, of learning is, however, itself a social
construct, derived from the characteristics, attitudes
and feelings of those people that contribute to it and
imbue it with meaning; place is ‘a way of seeing,
knowing and understanding the world’ (Creswell,
2008, p11; McConnell, 1994, p116). This
understanding within the context of a learning
community, and subsequently the ‘place’ of the
learner derives its meaning from the people that
comprise that community. The membership of the
community is therefore an essential consideration in
ensuring truly practitioner centred learning, where
seeing, knowing and understanding are focused on
practice and are not transformed by external
academic influences. 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.
The socially constructed spaces in virtual
learning environments are places where learners can
meet to develop their sense of identity a place to
carry out common ‘tasks’, a place to exist.
(McConnell, 1994). Interference from people
outside, changes the community’s identity and its
natural emergent leaders. Learning communities
need to attend to their own issues of climate, needs,
resources, planning, action and evaluation. This
requires personal investment, commitment, trust and
a sense of belonging. It is these characteristics of
participation and the know-how to achieve these that
HE needs to also attend to during their engagement
with lifelong learners. This underpins the focus of
our activity in designing learning for our European
course. In doing this we also draw on Pedler’s
(1981) notions of helping self, helping others
towards the greater goal of ‘social development’. In
this situation development demands a social
contribution, a ‘giving back’ as well as a personal
qualitative leap. Lifelong learning should not only
be seen as an individual goal, it has a social context,
a community context and a community of practice
context.
3.3 Designing Learning Activities that
Underpin Lifelong Learning
Development: A Work in Progress
We recognise that a position of self determination
and self governance is not an easy position to
achieve, especially in an unfamiliar online learning
environment. It requires staged development,
through staged activity and progressive enculturation
into the practices of the community. For many, who
may or may not already be participants in a CoP, the
transition to an online CoP may not be something
that can be easily transversed. For these new or
mature tourism practitioners, development of
competencies for belonging to a CoP can be
transversed through engagement with formal
learning. We argue that the development of a
professional course that reflects lifelong learning
needs to integrate activity that supports belonging to
an online CoP. In essence, we see this as not the
work of a facilitator managing power imbalances
present within the CoP but the work of the learning
designer in activity design. The task of the learning
designer is thus to work in partnership with industry
practitioners to design learning activity that works at
two levels - subject of interest and community
development.
The first at the subject interest level engages
learners in identifying tasks that could be of use to
the learning community. In our context these could
be product reviews, critical summaries of impending
legislation, membership list and activity, training
events, resources. The second level of learning
design should focus on underpinning this with an
individual’s personal development as a member of
the community. This will involve asking the learners
REACT: AN EMERGENT ONLINE LIFELONG LEARNING MODEL FOR PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN HIGHER
EDUCATION AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
69
to identify tasks that would involve them in offering
themselves up as a resource for community; leading
projects; supporting members and engaging in
governance of the CoP. This may involve creating
special interest groups, evaluating participation,
awarding accolades or prizes or noting the
contribution of other participants for recognition.
These two levels of activity together provide both
knowledge work and community building activity
that benefits the community. For us, lifelong
learning is not just about individual development for
now but also about community development into the
future.
Our work in progress is now at a stage where we
are designing learning activities integrating both
levels of participation. In our project we have a team
comprising of both academic and tourism industry
practitioners working on this and hope to provide
greater detail on the learning activity design that
underpins community development at the next
opportunity. Our planned pilot in Autumn 2011 of
the learning design will be followed by data
collection within the three European countries.
Interviews with a small group of participants will
seek to illuminate the learning experiences
encountered through the adoption of a
phenomenological approach.
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