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

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

 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

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

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

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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