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saved by3 people, first bySaid Kassem Hamideh on 2006-08-23, last byChristy Tucker on 2008-06-28

    • Learning communities


    • In truth, all communities learn. One of the
      lessons of postmodernism and situated cognition is that learning cannot be
      separated from action. We are learning every day, in everything we do.
      We add the qualifying term to our defin ition to suggest a community
      sharing a consensual goal to support each other in learning. Everybody
      expects to learn and is prepared to engage in activities at least partly
      for that reason. This would distinguish learning communities from those
      solely concerned with entertainment, political action, or the performance
      of an immediate task. We would note, however, that groups can have
      complex agendas, and that a group may have multiple goals that are
      commonly shared throughout the membership, such as sup porting both work
      performance and learning among its members.
  • Heretofore, instructional designers have thought they were in the business
    of designing instructional systems to meet prespecified learning
    objectives. But first the constructivist movement--and now communication
    technologies themselves--seem to be thre atening this conception as the
    sole way to support learning. People are learning without help from
    designed instruction! In many settings, in fact, "natural" learning is
    more prevalent than "designed" learning (Resnick, 1987).
    We believe that
    the situation requires a reexaminination of our core roles. Are we in
    the business of designing instruction or are we in the business of
    supporting valuable learning, wherever it may happen? The answer to this
    question will result in either a narrow or broad interpretation of our
    role and its relationship to non-instructional forms of learning.
  • Our own belief is that dynamic learning communities are proper objects of
    study. We should seek to understand how such communities function, how
    they grow, how they can be nurtured, and how they can be replicated across
    diverse settings. But nurturing is different than designing. We must
    respect the integrity of the community. In time, we may come to think of
    ourselves more as learning technologists than as instructional
    technologists
    , and learning support specialists more than
    instructional designers.