All Annotations of Dynamic Learning Communities[Preview]

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.