Building Learning Communities Research Articles

Using Technology to Engage Students and Build Learning Communities to Inform Instructional Decisions

Saint Leo University is a liberal arts university located in southwest Florida. University campus is a residential campus that teaches the traditional aged student. The campus population is 1,800 students who are mostly Florida residents, with international students representing 18 different countries. Twenty-one centers located in seven states support non-traditional student populations that may be civilian or military. The Center for Online Learning (COL) enrolls over 3,000 students who earn bachelor and masters’ degrees. The School of Education and Social Services offers undergraduate and graduate programs on campus, in centers and online in criminal justice, education, human services and social work. Throughout the university and the School of Education and Social Services core values are infused in all classes. In this session faculty who teach undergraduate and graduate classes in education, social services and human services will present how they infuse emerging technologies to design and implement instruction. Panel members will discuss effective strategies in technology, utilized across disciplines, to facilitate learning and build successful community, whether the class setting be an online platform, face-to-face or blended class. The panel will share how they quantitatively and qualitatively assess the effectiveness of the diverse technologies to support student learning modalities, critical thinking and application of course content. The panel’s discussion will convey the ways in which they promote dynamic student interactions and collaborations with instructors and peers. Speakers will provide a summary of how they use this information to inform instructional decisions within

A Deconstructive Approach to Class Meetings: Managing Conflict and Building Learning Communities

When the quality of teacher-student and student-student relationships is undermined by conflicts, classrooms can become unwelcoming environments that are not conducive to teaching and learning. Circle conversations are widely utilized in response to such conflicts as well as for academic and community-building purposes. In this article, we introduce a form of circle conversation, which we have termed deconstructive class meeting. We developed this specific meeting format in a New Zealand secondary school drawing on local, indigenous processes of community conversation, discourse theory and narrative therapy. The structure of our meeting is deliberately designed to support the simultaneous achievement of two, seemingly contradictory objectives: conflict resolution and community building. We argue that when teachers and students collaboratively examine the power of ideas or discourses of learning not only alternatives to problematic practices become available, but learning communities and relationships are strengthened also.

Review of Digitization Panels at the 2013 RSVP Conference

Review of Digitization Panels at the 2013 RSVP Conference Clare Horrocks (bio) Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word. Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," 1829 A review of the conference schedule for the 45 th annual RSVP conference at the University of Salford would indeed confirm that Victorian research on periodicals has moved into what Thomas Carlyle once called the "mechanical age." We are now in an age where machinery and digital archives are given increased prominence in course syllabi and research. Researchers are increasingly driven from the dusty archive and the hallowed halls of Colindale to more efficient online repositories. Scholars are divided as to whether new methods for data retrieval and analysis can be adapted and embedded within existing practices or whether they threaten to erode and undermine traditional methods. Likewise, as scholars have been quick to point out, creating an alternative canon of resources can at times present more challenges than solutions.1 The papers at this year's RSVP conference were keen to point out that embracing the digital age was not all about speed or replicating existing methods but rather about finding new and exciting ways to access and display data in ways that had not been previously possible, thus advancing, rather than retarding, the field of periodicals research. There were three panels on digitization at the conference: two on digital scholarship and pedagogy and one on digital bibliographic scholarship. Participants included seasoned scholars as well as publishers and post-graduates. Every session was packed to capacity with extra chairs having [End Page 562] to be squeezed in—a testimony to growing scholarly interest in digital pedagogies and research methods. I was fortunate to co-present on the first panel with my colleague Shannon Smith from Queens University, Bader International Study Centre. In this paper, we suggested that scholars must become producers as well as consumers in order to embrace the potential of digital pedagogies. The case study we used to exemplify this idea was the Punch and the Victorian Periodical Press Resource that I have been building at Liverpool John Moores University, which is part of a larger digital project identifying Punch contributors from 1843 to 1919.2 This site is in part focused on sharing links, readings, and examples of good practice in teaching and learning—building learning communities where students' work serves as a model for approaching and analyzing Punch. In the second half of our presentation, Shannon Smith described the process of creating a new digital humanities course. In the final part of this course, Smith brings together scholars who are in the process of developing digital archives to talk to her students about the impact of digital technology on research. Smith's presentation segued well into a paper presented by Seth Cayley from Cengage Learning, who described the process of developing the new Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896-2004. When discussing this project, Cayley made the processes of production transparent, thereby establishing dialogue between a commercial publisher and the scholarly community—the kind of exchange that has been all too rare in recent years. Cayley's discussion of publishing decisions regarding resolution, formatting, download speed, and functionality of digital databases provided a starting point for engaging conversation among scholars and digital database administrators. The final paper on the panel was delivered by Elizabeth Penner who is studying the Boy's Own Paper, 1879-1913. Penner's presentation demonstrated a method of uniting traditional hard copy research with analysis of digital texts—a methodology Shannon Smith and I had discussed earlier in the panel presentation. The fact that the Boy's Own Paper has been digitized as part of Gale Cengage's periodicals project provided a link to Cayley's presentation as well. Penner argued that the digital archive did not do justice to the complexity of the Boy's Own Paper because it did not promote understanding of the paper's unique form, style, and editorial...

Building Learning Communities

Learning communities, which are an emerging trend in medical education, create a foundation for professional and academic development through the establishment of longitudinal relationships between students and faculty. In this article, the authors describe the robust learning community system at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, which encompasses wellness, career planning, professional development, and academics.The Vanderbilt Advisory Colleges Program introduced in 2006 initially focused on two goals: promoting wellness and providing career advising. In the 2011-2012 academic year, the focus of the colleges expanded to incorporate an enhanced level of personal career advising and an academic component. In the four-year College Colloquium course, faculty selected as college mentors teach the medical humanities and lead sessions dedicated to student professional development in the areas of leadership, research, and service-learning. This academic and professional development program builds on the existing strengths of the colleges and has transformed the colleges into learning communities.The authors reflect on lessons learned and discuss future plans. They report that internal data and data from the Association of American Medical Colleges Medical School Graduation Questionnaire support consistently high and increasing satisfaction among Vanderbilt medical students, across the metrics of personal counseling, faculty mentoring, and career planning.

Developing the potential for sustainable improvement in underperforming schools: Capacity building in the socio-cultural dimension

This mixed-method study examines Arizona principals’ capacity-building skills and practices in Tier III schools aimed at developing potential for sustained improvements in student outcomes. Data sources included surveys (62 individuals) and semistructured interviews (29 individuals) of principals and staff (e.g. teachers, instructional coaches, assistant principals) who participated in grant-funded leadership training over an 18-month period. The theoretical framework consisted of leadership in the sociocultural dimension (Ylimaki et al. in Leadersh Policy Sch 11(2):168–193, 2012) and capacity building for sustainable improvement in high-capacity Schools (Mitchell and Sackney in Sustainable improvement: building learning communities that endure. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2009). Findings indicated that: (1) schools were not at high-levels of capacity building; (2) those schools in process of building capacity for sustainable improvement demonstrate a directive leadership approach; (3) school development towards high capacity focused on micro-level processes (e.g., professional learning communities); and (4) little attention was given to leadership in the socio-cultural dimension. Implications of the study suggest future research test a leadership development model for Tier III schools that links capacity building leadership and student achievement. The next generation of educational leaders must also have the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and analytical tools to lead schools in both the accountability culture and the macro socio-cultural dimension.

Academic climate, well-being and academic performance in a university degree course

The psychological climate within organisations affects not only the behaviour and the attitude of group members, but also the performance of the group itself. According to the ecological model, this research examines how learning in different classroom contexts of the same nursing degree programme can affect academic performance, well-being, self-esteem and perceived climate. Four scales were used to assess students' perceptions by collecting primary data while academic performance was measured by obtaining students' academic records. A questionnaire completed by 391 first-year nursing students was administered. Differences were observed in the perceptions of climate and academic performance in different classroom contexts with trends, which did not always overlap; however, strong correlations were observed among self-esteem, well-being and climate, and schoolmate relationships. Universities should not merely train competent professionals but also build learning communities that support the well-being of relationships and the development of well-being contexts. The findings support the need for an educational intervention for improving the quality of life and well-being of the community and individual students. This type of intervention requires a 'compliant' organisational environment that puts studetns, teachers and professionals in the condition to practice their professional skills.

SoTL as Generative Heuristic Methodology for Building Learning Communities

Excerpt: A variety of sources have expounded on the exponential growth of knowledge, and current projections estimate knowledge doubling every one to two years. I would argue that what has exponentially increased is the availability of and our virtually immediate access to larger sets of data and information; however, this access to data or information does not automatically correspond to an increase in knowledge, and even less so to informed judgments with knowledge or “practical reasoning” (Sullivan & Rosin, 2008). We have only to look at our educational systems, colleges or universities, or even our classrooms for evidence of a wealth of accessible information with no corresponding richness of knowledge. Specifically, it is our nascent knowledge of how our students are acquiring and applying their knowledge that has drawn unwanted and in some cases unwarranted criticism of higher education (cf. Bloom, 1987; Bok, 2004; Hacker & Dreifus, 2010; Brandon, 2010: Arum & Roksa, 2011). In sum, many perceive a lack of knowledge about what transpires in our classrooms and the qualifications of our graduates; as a result, higher education, faculty teaching, and student learning are in a national spotlight.

SOCIAL RELATION NETWORKS IN UT-ONLINE COMMUNITY FORUM

So far, the existence of a virtual community forum has become a reality and social necessity in an era cybertech. It was also viewed as the electronic frontier of 21st century society that was undoubtedly for reorganizing and redefining to awareness of human being, that ways of their perceptions and explorations no longer limited by time, space, and geographic. Since the early decades of the 1990s, the existence of virtual community forum has attracted much attention and interest to the researchers, because it has significance as a social and cultural capital, and as a socio-technological solution for creating a learning community building forces. The UT-Online community forum is a virtual community forum that was built by (Universitas Terbuka) UT in year 2006 to facilitate students to share and discuss various information, ideas, experiences in relation with academic or/and non-academic. This study examines and explains the contents of relation, social ties and structures of social relation networks in UT-Online Community Forum. The results of the study are important to the distance education institutions for building sense of community to DE students.

Book Review: Profound Improvement: Building Learning-Community Capacity on Living-System Principles

Book Review: Profound Improvement: Building Learning-Community Capacity on Living-System Principles

Talking In Class: Remembering What Is Important About Classroom Talk

AbstractThe writers describe how apparently ordinary decisions about what to say when talking with children can have substantial effects on their learning and development. The language we use with children influences, among other things, who they think they are, what they think they're doing, the relationships they have with others, the strategic information available to them in the classroom, and the possibilities available to them for thinking about literacy and their own lives. The writers offer some principles for the kind of talk that helps build learning communities, engagement, a sense of agency, social relations, self‐regulation and even moral development.

Ensuring Quality Education in Open and Distance eLearning (ODeL) Through Virtual Learning Communities

A process documentation was employed to determine how virtual learning communities are built in an open and distance education context as one mechanism to ensure quality education in this mode of instructional delivery. The study conducted at the University of the Philippines Open University from June 2008 to February 2010 specifically aimed to: 1) describe what a learning community is in the context of ODeL; 2) describe the process of building learning communities in ODeL; 3) determine factors essential for the building of learning communities in ODeL; 4) determine specific benefits of learning communities in an ODeL context wherein independent studying or learning is the core of the guiding principle. The study is also an attempt to document a good practice in ODeL, especially one that hopes to address quality of the learning process.

Building mathematics cellular phone learning communities

Researchers emphasize the importance of maintaining learning communities and environments. This article describes the building and nourishment of a learning community, one comprised of middle school students who learned mathematics out-of-class using the cellular phone. The building of the learning community was led by three third year pre-service teachers majoring in mathematics and computers. The pre-service teachers selected thirty 8th grade students to learn mathematics with the cellular phone and be part of a learning community experimenting with this learning. To analyze the building and development stages of the cellular phone learning community, two models of community building stages were used; first the team development model developed by Tuckman (1965), second the life cycle model of a virtual learning community developed by Garber (2004). The research findings indicate that a learning community which is centered on a new technology has five 'life' phases of development: Pre-birth, birth, formation, performing, and maturity. Further, the research finding indicate that the norms that were encouraged by the preservice teachers who initiated the cellular phone learning community resulted in a community which developed, nourished and matured to be similar to a community of experienced applied mathematicians who use mathematical formulae to study everyday phenomena.

Embracing Diversity through Open Doors: Using Social Competency Processes to Build Effective Teaching and Learning Communities

In the 21st Century, working with diversity is a daily issue in educational settings. Educators need processes in place that allow their learning communities to positively harness diversity to promote learning. This paper describes the use of social competency tied to pedagogical practices that enhance the ethos and atmosphere conducive to effective teaching and learning; which in turn, builds effective strategies for educators to deal with the diverse learning communities that they teach. It is an appropriate process for use by all sectors, from pre-school to the tertiary sector, for all students and in all learning communities.

Implementing an open source learning management system: A critical analysis of change strategies

<span>This paper analyses the change and innovation strategies that Charles Sturt University (CSU) used from 2007 to 2009 during the implementation and mainstreaming of an open source learning management system (LMS), Sakai, named locally as </span><em>CSU Interact</em><span>. CSU was in January 2008 the first Australian University to implement an open source learning management system institution wide. The unique characteristics of implementing change and innovation in higher education are discussed as well as CSU's change model, which comprises eight dimensions that can occur in any order and also in parallel, and is based on the work of Kotter, Cohen and Synnot. Two key strategies have emerged to support change, namely the building of learning communities and the sharing of best practice in implementing educational technology. Other findings were that the change was largely driven from the bottom up and with top management support and through the writer's role, from middle management in terms of top down strategies. Technological innovations in the context of an open source learning management system have wider, external implications than the local institution given the free flow of information and intellectual property within the community.</span>

Assessing the Online Learner (review)

Reviewed by: Assessing the Online Learner Janet Truluck, Academic Professional and Program Coordinator Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt. Assessing the Online Learner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2008. 176 pp. Paperback: $28.00. ISBN-13: 978-0470283868. An e-version was published in 2009. In Assessing the Online Learner, Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt provide a very useful how-to guide for online instruction and evaluation. The book's purpose is to support higher education instructors of online courses by improving their practice through better assessment and evaluation techniques and to provide institutions with a means for evaluating online courses. The book begins with a preface that provides the book's rationale, explains how the content is organized, and defines who will benefit from the book. It concludes with a final section containing a list of exhibits and examples of how to create the assessment models outlined in the book. Part 1, "Assessment Basics," provides background information about the components that go into course design such as competencies, outcomes, and objectives. They define these as "Objectives: What the students will learn . . . Outcomes: What students will be able to know or do . . . Competencies: How students demonstrate knowledge or skill acquisition" (p. 6). The authors' basic premise is that online learning is changing the way education is distributed and assessed. Therefore, techniques appropriate in the face-to-face classroom may be less appropriate in the online environment. Online instruction brings with it a new set of questions, which must be addressed such as: "Is the student who has enrolled in the course the student who is participating?" "How do I, as the instructor, know that students really understand and can apply the material?" "How can I assure that students won't cheat on exams or other assessments?" and "How can I deal with plagiarism online?" (p. 4). The authors suggest designing learner-centered assessment that empowers students by having them take responsibility for their learning and by reflecting on their progress during the course. They also suggest that assignments focused on real-life experiences make plagiarism more difficult since these experiences are known only to the student. They also provide directions for designing grading rubrics and several examples of such grading rubrics for course discussions. In this book as in their previous works, Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community (2005) and Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace (1999) Palloff and Pratt stress the importance of fostering collaboration to build student involvement and to establish a sense of community, both of which strengthen knowledge acquisition and retention. In this edition, they also stress collaboration through student assessment. They recommend asking students to submit a self-assessment of their contribution to the activity and also to assess their fellow students' contributions. Students can respond to such questions as: How was my participation? Did I contribute? Did I provide significant feedback to others? Was I comfortable in my group and with the work produced? They also provide a sample form for peer review assessment. The final section of Part 1 addresses course and program evaluation processes and outcomes. "In the learner-focused online classroom, course evaluations should refrain from focusing on whether or not the student liked the instructor, but should instead focus on whether the course provided an opportunity for learning" (p. 50). Since most institutions require some form of summative evaluation at the completion of courses, the authors suggest that the evaluation should reflect the interactive and self-directed nature of online courses. They offer eight essential areas that should be addressed: the overall perception of the online experience, the course and material orientation, the quality and quantity of the material, the interactions and discussions with peers and the instructor, the peer- and self-assessment of the level of participation, the course management system's ability to sustain the learning during the course, the technical support, and the availability of resources. They comment, "The more we involve our learners in the development of assessment and evaluation activities, the more empowered they become as learners, scholars, and practitioners, and the more satisfied they will be with their learning experience" (p. 62). Part 1 provides the reader with some good and explicit steps for designing learner-focused...

Research as pedagogy: building learning communities and religious understanding in RE

Debates on teacher accountability are informed by research generating, for example, evidence‐based policy and practice. Debates on pedagogy, too, are informed by research, albeit with only a limited amount of empirical research being currently available on religious education (RE) pedagogy. In this article, research is conceived as not simply informing such debates, but as providing a framework for both accountability (through action research) and pedagogy (through enabling creative collaborative learning in classrooms). Empirical research is reported on patterns of classification and framing expected in RE by pupils, teachers and educationalists outside schools. Evidence is provided of possibilities for the collaborative involvement of teachers and pupils within RE, and for collaboration with teaching and learning in other school subjects. Research is itself put forward tentatively as the most appropriate pedagogy in RE. This is not conceived in terms of its ‘effectiveness’ as a pedagogy, but in terms of its ability to develop itself, critically, within the classroom and school as a learning community.

Online Learning Community Building: a Case Study in China

Much attention has been paid to online community building in recent years due to its much acclaimed potential of enhancing knowledge construction in the Information Age. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on the process of how online learning community influence knowledge construction in particular and enhance the quality of learning in general. This paper is devoted to a case study of a popular language learning community in China (www.HJenglish.com) by drawing upon the metaphor online community is a miniature society, and thus an informal learning model is presented. In the light of the SOCIETY metaphor, virtual space and real social context are converged to facilitate the understanding the complex process of online learning. A text-based analysis of observable online activities and discourse was performed and a follow-up online questionnaire was performed to further explore how online learners conduct their voluntary learning activities and in the meantime shape the cultural environment which in turn facilitates meaningful learning. This paper concludes that to fully grasp the learning process in an online community, three aspects, namely social presence, affective supports and cognitive development, should be taken into consideration. Key words: online learning community, social presence, constructionism, CALL Resume: L’attention pretee a la construction de la communaute d’apprentissage sur ligne dans les dernieres annees est due a son potentiel beaucoup proclame de renforcer la construction du savoir a l’âge d’information. Cependant, il y a lacune dans les recherches empiriques sur le fait que comment la communaute d’apprentissage sur ligne influence la construction du savoir et ameliore en general la qualite d’apprentissage. L’article present entreprend une etude de cas d’une communaute d’apprentissage de langue populaire en Chine (www.HJenglish.com), en utilisant la metaphore « La communaute sur ligne est une societe en miniature », et presente ainsi un modele d’apprentissage informel. A la lumiere de la metaphore de « societe », l’espace virtuel et le contexte social reel conjurent a faciliter la comprehension du processus complexe de l’apprentissage sur ligne. Une analyse, basee sur le texte, des activites et discours observables sur ligne et une enquete suivante sur ligne sont effectuees pour explorer profondement comment les apprenants sur ligne conduisent leurs activites d’apprentissage volontaires et, en meme temps, faconner l’environnement culturel qui a son tour facilite l’apprentissage. L’auteur en arrive a conclure que, pour comprendre pleinement le processus d’apprentissage dans une communaute sur ligne, trois aspects, a savoir la presence sociale, le support affectif et le developpement cognitif, doivent etre pris en consideration. Mots-Cles: communaute d’apprentissage sur ligne, presence sociale, constructuralisme, CALL

How to Change University Faculty Members' Attitudes and Behavior in the Context of Education for Sustainable Development

It is commonly assumed that attitudes and behaviors need to be modified to secure a sustainable future. This article examines insights from the social sciences in this extensive field. It first evaluates college faculty attitudes and classroom practices with respect to education for sustainable development (ESD) using a survey designed for that purpose. Results of the study indicate that college faculty exhibited a moderate level of attitudes toward ESD. Although they showed a strong preference for pedagogical approaches that were contrary to the basic tenets of indoctrination, they used teaching practices that hinged on indoctrination. That mismatch between faculty attitudes and behavior was carefully highlighted and discussed by taking account of the personal, physical, social, and institutional contexts that shape and constrain their choices. The study suggested following several safeguards practices against indoctrination when adopting a committed approach to ESD, offering special training courses for college faculty to enhance their pedagogical knowledge, and building learning communities between college faculty to advance their awareness, attitudes, and pedagogical knowledge that relates to ESD.

Building Learning Communities Online: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom – By Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt

Building Learning Communities Online: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom – By Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt

Building Learning Communities in Residential Colleges

This paper addresses the retention issues presented when large numbers of students from low socio-economic backgrounds and associated disadvantaged educational histories live together on-campus. It reports research in progress on a new approach taken at the University of New England (UNE), Australia, aimed at encouraging the growth of learning communities in colleges through the training and subsequent support of senior students charged with helping first year students negotiate the transition to successful university study. It outlines the issues faced by both the first year students and the senior students, strategies implemented, outcomes to date and plans for further change. UNE is a regional university with 5,000 on-campus students, half of whom live in seven residential colleges. It appears that for these students, traditional lectures and workshops on learning strategies and techniques are not as effective as layered, personal ‘at the elbow’ learning support in a non-threatening, social environment.