In attempting to define learning communities, Day cites Eduard Lindeman’s description of the ideal setting for adult education as “small groups of aspiring adults who desire to keep their minds fresh and vigorous; who begin to learn by confronting pertinent situations; who dig down into the reservoirs of their experiences before resorting to texts and secondary facts; (and) who are led in the discussion by teachers who are also searchers after wisdom and not oracles.”
Day emphasizes a community structure that facilitates face-to-face interaction and respect over the size of the group. Although Day does not mention trust specifically, in my experience it is critical. Day’s suggestions of seating arrangements that allow learners to see one another is an opening strategy in building trust.
The building of trust is critical to discussion as the primary learning methodology of learning communities. Day says discussion should occur “against the backdrop of actual, real-life problems,” but his use of story problems, although they may be based on real problems, seems to create distance between the discussion in the learning community and the experiences of the learners.
My own experience with learning communities has led me to the opinion that the teacher, even when fulfilling the role of facilitator or knowledge broker, must create the conditions that make it possible to step completely away from their role and let learners fill that gap. I think no learning group can consider itself a community without diversity of perspective and the possibility of temporary roles, including leadership.
Application: I have been working with variations of learning communities for a decade. What I’ve learned in that time is that most teachers and community managers view learning or engagement as an outcome, but learning and engagement are or should be means to an end. No learning community, special interest group or community of practice is fully realized unless leads learners to self-efficacy and action, to collaboration or innovation, or to change their practice.
I am currently working to create the conditions for a learning community for NDSU Extension Family and Community Wellness staff to flourish. If this community can be established and grow, it will lead to more collaborative and innovative programming in NDSU Extension. I am currently trying to create the conditions for more regular discussion of programming by letting staff practice sharing their work. We’ve created a group on Yammer, Microsoft’s micro-blogging/social media tool for business.
Our first step in establishing the trust necessary to share work openly was to establish a rhythm, a way of syncing up our work. We agreed to post what we are looking forward to each week on Mondays and our reflections on the week past on Friday. These regular posts also help staff practice this new way of working in a relatively low-stakes manner. As trust grows, the hope is that staff will be more generous with their experiences, and the increased bandwidth of information will lead to stronger relationships, new ideas and serendipitous connections between people and ideas.
Assessment: Community Engagement Framework (Happe, 2015)
We will assess the community using The Community Roundtable’s Community Engagement Framework. The framework outlines four categories of contributions to the community discussion:
We are monitoring the posts in Yammer for contributions that fit each category. The categories are progressive. Validating indicates comfort. Sharing indicates connection. Asking & answering indicates trust. Exploring indicates partnership and collaboration. By measuring the number of contributions in each category and the percentage of members offering contributions in each category, we should be able to get a picture of the current status of the community and make inferences about what might be needed to help the community progress.
References
Happe, Rachel. (June 17, 2015). Community Engagement Framework. Retrieved from https://communityroundtable.com/best-practices/thecrs-work-out-loud-framework/.
Day, Michael J. (2004). Enhancing Learning Communities in Cyberspace. In Michael W. Galbraith (Eds.), Adult Learning Methods: A Guide for Effective Instruction (3rd Ed.) (425-450). Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company.