Topic 3. Learning in communities, networked, collaborative learning. Oh, my goodness. I feel like I’m in my element. I was so excited to jump head first into this topic. So excited in fact that I put my hand up to lead our group’s efforts when engaging with the content.

So let’s break it down. Communities, networking, collaboration, and learning, all of the things I live and breathe in my everyday life, both personally and professionally. With an interest in professional identity formation (particularly healthcare professionals), and the social context in which it forms, two main theories that I see applying to this topic are Wenger’s Communities of Practice theory(Wenger, 1998); and Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986). Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (Wenger, 1998). At the heart of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) is the social context in which an individual learns and maintains behaviours (Bandura, 1986).

For more on the work of Wenger click here

I engage in my professional society through a lot of online platforms and I find that networking has really helped me get where I am today. In fact, it may even be responsible for the job that I currently have and collaboration is something that I just live and breathe. I really appreciate the concept of collaborating with others, learning from them, teaching them, moving forward together to create a product. So this topic, the concept of networked, collaborative learning, really engage me. The thing that was going to be slightly new to me was what did it mean in the digital age? How was I going to embrace communities of practice, networked based, learning to collaborate and facilitate education for my students in the digital age?

Looking at the experience of PBL Group #3 we successfully demonstrated, through the use of an online mind map tool (see the video below) how we could synchronously and asynchronously collaborate . I found the experience really powerful as each member taught and learned in the same session. As an outcome of our collaboration we even created a “tips sheet”, which we think could be used to guide educators who are thinking of engaging digital collaborative activities with their learners

In terms on my personal learning networks – these are strong, mostly due to the fact that living in Australia as meant that I have been physically distance from my simulation colleagues around the world.

Thank you to my PBL group members for really living and breathing the concepts of digital collaborative learning.