I have attended several courses in teaching and learning in higher education and many of them are often designed as learning communities or learning networks. I love the way that knowledge is not only shared but also co-created in personal learning networks (PLN). In the task for week 3, i think we got confused in my group about the difference between networks and communities. We found that there is a tendency to use them interchangeably despite their differences. This was further complicated by the fact that some authors define differently! However, further deep discussions and analysis of the definitions helped us to see the real difference i.e. that networks are not planned, people in the network don’t have shared goal… but a community does come together around shared goal, that’s what we were doing! This insight helped us to get unstuck and move on with the task!
The true nature of the learning and social connectivity in PLNs are constantly impressed on me as we meet and learn twice a week in this course, something i look forward to! Luckily we are not having problems with social loafing! Some thoughts that we had in my group include: Social loafing-who is volunteering? Let each other lead. Do people work harder if doing it alone or doing in as part of a group? Would I learn more? Challenging each other to read. Well, since an element of individual learning is still required, some may not respond as well to learning with others
One great advantage of being in a PLN is that of having each other as ou learning resources. I have now used so many learning and presentation tools that i never knew of. The need for variation is often discussed in teaching and learning. Personally, i think that using technology helps create variation especially when we use different tools for presentation. One challenge may however be the issue of compatibility between certain desired tools and the learning platforms used by our different institutions. It seems that the ONL course platform seem to support every tool we have tried so far, cool!
Also, we have to make sure we carry our students along as we introduce new tools and not think they will automatically learn and adjust due to their familiarity with technology and social media. It has been shown that this is not always the case. So, we must provide good instructions and guidelines (probably in the form of job aids) as we introduce new technologies in our teaching.
