The topic 3 in ONL202 course addressed the importance of creating communities of learning. This aspect can be discussed from two different perspectives – teacher and student. In both cases, creating a personal learning network (PLN) is of great importance to facilitate learning. The definition and type of members in the PLN for a teacher and a student can be very different, as well as the objectives of creating this network. For a teacher, a typical PLN could be a group of teachers at the department (official webpages, social media etc.) who share their experiences and tips from their respective courses and teaching experience. This could provide more hands-on knowledge about implementation of various teaching tools, for example ‘how did group discussions in your classroom?’. The shared experiences could result in improvements of teaching methods in one’s own course. Another example could be an online professional network, such as LinkedIn, where a group of teachers with similar interests and objectives create a community of learning. The idea would be similar, to share experiences of their own teaching and learning, and contributing to the discussions. It is important to emphasise here that there can be several such networks established with different goals, such as one for education and another for research. The common theme is that participation is on one’s own initiative, that is personal, rather than a professional requirement [1].
The main focus of this topic was actually on the student perspective and the teaching methods that could be used to facilitate “automatic” creation of these PLN for the students. I remember that especially during my bachelor studies, we had a group of friends who always studied together for exams. We sat together during the lectures, formed groups for group assignments, and motivated each other to finish assignments on time. This was a great way to have discussions and learn together, rather than studying alone. When I think about it now why this worked so well, the main reasons were (i) we had fun studying together, (ii) we motivated each other to study (its easier to go the gym if you have a friend who always goes with you), and (iii) we felt that being part of this group would improve our results. I have also heard of bad examples of PLN from the course I teach where we have a lot of international students who tend to form their own groups based on nationalities. Some of them struggle to get out of those groups even if they want to. In my course where students have to work on a group project, I earlier asked the students to form the groups by themselves until one year, one of the students almost begged me to create groups, otherwise she would have been forced to be in a group with other students of her nationality, while she wanted to work with different groups to learn more. Since then, I create the project groups trying to mix people from different backgrounds in a group, thus facilitating creation of new PLNs outside of their own PLN. This example shows that frustration of working in group, highlighted as one of the major issues with group work [2], can exist even in self-created PLN. While creating PLNs could be positive, they could be negative also if one is not open-minded. Perhaps a mix of different type of PLNs would be optimal.
References
[1] PLNs Theory and Practice by Kay Oddone, part 2.
[2] Capdeferro, N. & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences?. The International review of research in open and distance learning, 13(2), 26-44. Available here.
