Learning Design: creating and sustaining online communities of practice

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Learning Designcreating and sustaining online
communities of practice

• Tim Bilham
• Director, Education Research and Development
• School for Health
• University of Bath

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WorkshopFestival of Learning, March 2007

• Bath context
• Your background and experience
• Educational drivers
• Our learning and teaching approaches
• Your educational philosophy and approach
• Learning design
• System specification
• Programmatic level
• Activity level
• Effectiveness Learner engagement-early
  evaluation
• Illustrations from programmes for healthcare
  professionals
• Your illustrations

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University of Bath context

• No institutional policy on e-learning (pre 2006)
• Pilot programmes using Bb, WebCT, a bespoke VLE
• School for Health (SfH) established 2003
• Postgraduate education for professionals
• Some pre-existing courses delivered through
  distance learning- text, video, audio
• SfH takes whole programme approach to e-learning
• SfH selects Moodle (2004)
• launches first programme January 2005
• University adopts Moodle (2006)

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Participant contributions

• Introduce yourself and describe your equivalent
  teaching and (e-)learning context perhaps in
  terms of departmental and/or institutional
  strategy

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WorkshopFestival of Learning, March 2007

• Bath context
• Your background and experience
• Educational drivers
• Our learning and teaching approaches
• Your educational philosophy and approach
• Learning design
• System specification
• Programmatic level
• Activity level
• Effectiveness Learner engagement-early
  evaluation
• Illustrations from programmes for healthcare
  professionals
• Your illustrations

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1 Traditional e-learning models

• Efficiency driven
• Learners as individuals
• Flexibility of convenience (access) rather than a
  flexibility of learning
• Transmission model
• Which models are you familiar with?

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2 Institutional Strategy

• Institutional drivers
• business
• academic
• pedagogical
• technical
• administrative
• Which perspective dominates in your institution ?

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Strategy Bath

• Institutional drivers
• Creation of new School, support for expansion
• Increase student numbers
• Recruit international students
• Constraints on campus space
• Increase income from teaching
• School drivers
• Inherited a number of conventional distance
  learning courses
• Largish student numbers circa 700 on 3
  programmes
• Problems with progression, attrition
• Material outdated, difficulties in keeping
  topical
• Fast-moving clinical areas
• Staff enthusiastic to innovate
• Improve quality of learning experience

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Strategy Bath

• School strategy
• Postgraduate professional education
• Part-time and relevant to practice
• Innovative blended delivery
• Remote learners and dispersed part-time tutors
• Learning strategy
• Learner-centred
• Activity-driven
• Establishing communities of practice
• Effective learner support

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3 Drivers in education that inform current models
of learning

• Increased accessibility to information and
  knowledge
• Shift in expectations upon professionals and upon
  educators and trainers
• Self-directed learning commonplace and supporting
  and facilitation key to success
• Do you consider there are different or
  additional drivers for change?

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WorkshopFestival of Learning, March 2007

• Bath context
• Your background and experience
• Educational drivers
• Our learning and teaching approaches
• Your educational philosophy and approach
• Learning design
• System specification
• Programmatic level
• Activity level
• Effectiveness Learner engagement-early
  evaluation
• Illustrations from programmes for healthcare
  professionals
• Your illustrations

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The School for Health approach

• Constructivist learning
• Communities of practice
• Reflective practice
• Knowledge construction

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Focus upon learning design

• Pedagogical policy
• Social constructivist- communities of practice
• Learner support- induction, growth, personal
  development
• Reflective practice- work based learning,
  professional development
• Activity-driven not content-driven
• School for Health Learning and Teaching Strategy,
  late 2004

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Underpinning pedagogy -School for Health
programmes
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WorkshopFestival of Learning, March 2007

• Bath context
• Your background and experience
• Educational drivers
• Our learning and teaching approaches
• Your educational philosophy and approach
• Learning design
• System specification
• Programmatic level
• Activity level
• Effectiveness Learner engagement-early
  evaluation
• Illustrations from programmes for healthcare
  professionals
• Your illustrations

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Sharing approaches

• Working in small groups share your approaches to
  learning and teaching (especially e-learning).
• You may find using this matrix helpful.

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Constructivist learning

• Only by wrestling with the conditions of the
  problem at hand, seeking and finding his own
  solution (not in isolation but in correspondence
  with the teacher and other pupils) does one
  learn
• John Dewey, How We Think, 1910

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Precedents for constructivist models

• Dewey (1938, 1964)
• Montessori (1914,1965)
• Piaget (1977)
• Bruner (1986)
• Vygotsky (1962, 1986)
• and
• Gagne (1970)
• Schön (1987)
• Lave Wenger (1991)
• Wenger (1998)

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Situated Learning

• Situated learning is education that takes place
  in a setting functionally identical to that where
  the learning will be applied
• Wikipedia, 2006
• Lave and Wenger, 1991
• Implications for work-based learning, for
  e-learning, for professional practice?

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Communities of practice

• A community of practice is a network of people
  who share a common interest in a specific area of
  knowledge or competence and are willing to work
  and learn together over a period of time to
  develop and share that knowledge
• NeLH Specialist Library, Knowledge Management

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Reflective practice

• involvement in a process of reflection on ones
  actions as part of continuing learning is a
  central characteristic of a professional
  practitioner
• after Schön
• a capacity to reflect
• .. in action (whilst doing something) and
• .. on action (after it has been done)
• is an important feature of professional
  development

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Kolbs learning cycle
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Knowledge construction

• Physically through their involvement in active
  learning
• Symbolically by learners making their own
  representations of action
• Socially by conveying meaning to, and receiving
  meaning from, others
• Theoretically by learners trying to explain their
  own incomplete understanding

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Building knowledge

• We have begun at last to play with digital
  technologies as a way of meeting the demands of
  the digital age, but with an approach still born
  of the transmission model.
• Diana Laurillard (2002)

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Rationale for learning design

• Professional learners have invaluable
  contributions to make
• new knowledge and learning are properly
  conceived as being located in communities of
  practice
• Tennant (1997)

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WorkshopFestival of Learning, March 2007

• Bath context
• Your background and experience
• Educational drivers
• Our learning and teaching approaches
• Your educational philosophy and approach
• Learning design
• System specification
• Programmatic level
• Activity level- a learning design methodology
• Effectiveness Learner engagement-early
  evaluation
• Illustrations from programmes for healthcare
  professionals
• Your illustrations

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Early experiences (2003-4)

• Blackboard
• WebCT
• Bespoke LMS

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Bb solution - Care and support workers
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Course Structure

• Blended Learning Online F2F
• 3 phases
• AS Awareness - E-tivities
• AS in Context - Case Study Analysis
• Supporting AS Developing Reflective
  Practice

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Evaluating participation

• 95 participated online.
• Staff accessed the course every day
• 56 of all user access was after 6pm.
• The course content was accessed a total of 9,463
  times.

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Strength of e-tivities

• Build confidence - Safety rail for novice
  e-learners.
• Allows contributions from everyone.
• Gives structure to a potentially chaotic and
  stressful online environment
• The framework is inherently motivating response
  element.
• Gives time to build mutual respect and trust.

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Bespoke solution - Informatics
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Limitations

• Proprietary (costs lock-in)
• First generation VLE (not flexible enough)
• Commercial agenda attempting to drive
  institutional decisions
• Being used for purposes other than e-learning
• Transmission model
• Limited sequencing in learning
• No social construction of knowledge
• No indicators of virtual proximity/ human
  presence

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Learning Design -system specification

• Drivers Influences

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A Learning Environment for SfH

• Drivers Influences
• Underpinning Pedagogy
• Objectives for the Learning Experience
• Requirements of the Learning Environment

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A Learning Environment for SfH

• Key requirements
• Learning process - event driven.
• Activities group discussions using CMC tools
  that not only provided a channel for
  communication but also helped to develop social
  presence, an important precursor for the
  formation of learning communities.
• Resources dynamic, current and aggregated from
  a variety of sources including tutors and
  students.
• Student administration handle separate cohorts
  of students and allow electronic submission of
  assignments.
• Flexibility/Usability for developers/learners and
  tutors

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A Learning Environment for SfH

• Objectives for the new learning experience 1
• Reduce the feelings of isolation felt by our
  distance learners
• Exploit the experience and expertise of both
  tutors and students as a valuable resource for
  the programme
• Provide opportunities to engage with real world
  problems alongside study of theoretical concepts.
  

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A Learning Environment for SfH

• Objective for the new learning experience 2
• Create a resource that could be used and reused
  in a variety of ways dependant on individual
  needs as learners and as medical practitioners.
• Build on the intrinsic motivation of students by
  providing supportive frameworks of engaging
  collaborative activities.
• Recognise our tutors and students as professional
  practitioners and members of an evolving
  community of practice.

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Learning design -programmes

• Process modules- reflective practice, PDP driven
• Topic modules

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The Salmon five stage model
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Induction programme
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The practice development processPractice related
module
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Learning design - activities

• A learning design methodology
• Situation
• Grouping
• Bridge
• Questions
• Exhibit
• Reflections
• Gagnon and Collay (2005)

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A framework for designing

• people in specific groups and roles engage in
  activities using an environment with appropriate
  resources and services.
• Koper and Tattersall (2005)
• people
• materials
• activities
• Gibbs and Gosper (2006)

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WorkshopFestival of Learning, March 2007

• Bath context
• Your background and experience
• Educational drivers
• Our learning and teaching approaches
• Your educational philosophy and approach
• Learning design
• System specification
• Programmatic level
• Activity level
• Effectiveness Learner engagement-early
  evaluation
• Illustrations from programmes for healthcare
  professionals
• Your illustrations

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Social view
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Social view
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Topic view
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Sport and Exercise Medicine Online
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Learning design- activities
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Learning design- activities
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SfH learning design methodology

• Gagnon and Collay (2005)
• Situation......Task, timing
• Grouping.........Format, resources
• Bridge......Connection
• Questions........as part of task
• Exhibit.......Response
• Reflections.......built into process and
  Response
• School for Health activity model, 2006

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Learning design- activities
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Practice-based learning
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• http//moodle.bath.ac.uk/course/view.php?id5
• http//moodle.bath.ac.uk/moodle5/course/view.php?i
  d266

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Evaluation

• Logs of participation and posting
• Analysing posts in the fora
• Collecting student and tutor comments during the
  pilot through individual journals and at the end
  of the pilot through focus group interviews
• Keeping a diary of our own personal reflections
  as developers

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The Sports Doctor unit
Activities and resources linked to paper based
texts
42 Students 1,300 page accesses /day
Regular discussion events with colleagues
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Monitoring progress
42 students over 2 months
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Conclusion

• e-learning has largely assumed the educational
  paradigms of traditional teaching . driven by
  a teacher model
• Individualistic learning
• Teacher-student knowledge transmission
• Located outside the workplace
• Occurs as a result of teaching

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Conclusion

• ..but e-learning can be designed to support
  the process of engagement with a community of
  practice
• Team working, inter-professional learning
• Social construction of knowledge
• Situated in practice
• Reflecting on practice and sharing of good
  practice

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Future work

• Systematic evaluations
• Before and after
• Comparing delivery methods
• Cross-organisational studies

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Thank you

• Tim Bilham
• t.d.bilham_at_bath.ac.uk

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Rationale for the new programme

• Two hour evening session
• Busy sometimes stressful
• Sometimes difficult to keep track of posts if
  many fora are in use
• Short posts
• Large number of posts
• High degree of tutor leading e.g. questions and
  narrowing focus
• High virtual proximity
• Most of the social exchanges occur here
• Less accommodating of flexible participation

• One week session
• Less busy less stress
• Easy to keep track of posts messages arrive in
  an email from the fora
• Longer posts
• Fewer posts
• More student autonomy
• Lower virtual proximity
• Few social exchanges
• More accommodating of flexible participation.

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A Learning community
Current articles from external sports or medical
sources
Latest news from the course team and updates from
the tutors
Communication tools for keeping in touch with
colleagues and tutors
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