Before beginning this course I had never really heard of specific essential elements or best practices for online learning communities. After this week’s readings and resources I have found that as I struggled to create an online learning community with my students these past years without a guide that I ended up following many of the principles of the “Ten Core Learning Principles” outlined by Boettcher and Conrad (Boettcher & Conrad, 2010).
Ten Core Learning Principles
- Every structured learning experience has four elements with the learner at the center.
- Learners bring their own personalized and customized knowledge, skills, and attitudes to the experience.
- Faculty mentors are the directors of the learning experience.
- All learners do not need to learn all course content; all learners do need to learn the core concepts
- Every learning experience includes the environment or context in which the learner interacts.
- Every learner has a zone of proximal development that defines the space that a learner is ready to develop into useful knowledge.
- Concepts are not words but organized and interconnected knowledge clusters.
- Different instruction is required for different learning outcomes.
- Everything else being equal, more time on task equals more learning.
- We shape our tools, and our tools shape us.
(Boettcher & Conrad, 2010, p. 20)
These learner-centered principles are essential to the development of a quality and effective online learning community for any student population.
From my experiences I think it is very subjective and depends on the student population how online learning communities impact both student learning and bring student satisfaction with the online course. Adult learners have different requirements for their online learning communities than Youth online learners. Where adult learners may require more flexibility in the use of their individual prior knowledge, many Youth learners require online experiences that build their prior knowledge for future use. I believe that both learner types benefit greatly from the establishment of an online learning community but as an online instructor and instructional designer I will have to provide different online learning communities based on each student populations needs and requirements.
It is the instructor/facilitator’s job to maintain the online learning community. This can be done by the design of a learning environment that encourages and supports the learners interaction and collaboration. One way I have found to do this for my online high school science students is to allow them a discussion forum where they pose their own science based questions and work together to research the answers. My students understand that in this forum setting there are no wrong answers or questions just simply a space for science exploration and collaboration.
So with a knowledgeable and learner-centered course design and facilitator/instructor a dynamic online learning community can be achieved and maintained.
Thank you.
Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. (2010). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bas. Walden Library Education Research Complete database
Beth,
ReplyDeleteI have no experience trying to reach high school aged learners. However, I would totally agree with your statement that the difference between , teenagers and adults must be addressed. For that matter, you also alluded to the fact that each online learner will have differences in how they want their online environment to be created, maintained, and facilitated. Which in my experience would be frustrating. As an ID you create the designed based on many factors, but at the end of the day its almost impossible to account for the all the learner characteristics possible. Hence, where the rubber meets the road is the facilitator/instructor/teacher. I have a firm belief that the facilitator can make or break a good or bad instructional design.
Nol
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteYou've made some very good assertions in your post as it relates to the differences between young adult and adult learners. You stated, "Where adult learners may require more flexibility in the use of their individual prior knowledge, many Youth learners require online experiences that build their prior knowledge for future use."
I would disagree with your assertion. Creation of a safe learning environment is essential for both populations. Flexibility is one of the big selling points for online learning. Its my opinion this is an important element for both populations.
Sharla
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteYour blog Online Learning Communities was very informative. You stated, "From my experiences I think it is very subjective and depends on the student population how online learning communities impact both student learning and bring student satisfaction with the online course."
I would like to counter that the online learning communitiy is more objective than subjective. Learners bring a diversity of knowledge, experience and perspectives to the online learning community. There are a number of essential objectives that must be faciliated by the instructor in order for learning and collaboration to form in the online environment. Subjectivity means there is any guidelines to help form a clear learning path. At least that is my perspective.
Sharla