Module 5 Blog
In our module 5 reading we started
reading about the learning community in online learning in the book Building
Online Learning Communities by Palloff and Pratt. The first three chapters cover when teaching
and learning leave the classroom, recontextualizing community, and the human
side of learning. The part of this
reading that really resonates with me is the loss of social interaction in
certain technologies. How do we identify
and address the gap between online learning and face-to-face learning. As the book points out there are benefits to
online learning, but at the same time we have to acknowledge the drawbacks and
what are lost (Palloff
& Pratt, 2007).
Coming from a hybrid class where we have exposure to both types of
learning, this is a topic we have discussed on more than one occasion.
Preece and Maloney-Krichmar (2007) ask
the important questions about online learning communities. The article brings up an excellent point on
the emergence of online communities stating, “Many of today’s online
communities changed comparatively little during the last twenty years, until
the Web became widespread in the mid-1990s.
Since then there has been a steady flow of new versions and new
technologies but the biggest changes are in how the technology is being used,
and who is using it (Preece & Maloney-Krichmar p.6). The article talks about how the best avenue
for communication is different depending on the individual, medium, and type of
communication. What works best for one
person is not always what works best for another person. As teachers we have all heard the hype term “differentiated
instruction.” That term is not just
applicable to those students.
In the article Online Communities: Focusing
on Sociability and Usability it asks those same questions about online
communities that the chapters in our book as well as the questions that I
myself as an educator has. I do feel
that this article really gets to the heart of theses questions and takes it a
step further by talking about things such as factors that affect the ease with
which common ground is established. It
takes a chapter of our book and makes it into a 48 page thought process.
References
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt,
K. (2007). Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for
the Virtual Classroom (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Preece, J., & Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003). Online Communities: Focusing on Sociability
and Usability. Handbook
of human-computer interaction, 596-620.
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