Category: learning

CoP Series #2: What the heck is a Domain and why should I care?

This is a reblog of a guest blog post I did on Darren Sidnick’s Learning & Technology Blog: What the heck is a Domain and why should I care? (CoP with Nancy White). I’m republishing them here with Darren’s blessing! Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6,  part 7 ,  part 8 , part 9 and  part 1o  are all here on the blog.

What the heck is a Domain and why should I care?

Flickr photo by IdeaideiaIn the first in our series on communities of practice, (CoPs) I briefly mentioned Community, Domain and Practice. In this blog post I want to dive a little deeper into Domain. Because Etienne Wenger does such a great job of defining domain (and he really helped me understand it) I’ll start with his definition, and use his definitions later for Community and Practice as well:
The domain: from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/

A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. A youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain: surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.

So Domain is what we care about together. It is what is important enough for us to make time to participate, to learn these crazy online tools if that’s how our community connects, and makes us prioritize it over the many other things we have in our busy lives. So it has to matter! So if a learner is taking a course because they “have to”, we need to think carefully about if a community is the right approach.

Domain is not static
Domain is also one of those things that seems obvious at first — we are interested in learning about how to become entrepreneurs — but ends up being a bit more subtle. In large communities, there may be a big, overarching domain, with smaller, more specialized subgroups. In some communities, the domain may be relevant for only a short period of time and then the community naturally comes to the end of it’s life. The domain may shift when new people join or initial core members leave. Not all domain’s are “eternal!” So the first lesson about Domain is that it is not static and it has to reflect and respond to the interests and needs of the member. So we might start a CoP on entrepreneurs coming out of a business course offering, but it may turn out that the core of the group is really interested in marketing for small businesses, or developing a horticulture business. Then you get to that “ignition” point where the interest and passion is sufficient to get the community going. That “commitment” that Etienne describes in his definition. Over time, the domain focus might shift again — and responding to that shift is critical for community sustainability.

Community and personal identity
Domain also has to do with something else important in communities of practice: identity. The domain gives the community as a whole an identity, and it also is part of the identity of individual “members.” Shawn Callahan from Anecdote often says a useful test of a domain is to be able to identify with it personally. So in a community of entrepreneurs, you would say, yes, I’m an entrepreneur. But it may have a lot more personal meaning if it was “yes, I’m own a small horticultural business” and thus the more specific domain has more meaning.

So if you are thinking about a communities of practice approach with your e-learners, ask yourself, what might be the domain of my community? Try it out on some of your learners. See what they tell you. If it resonates… keep going. If they look at you like you are crazy, keep refining your ideas about domain WITH them. Because after all, it will be THEIR community. If you do this little experiment, leave a comment here and share a story of what you learned!

Here is another story about domain: http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/2008/07/communities-of-practice-and-bulldozers.html

Flickr Photo Credit:

view photostream Uploaded on July 10, 2008
by ideaideai

Catch up strategies in online courses

Flickr photo by Simon Pais-ThomasMy friend Bronwyn Stuckey wrote a blog post this week that rang bells for me. She was essentially asking, how do we catch up when we are lost or left behind in an online learning course/class/workshop? This hit home because right now I’m facilitating a workshop and have totally fallen behind in two online courses I’m ostensibly “taking!” Ha!

Here is a snippet to get us started. Lost or left behind in online learning? « Bron’s Spot

Flickr photo by JagginLast week I was facing what many of our online learners must face – a guilt trip about not devoting enough time to a course and being overwhelmed by decisions. Do I try to catch it all up after being inattentive for a few weeks? Do I try and contact someone, perhaps a buddy, and try to get the abridged version of what has passed me by? If everyone else is keeping up why am I so inadequate? Do I just pick up from here and ignore or let slide what has passed me by? Or do I just give up because I feel too far behind?

I know in the Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop in which I am a leader and coach, we have have been acutely aware of this kind of problem. How do we allow people easy reentry into the hub of the learning when they have been absent (physically or mentally)? This is particularly important when courses like Foundations and the FOC08 and CCK08 have a frequent phase changes that make returning your attentions like picking up a movie plot part way through the screening. We have never really found a satisfactory answer. How do other online programs deal with this?

Flickr photo by Ric e etteFirst, for those not familiar with term “phase change” in the context of a course, my interpretation is a phase change is when the group shifts from a focus or topic, shifts from one form of interaction to another (going from online to offline, for example, or shifting to using a different tool or modality.) Sometimes the shift makes us feel that there is no going back to previous phases, or that if you missed the previous phase, you were out of luck. Bron, is that your interpretation?

OK, let’s start brainstorming strategies for facilitating catch up and reentry. I started to sort some initial into two lists – strategies for the workshop designer/instructor/facilitator and strategies for the learner/participant, but in a collaborative or community setting, some of these might be interchangable. So they are all in one and you can infer which are more design strategies for the facilitator and which are more ongoing learner coping strategies. I’ve included those suggested by Bronwyn!

Design and Practice Strategies for Catching Up in Online Courses

  • Offer synchronous meetings to reestablish engagement through a focused moment in time.
  • Design “phase changes” (as Bron calls them in her blog post) that are also reentry points, rather than “left behind” points. (I should write a whole blog post on this one alone.)
  • Create or encourage the creation of summaries for both content and process where appropriate.
  • Design “Forgiveness” points in time where you tell the learner to ignore everything that came before and just dive in.
  • Encourage learning buddies to help each other – “personal bonds to keep us on track” (Bron).
  • Don’t go overboard in a designing “self directed learning” recognizing that learners are busy and may need/appreciate more scaffolding than “do your own thing, baby!”
  • Contact another learner and ask them to give you a quick update.
  • Offer to do a summary – you will learn more than anyone else and catch up at the same time.
  • Forgive yourself and let go of what was not done and focus on what can still be done.
  • Mark time in your calendar for the course and treat it like a “real appointment.”

What else?

P.S Edited on Friday, Sept 12 – Sue Waters’ comment reminded me it would have been helpful if I referenced the workshops I was referring to:

Photo Credits – creative commons on Flickr

view photostream Uploaded on November 20, 2006
by Simon Pais-Thomas
view photostream Uploaded on January 5, 2007
by jaqian
view photostream Uploaded on December 8, 2006
by Ric e Ette

Communities of Practice Series with Darren Sidnick #1

I mentioned a while back I was guest blogging on Darren Sidnick’s blog on communities of practice with an emphasis on the current interests of folks at his company, UFI Learndirect. Darren said it was ok to repost these on my blog, so I’ll be including one about once a week for the next 10 weeks. Here is number one, which ran on Darren’s blog in August. Darren Sidnick’s Learning & Technology: Communities of Practice (CoPs) with Nancy White

Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6,  part 7 ,  part 8 , part 9 and  part 1o  are all here on the blog.

Communities of Practice (CoPs) with Nancy White

Darren wrote: This is a series of blogs on Communities of Practice (CoP). I’m excited as I’ve teamed up with CoP guru, Nancy White http://fullcirc.com/wp/. Nancy is a regular keynote speaker on the conference circuit and expert practitioner. For me, it’s like getting on the same football pitch with Manchester United’s Ronaldo (or should I say my favourite football player Paul Gascoigne! I’m a Tottenham Hotspurs fan).

Nancy is writing, while I’m editing and doing the odd football/soccer trick (ie. doing a bit of writing). CoP is a hot topic in Ufi learndirect at the moment and an area we are piloting and testing. For me, Communities of Practice take love and attention to get right! They are about people and communities, not about technology or platforms. Anyway, here’s blog 1……………
What is a Community of Practice and Why Should I Care?
You’ve probably heard the term bandied about … “communities of practice” … and in the same breadth someone says “the email list” or the “website.” So what the heck are they talking about and how can a piece of software be a community? Read on…

What is a community of practice?
I like to start with the definition of a community of practice from the guy who coined the term, Etienne Wenger. Here is his definition. Note the last part – that is the important part:

Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell:

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

There are three important things in this definition: groups of people (community), domain (a passion for something) and practice (do it better as they interact regularly.) CoPs are not one shot deals that happen at meetings or conferences. They grow and develop over time. In subsequent posts, we’ll talk more about community, domain and practice – because they can be really useful terms as we think about launching and sustaining communities of practice. (CoP).

How are CoPs useful in learning?

But first lets get practical and think about the role of CoPs in eLearning. How can CoPs enhance learning?

  1. They offer the chance to making meaning of our learning as we apply it to our lives/work/tasks. When we learn something in a course, it can go in one ear and out the other. You know the old adage of the power of application. Even more powerful is how much we learn when we have to teach someone else. So the sharing of the application – what is working or not working, asking for help and teaching others what we know – makes our learning in a community of practice deeper and longer lasting.
  2. They connect us with people who can be resources for continued learning, opportunities for practice or even job leads. Communities can offer people access to networks which are particularly important if their learning is to support employment.
  3. They allow us all to use our expertise. The “teacher” or the course content may be the initial source of learning, but the learners themselves can be great sources of knowledge. Communities of practice may create things that capture and share their learning. They may bring in local context that deepens the learning. Together we know more than any one of us alone.

Wait a minute!

So does that mean you should rush out and start a CoP? It all depends… We need to ask ourselves a few questions before we go “launching a community” because CoPs are not always what we need. And that’s ok. So here we go:

  1. The value to participants. Is there a group of people who want to and will interact and learn together over time? If not, maybe there is another form we should be looking at, such as a network. Or a site where people can go for related content. Communities have to be of enough value so people will take the time and effort to participate.
  2. Time and access. Do these people have the time and access to interact, particularly online since we are talking about an e-learning context? Are they already meeting face to face – and if yes, do you even need the added online layer? If not, don’t bother!
  3. Is there an existing CoP that fills the need? If yes, think hard before you try and create a new community. It is easier to build on what exists than to start from scratch AND compete for attention.
  4. Support. If there is a group of people who want to learn together over time, is there sufficient conditions to nurture the community such as leadership and facilitation? Online CoPs , we’ve learned, really benefit from facilitation. Is that in the plan and the budget? If not, think twice.

The tool is not the community
If you still think a CoP is useful for your context, let’s clear up one more issue. Web based tools, sometimes called “Web 2.0” tools allow us to “be together” as a community even if we are not in the same location. The internet has radically reshaped what a CoP can be. But it is VERY IMPORTANT not to confuse the community with the platform. Communities are made up of people. Platforms support their interactions. Just because you provide a platform does NOT mean you will auto-magically have a community. But these tools will allow you to support people connecting across distance, allowing a greater diversity of thought which can enrich a community. They allow communities to share what they know and connect to other communities and the world, which can deepen their learning. So technology has become an important part of the community toolkit.

If you are already using CoPs for yourself or for your learners, leave a comment here and tell a story or share a URL … how is it working for you?

Want to know more about Communities of Practice? Here are some great resources:

Onramps to online engagement

Rambly post alert –  this one hops all over the place with little regard to coherence.


DEANZ 2008 - Workshop Discussions

My friend Mark Hammersley reminded me a few months ago of a tool to help surface intercultural issues and build trust in distributed teams. One was Thiagi’s Multicultural Email Game. (Mark notes it is also included in the “Building Trust in Teams” toolkit, PDF for free or you can buy the book, published by Oxfam www.oxfam.org.uk) I have not used this game and would like to try it – and not just at a F2F meeting, but try it online. It could be tricky because it actually asks participants to trust the process of the game right from the start. But the idea of a game appeals to me, not only for trust building, but as an on-ramp to engagement. Michele Martin shares some of her favorite ice breakers (mostly F2F) which are another way of initiating engagement. Check the comments on the post for more ideas.

So why am I focusing on onramps to engagement today? Two reasons. The first is I’m a guest in a South African workshop on elearning for educators in higher education and almost ALL of their questions have to do with engagement.  Most often, “how do I get people to post on discussion boards.”  They are also dealing with huge cohorts that blow my mind. How does engagement scale? Wow. I’ll have to save that for another post.

The second reason engagement is top of mind is because  I was Skyping with a colleague who is facing challenges getting some organizational partners to participate in a discussion forum. In our conversation we talked about three big barriers. Maybe they will stimulate you to contribute some more issues and ideas.

Why are we talking about discussion forums?

Engagement is an issue with all tools. Tools are the medium to achieve our purpose.  It just so happens today people were talking about discussion forums. It is still critical to ask the question “why are we using discussion forums.” Again, I won’t go into that today. So let’s take it as a given just for fun, ok?

Barrier 1: No Shared Context for Learning Together

One of the possible barriers we identified was the different cultural contexts for sharing work in progress as a way of learning. I have found that people often think what they observe and experience won’t have value to others. That their stuff, their “work in progress”  is not ‘good enough.’ So one suggestion is to create an example or trial run, and wrap it in an invitation that has relevance and value to the participants. To role model the value of thinking together while working, not just when we are done. This begins to help us see where we have shared and different contexts and how these can add to, not subtract, from our learning.

For example, recruit 2 people from the group – one who is willing to share her workplan (this is what is under discussion) and another to interview the first person with you, the facilitator. Prior to posting, spend some time with person one to see if they need any help preparing the document and give them some feedback about the value of the work. There is always value, trust me. But sometimes we are blind to our own learning and strengths. Then spend some time with the interviewer brainstorming questions. DON’T practice the interview. I find that often saps the life out of things. But prep the initial questions and give tips on how to interview and dig down for the gems rather than just coasting on the surface.

Then create an invitation to the rest of the group to a time delimited interaction. In this example, it is on a discussion forum due to bandwidth limitations.  In the invitation, use language that is relevant to the participants interests and needs, such as “come participate in a peer interview with Person 1 and Person 2 where we’ll mine for the gems in a work plan. Get ideas and different perspectives on the work plan process.”

After this interview, do a quick debrief. What did people learn? What did they like about the process? Not like or make them feel uncomfortable. This can surface both focus, technological and cultural issues. Adjust and then encourage others to take a turn their your plans and getting valuable peer feedback.

The debrief, as was cited in the Email Game link above, is the critical part. Without this you have no feedback to adjust and improve. Without the reflection on the process, many of the participants may speed past their own learning and the possibilities of the conversations and learning with others. The “I don’t have time to post on discussion boards.”

Barrier 2: Technology

Wait, I said we were taking forums as a given for this post? Well… maybe not, eh? I work a lot in international contexts where there is little bandwidth equality. Or even electricity parity. Some members are lucky to get online on a patchy dial-up once a week, while others are always on with broadband. A portal or forum tool may just not cut it when it takes 20 minutes to download a page – and worse when that page has no value.  Organizations sometimes deny this, but it is real and the sooner we adjust our strategies, the better. So one of the suggestions we talked about on our Skype chat today was the bridging of technologies, specifically text on mobile phones to alert or focus on key web based interactions. It is probably not yet realistic to replace all web interactions – not everyone has web enabled mobiles, but this linkage with the commonly shared tool of mobile phones recognizes the realities of those with less web access and includes them more fully. It is easier to say yes to a text than that 20-minute loading page.  So the message to organizations who insist that everything happens on their portal should look again. Rethink the centralized strategy because it is not inclusive in many cases.

Barrier #3: Organizational Foo

Finally, we come to the fun stuff. The elephants in the room. Our own organizational blinders and shortcomings. For example, funders have power over their grantees, so grantees do what they need to to “tick the box” but do they feel ownership of their learning in an experience with a funder, or beholden to the learning agenda of the funder? What real and meaningful roles are available to people? What ownership? Like the tool choices above, the power of the convenor can stifle the engagement of everyone else, especially if their power is disproportionate.

To address these issues, we have to look inward to our organizations and ask the hard questions about our values, how we lead and follow, how we prioritize our time and what we ask of others. If we are asking our colleagues to participate in a web based interaction, we should not dare to refuse to participate ourselves. If we choose technologies that are for our convenience, we should also struggle to master those that are convenient for others. It is a two way street.

Broader issues: Training, Performance Support and Learning

So now, this spreads out to something I’ve been following others on – how we think about learning in the workplace. Is it training? Is it performance support? Is it formal or informal learning? Or better, what should we be pulling out of the bag when? This actually links back to the question, why are we seeking engagement?Yes, for learning, but for what? Why? For whom? Are we being strategic? Are we deluding ourselves that people have time for these distributed, online learning conversations in the first place? Purpose is always first and foremost, but we still slide by it with vague answers. Or we forge ahead with training, performance support or communities of learning and practice without asking about purpose.

If our purpose is clear, then what is the relationship and strategy around training, PS and learning? Too many questions and it is time to go make dinner. How was that for an easy out? 😉

Other people blogging/thinking out loud about this:

Edited to correct some bad spelling boo boos

Connectivism Course – Pre Assignment

Connectivism Course Wiki

As if I had time/attention for another workshop or course! I’m barely following Leigh’s  online facilitation workshop, running a workshop for a client, guesting in a South African workshop and now starts George Siemens and Stephen Downe’s

 Connectivism Course. But I’m weak. I can’t resist. So in the spirit of things, here is my first blog assignment. Rather than start a blog just for the course, I’ll do my posts right here on my home blog-base.

Connectivism Outline – LTCWiki
Activities:

  1. Set up your course blog (edublogs or WordPress are recommended, but you can set up your blog with any other service) DONE!
  2. Introduce yourself in the moodle forum or on your blog – be sure to use the CCK08 tag. For the introduction, let other participants know:
  • Where you’re from – Chocolandia, of course. In earth terms, I’m from Seattle, Washington in the upper left hand corner of the continental US. But lately I rarely seem to be here. Lots of travel, baby. My carbon footprint is horrible. At least I’m not the only person on those planes by my self. (However, I could use a little leg room!)
  • Why you’re interested in this course – for a variety of reasons. 1. To see how George and Stephen collaborate in running the course, both from a content, process and technological perspectives. I love this idea of open courses (with a paying option for credit). I want to see how they scale. I suspect they are a LOT of work for the convenors! 2. I’m interested in the topic and 3. Well, you already read – I’m a glutton for overscheduling myself.
  • What has to happen in order for you to consider this course a success. Actually, very little. Even “just watching” provides a learning experience. And that is the bottom line – did I learn?
  • Random information about yourself – your work, your experience with networked technologies, etc. – Well, I guess a quick scan of this blog will give a fast hint. And the nickname, choconancy.