New Learning Communities

Technology, Collaboration and Democratic Practice

Overhead Transparancies

Roberta S Matthews, Vice President for Academic Affairs
Marymount College/ Tarrytown, New York

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Overhead Transparancy #1

A (Gentle) Reminder About Technology

"Technology is a tool....that in and of itself will not revolutionize education. It will not make people learn better. It may provide different channels of communication, equalize access to information, remove the learner from learning a particular subject at a particular time, but it will not do this on its own. These aspects involve fundamentally changing the educational system, not merely incorporating technology with the same styles, emphasis and materials. "Learner-centered" [education is an] exceptional idea and involves a lot more than the mere use of technology."

Chad Dubois, MIT,AAHESGIT

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Overhead Transparancy #2

A Brief Definition of Collaboration

The collaborative classroom "provides a social context in which students can experience and practice the kinds of conversation valued by college teachers" (Bruffee, 1984). Collaboration asserts that learning is a mutual endeavor undertaken by students and faculty; the process welcomes students into the academic community. The rubric of collaborative learning embraces various active learning approaches that value the voice and contributions of all participants.

Collaborative learning and cooperative learning share some core beliefs:

• teaching and learning is a shared process;

• teacher is primarily a facilitator rather than primarily a lecturer;

• social intercourse is the basis for enriching understanding and for creating knowledge;

• striving for consensus-building of various kinds in the face of diversity is central to learning.

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Overhead Transparancy #3

Key Characteristics of Learning of Learning Communities

• There is a purposeful restructuring of the curriculum.

• Students are enrolled in classes together; they travel as a cohort to larger classes, or are a self-contained learning group in two or more classes.

• There is usually a central theme or question around which the learning community program is focused, e.g. "The Paradox of Progress," "The American Character," "Molecule to Organism."

• Students are asked to build explicit connections between ideas and disciplines.

• Courses or programs are usually team-designed and in some models, are team-taught.

• Frequently, these elements are emphasized:
  • Student involvement and active learning, with discussions, seminars, workshops, and a great deal of writing;

  • Collaborative learning;

  • Student self-evaluation as well as more typical forms of student evalution.

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Overhead Transparancy #4

Technology and Learning Communities

Four Ways to Go (Not in order of preference or desirability):

I. Integrate technology into an already successful learning community;

II. Create a learning community and then integrate technology;

III. Begin with a chosen technology serving a particular purpose or with a particular content and create a learning community around it;

IV. Grow the learning community and the technology together

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Overhead Transparancy #5

Points To Ponder

1. What are the limitations and potentials of various computer conferencing software? What collaborative capabilities have been built in? Should be built in? Cannot be built in and must be compensated for by extra-technological, human collaborative approaches?

2. How can we use the principles of collaborative learning to compensate for products of the new technology that are, by design or by oversight, fragmented, potentially isolating, instantly gratifying and/or superficial?

3. How do we acknowledge and reward the time necessary for faculty, using the new technology, to create new, truly interactive collaborative models?

4. With regard to the social construction of knowledge using technologies: how? by whom? who has voice? how may we assure equitable communication and reflective practice? How will multiple conversations be facilitated? How will they be brought to closure/consensus? How will we re/define the epistemological issues at the center of our work?

5. How do we organize ourselves as practitioners to share our experiences, learn how to combine collaborative approaches with the new technology, disseminate such models, adapt them to new situations, disciplines, combinations of technologies and ultimately accumulate a critical mass of good practice that will validate new approaches?

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