This document discusses creating sustainable digital communities for learning. It provides principles for building communities, including making the community purposeful, engaged, connected, and about people. Structure is needed but also flexibility. Leadership is required and communities should bring members closer together rather than create separation. Examples of digital communities include communities of practice and collaborative models involving mentoring and digital environments. Questions are raised about community commitment and priorities competing with other work.

1. Creating sustainable digital
communities for students and
teachers
Dr Shirley Reushle
Associate Director
Australian Digital Futures Institute
University of Southern Queensland, Australia
shirley.reushle@usq.edu.au

2. What is a digital learning community?
Guiding principles for building and fostering
digital learning communities
Examples of digital learning communities
It's difficult to stay current and informed in a climate where
everything is changing (George Siemens)

3. A digital learning community is defined as a group of
people who come together in an online environment
to conduct focused and scholarly dialogue,
collaborate with their peers, share resources and
practices, and build and deepen knowledge and
expertise.

4. McLuhan, M. (1968). War and peace in the
global village. Bantam, NY.
“we live in a global village”
34 years later:
Ohler, J.B. (2010). Digital community, digital citizen. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Corwin.
“learners have two lives”

5. engaged
has
structure
requires
leadership
connected
PURPOSEFUL
about
PEOPLE
social

6. Do people feel sufficiently attached to the online
environment?
If so, which people and why?
At some level, leadership may fail if those who
are to be part of that digital community are not
in tune with the modality of interaction, even
while agreeing to its importance.

7. Do digital communities bring members
closer or, for those less experienced in the
digital environment, can the very tools
being used lead to a greater sense of
separation?

8. What is the “fit” between engaging in a
digital community and the learning to be a
member of that community (where learning
may be the sense of becoming adept at its
modes of operation)?

9. 3 Cases…

10. There are few
experiences as
powerful as
connecting with other
people who are united
by the need to work
collegially and to
resolve mutually
shared problems
ae-j's photostream
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0

11. Collaborative activity
+
Mentoring
+
Digital environments
+
Community of Practice
model….
=………………

12. Community of Practice theory
applied to the USQ Higher Education
context, with three elements
providing organising
structure 1 2
Community Domain
building knowledge
3
Sharing of practice
McDonald, J. (2010) adapted from Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13. A domain of knowledge that creates a common
ground and sense of common identity (builds
member capacity)
A community of people who care about the
domain and create the social fabric of learning
(grow a learning community)
A shared practice developed to become effective
in the domain (innovations noted and this saves
reinventing the wheel)

14. 1 2
Domain
Community knowledge
building
3 4
Sharing of practice A missing
link?

15. …the power of learning partnerships to
motivate and excite us in our work.
…the importance of flexibility and
adaptability …
…access to four mentors, rather than just
one adds to the breadth and depth of advice

16. …but…
I need more clarity of purpose and process in
the digital environment.
I found difficulty making the program a high
priority …Although I felt fully supported, I
was not fully committed… it's something I
want to do, can be fun, but gets put aside
because I have too much "real" work to be
getting on with…

17. Follow the Sun Learning Futures Festival

20. The combination of synchronous and
asynchronous features is considered to be
the ideal online conference format
(Murphy, A., & Reushle, S.E. (in press). Following the sun: Sustainable conferencing in a climate of change. ascilite conference, Wellington, New Zealand)

21. This was a truly collaborative endeavour. I was intrigued
by the 24-hour format and the calibre of hosts and
presenters. Excellent speakers and panels, who know
how to conduct themselves in synchronous
environments, and well trained moderators.
Enlightening and thought-provoking.
This has been extraordinary and probably the best single
experience in my 10 years in Higher Education. So
much breadth and depth and such a sense of
connectedness.

22. Candidate 1
Candidate 1
Co-supervisor 1
Co-supervisor 1
Candidate 1
Candidate 1
Candidate 1
Honeycomb model of collaborative PhD supervision

23. To sum up…

24. Put “community” at the heart…
Needs effective
leadership &
facilitation
Members are
It’s a
PEOPLE…
collaborative
process
Needs structure &
purpose, yet
flexibility & fluidity
…and should feel they are
part of something special

25. Questions

26. Creating sustainable digital communities for students and teachers
shirley.reushle@usq.edu.au
Australian Digital Futures Institute
University of Southern Queensland, Australia
This work is licensed under a
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Images sourced from
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