Online CoP Impact on Learning
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Presentation of a research study on the impact of online interaction on student learning National Tertiary Learning and Teaching Conference (NTLT) 2016
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Online CoP Impact on Learning
- 1. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Creating learning connections via an online community of practice: a case study Darcy Vo- The Mind Lab by Unitec Presentation from National Learning and Teaching Conference 2016
- 2. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Outline ● Background of the study ● Methods ● Results ● Discussion and Conclusion
- 3. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Background of the study Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice Communities of Practice Joint enterprise
- 4. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Online Communities of Practice deepen knowledge creating new understanding ( Wang, 2010; Tseng & Kuo, 2014; Hou,2015; McLoughlin & Lee, 2010) Online communities of Practice Joint enterprise
- 5. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Mutual Engagement Communities of Practice Joint enterprise
- 6. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Research aim To investigate learner’s perceptions of the impact of an online CoP participant learning Mutual engagement Learner-learner online interactions
- 7. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Research questions Overarching question What is the impact of the online community of practice on participant learning? Sub questions ● What is the impact of the online interactions on participant learning? ● What are the barriers to the online interactions? ● How likely will the participants continue the online interaction in an online community of practice?
- 8. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 ● Background context ● Participants ● Methods Methods
- 9. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 ● DCL postgraduate program dedicated to enhancing digital literacy capability and the implementation of contemporary practice in the teaching profession. The Mind Lab Context
- 10. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Participants ● Student cohorts from 4 intakes (full time teaching, part-time study) ● All enrolled students join their relevant community (TML G+)
- 11. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Methods An electronic survey questionnaire Exclusion criteria ● Disagreeing to proceed ● No to any of the three elements Total responses after exclusion are 103. TML G+ Domain(s) of interest
- 12. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Results The online community of practice ● Domain(s) of interest ● Interact online in any way ● Utilise shared resources
- 13. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Impacts on Learning ● Positive for most questions ● Responses to negative phrased question is consistent with others ● The highest positive responses related to concepts
- 14. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Impacts on Learning Some comments “Shares ideas of practice in different levels I don't teach” “Being kept up to date on latest research” “Exposed to new ideas” “It takes me directions I wouldn't have thought of otherwise”
- 15. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Barriers to Online Interaction ● The most significant barrier was feeling uncomfortable interacting online ● G+ platform also has created some issues
- 16. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Barriers to Online Interaction Uncomfortable to interact online “I am worried about looking stupid in some of the things I would say because I have so little knowledge of all this” “Feel too shy to post mostly” “I find it hard to share as I am not use to to putting my ideas out in a forum that everyone can comment on. It has taken a bit of courage to put myself out there”
- 17. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Barriers to Online Interaction Issues with G+ “It’s not user friendly, too hard to re-locate posts on G+ too busy, too jumpy when scrolling” “I think the quantity of posting that came through was huge and it is important to filter what would be relevant and what would not” “Some people post so often that the comments/posts of others are easily lost or go unnoticed”
- 18. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Sustained engagement High percentage of respondents are likely or very likely to extend their social exchanges on other online communities
- 19. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Discussion ● Positive impacts on participant learning, especially in relation to concepts ● Considerations for online course designers: - Preparing for learners to participate online - Address the issues of the platform
- 20. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Limitation of the study ● lack of triangulation of methods. ● based on student perceptions ● focused on only one of the three dimensions of a community of practice.
- 21. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Future directions ● Study all three elements of an online CoP on participant learning ● Collect data from different resources ● Robust tools to measure the impact
- 22. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Reference Hou, H.(2015). What makes an online community of practice work? A situated study of Chinese student teachers’ perceptions of online professional.Teaching and Teacher Education,46, 6-16. McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. W. (2010). Developing an online community to promote engagement and professional learning for pre-service teachers using social software tools. Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 12(1), 17. Moore, M. G. (1989). Editorial: Three types of interaction. American Journal of Distance Education,3 (2), 1–7.
- 23. The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016The Mind Lab by Unitec | 2016 Tseng, F. C., & Kuo, F. Y. (2014). A study of social participation and knowledge sharing in the teachers’ online professional community of practice. Computers and Education, 72, 37–47. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.10.005 Wang, L. (2010). Integrating communities of practice in e-portfolio assessment: Effects and experiences of mutual assessment in an online course. Internet and Higher Education, 13(4), 267–271. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2010.07.002 Wenger, E.(1998).Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems.Organization,7(2), 225-246.
Editor's Notes
- Our background theory is based on Wenger’s (1998) concept of “community of practice”.A community of practice is characterised by three key elements: a joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. A community of practice is a dynamic entity so when online interactive platforms emerged the concept evolves to include the online communities of practice.
- Online community of practice provide an alternative space for like-minded professionals to engage, without the limitation of requiring physical presence with the virtual interaction and learning. Research has shown that online communities of practice offer learners a range of benefits, including deepening learners’ knowledge and creating new understandings
- In this research we are not going to look at all three elements of the community of practice, but rather focus one of them, the mutual engagement. Wenger stresses that one of the key ingredients of a successful CoP is the quality of mutual engagement (Wenger, 2000). Mutual engagement is the interactions the members of a CoP undertake, specifically through the exchange process whereby the members share knowledge and support each other (Wenger, 2000; McLoughlin & Lee, 2010). In online learning, Moore (1989) distinguished three types of interaction: learner–content, learner–instructor and learner–learners. And this is the focus of our study, the learner-learner online interaction. Learner–learner interaction is communication between students, in pairs or groups, with or without an instructor present (Moore, 1989).
- In this study, the authors aim to investigate learner’s perceptions of the impact of an online CoP with a focus on one of the three elements of CoP, the mutual engagement or in particular the online interactions within the CoP on their learning.
- The Digital and Collaborative Learning postgraduate programme of The Mind Lab by Unitec dedicated to enhancing digital literacy competencies and the implementation of contemporary practice in the teaching profession. Over the period of 32 weeks, the program cover 4 courses. The first 2 courses consists of face-to-face classes while the second half is delivered mainly online. To foster learning experiences and sustain the social interaction of the participants, a Google+ community has been created for each cohort.
- Participants of this study are students in the postgraduate program from 4 intakes. They are full -time teachers studying part time and are from different teaching disciplines, working with different student age groups, and from different regions of New Zealand. All enrolled students are invited to join their relevant community (we will refer to these communities as TML G+ in the rest in this presentation).
- An electronic survey was sent out to the participants. Since a community of practice requires three dimensions, the survey questions were devised to ask the learners if they identified any domain of interest within TML G+ (joint enterprise), if they interacted in TML G+ in any way (mutual engagement) and if they used the shared resources of TML G+ (shared repertoire). Exclusion criteria were applied to responses that did not identify and domain of interest within TML G+, or reported no interaction in TML G+ in any way, or reported no usage of the shared resources in TML G+. The total number of responses after the exclusions was 103, about 10% of the total number of the students from these four cohorts.
- In terms of the domain of interest, understandably the data shows the highest response was from the combined domain that included one’s specialist areas of practice such as early childhood education or primary education, together with Digital and Collaborative Learning, which is the theme of the programme itself. For example, 24.3% combined primary and DCL Regarding mutual engagement, a majority of learners chose to interact with others on TML+G by reading and commenting on other people’s posts (95.2%) or replied to other comments (97.1%) once a week or more, while only 32.4% shared their assessment work. When asked about their use of shared repertoire, the responses indicate that teachers utilised different types of shared resources. More than 60%of the respondents utilised at least two types of resources such as using educational tools, using teaching techniques/ideas or using images/videos shared by their fellow students in the program.
- In this section of the survey, the participants were asked about their learning with regard to introducing new concepts and concept expansion; assessment clarification and motivation; challenging assumptions and introducing new perspectives. The last question was phrased from a negative perspective as one measure of the reliability of the responses (other questions were phrased from a positive perspective). The graph shows positive responses for most questions. For example, 65% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that online interactions helped them in clarifying the assessment requirements, while only 13.6% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 69% agreed /strongly agreed that online interactions encouraged them to work on the assessments, with 14.5% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. This result is in accordance with other studies, which credit such social discussions with helping learners to share the challenges they face, and express support and encouragement for other students (Stepich & Ertmer, 2003), while this in turn enhances learning (Baab, 2004; Conrad, 2005). In online learning environment, assessment-related issues can impact greatly on participant learning. The participants in this postgraduate programme are often under pressure from full time work and part time study, which can lead to demotivation and frustration. Therefore, peer support in terms of assessment clarification and encouragement is really beneficial for the participants. Being in the profession for a long time can develop one’s expertise but may also simply reinforce one’s existing perspectives, which can lead to a building up of assumptions about other people and situations. Therefore, one of the questions in the survey looked at learning in terms of whether social interactions in the online environment help to challenge any long standing assumptions that teachers might have. When asked this question, 66% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that this interaction helps them to challenge their own assumptions. The value of another person’s perspective is one of the key learning components in constructivist learning theories (Anderson, 2003). The percentage of respondents who agreed/strongly agreed that online interactions provide a different perspective about their teaching practice was 72.8%, while only 7.8% disagreed/strongly disagreed. The last item in the questionnaire related to impacts of online interaction on learning. To ensure respondents’ opinions were reliable, a negatively phrased question was used. With 72% responses disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that online interactions do not enhance learning, this result is quite consistent with earlier responses. The highest positive responses related to concepts with 79.6% (introducing new concepts) and 74.8% extending concepts. This result reflects Lave’s (1991) social learning theory, in which she argues that learning occurs in social contexts and is achieved through interaction among practitioners. Knowledge is acquired when members of the community share interesting information and resources to introduce new concepts or extend existing ones.
- These are some of the qualitative data to illustrate the impact the online interaction on introducing and extending concepts
- Previous research shows that one of the factors that affects online interaction is time constraints (Ma, 2014; Vonderwell & Zachariah, 2005) so we expect this to be the biggest problem for online interaction. Interestingly, the results from our survey shows that only around one third (34.9%) of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that online interaction is time consuming. A similar number of participants disagreed/strongly disagreed with this statement (35%). The strongest barrier to online interaction, according to the respondents, is feeling uncomfortable interacting online (48.5% agreed/strongly agreed). Some explanations can be that some of the participants in this program may lack the confidence of engaging in open dialogues on TML G+, especially those who have limited experience with virtual interaction environments. If combining the two items: difficult to navigate and technical issues with posting on G+, then 36% consider issue that hinders interaction is G+ platform. Options for organising posts in G+ are relatively limited, especially when the learners are not granted the moderator’s rights to create a personalised category to filter the posts in the community. 68.9% of the participants disagreed, and 67% strongly disagreed with the statement that a barrier to online interactions is that it is not relevant to assessments and practice, with only 4.9% and 7.8% agreeing and strongly agreeing respectively. This result reflects some of the findings described above, in which the learners believe that online interaction helps them in their assessment and learning.
- Some of the responses to the open-ended question “if you can identify any other barriers to your online interactions, please indicate these below” have revealed how they feared they would be judged by others on TML G+, as illustrated by the following comments:
- Here are some respondents comments on issues with G+
- Creating TML G+ communities and encouraging the participants to join the online dialogue is just a first step towards a continuing lifelong learning journey. We hope that student online interactions continue to thrive even after the participants complete the programme. Therefore, we were interested to ask about the likelihood of the teachers intending to continue interact within TML G+ and other online communities. There is a high percentage of 84.5% saying that they are likely or very likely to extend their social exchanges on other online communities. This is positive in the sense that participants may realise the important and helpful role of online interaction in their professional learning. It is also understandable that teachers prefer to select any community that is more relevant and suitable to their specific needs and contexts.
- The findings show that learners attributed positive impacts on their learning to the online interaction. Areas of learning include assessments, motivation, concept introduction and expansion, challenging assumptions and giving new perspectives. These results are consistent with previous studies and in line with the theorem proposed by Anderson (2003) Participants in this study were education practitioners with a range of years of experience and disciplines. Being involved the online CoPs with a shared learning goal has encouraged the participants to share ideas and support for their fellow educators in the course of their study. Collegial support is of great importance for those time-poor professionals who can be overwhelmed with the workload of study alongside full-time work. This research also identifies barriers to the online interaction with social reticence considered the most problematic for learners’ online participation.This requires course designers’ attention in developing learner confidence to socially engage in the online space and equipping learners with necessary skills to participate online.
- There are some limitations in this study, including a lack of triangulation of methods. It should also be acknowledged that the findings are based on student perceptions rather than actual observation of student learning outcomes. Our conclusions in terms of impact of an online CoP on learning should be considered with caution because the survey only focused on one of the three dimensions of a community of practice.
- It would be more thorough if this study had investigated the correlation of all three elements of a CoP on participant learning. Future studies might usefully collect data from different resources such as focus group interviews, observation of online interactions and robust tools to measure the impact on participants’ learning performance.