The importance of people... connecting!
New people arrive in your life and you learn to cherish them in all their diversity. Sometimes circumstances occur where you leave people behind but their impact stays with you forever. But during the challenges of recent months I've never been more sure how important people are to me.
That sounds bizarre, but I had always thought of myself as being inherently antisocial. As a mathematician I always reckoned that numbers were easy to deal with because they behave in predictable ways and don't argue back like people do. If an office party came up I would have other plans. If I was invited out for dinner I would suddenly and conveniently find myself double booked. Not because I didn't Iike going out but because I always felt like I didn't connect with others very well. I just felt awkward.
Then along came two special people who just accepted me for the awkward, peculiar, insecure creature that I was. No judgement, just acceptance. For that alone those two people (they know who they are) will always command a special place in my heart because that level of acceptance and kindness allowed me space to grow. To this day I'm still not sure if they realise what they did or the difference it made to me. But that real human connection, I came to treasure that.
And then Coronavirus struck and my new found social life was snatched from me at a rate of knots. That same antisocial creature from only a few months before suddenly found himself missing these people who had become so important to him. It was at that point I realised that people are hugely important to me. But not just any people, these specific ones. And that got me thinking...
We should be hugely important to each other. But the problem is that 2020 has been an ugly year. Quite aside from the physical separation brought about by covid-19, political agendas have brought to the surface issues that have been hugely divisive right at the time when society needs solidarity and kindness the most. I'm not saying these political issues shouldn't be addressed, but come on, timing people!! As Lauren Hug (2016) points out in her TED talk on Digital Kindness, sometimes the urge to lash out at people is powerful, but is quietness kinder? Does lashing out help to redress the wrongs in society or does it simply add to the anger and hate thats already circulating out there? Surely there are more productive ways to use our energy.
But more specifically, in terms of my own learning, being part of a community of teachers and social scientists and technology experts has been crucial to my learning journey through my MA degree. Studying during a pandemic is hard but I'm very lucky to live in the same household as a psychologist and a criminologist so I have people on hand who challenge and broaden my academic perspective through face to face conversations. There are learners, students at all ages and stages of development who need that supportive community of practice around them. But, sadly not all of them do. Despite knowing that the community of practice model is one of the corner stones of online and digital pedagogy, so few people have been able to do that and embody that sense of community between their students and we wonder why learner attrition rates are taking a nose dive. I love the example given by Professor Gilly Salmon (2014) where she likens the role of the online educator to that of the Sherpa who ropes the learners together before they begin their ascent. Common sense right!?
The very act of sharing, learning and growing together is a corner stone in the pedagogy of online learning. Those of you who are visiting this blog and leaving in comments shows the common interest or domain that Lavé and Wenger highlighting their community of practice model. I've been a distance learner with the Open University in the UK for almost 20 years now and one of the things I enjoy most is the online conversations, the ability to share and exchange thoughts and ideas with others in an online space is amazing! A community of practice is however about more than common interest though. Its about more than sharing too. Its also about changing our practice. Sharing only goes so far if it doesn't impact our learning and teaching practice.
So that leaves us with a question. If people need human connection to grow and develop (just like I did), what can we do in our learning and teaching practice to bring those learners who have precious few connections into the fold, into our online learning community? What can we do to prevent more learners from dropping out?
Let's talk. Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below. But most of all, let's change our practice.
References
Hug, L. M. (2016) The Power of Kindness in Our Digital World [Online]. Available at: https://youtu.be/_8fxEWsQy9s (Accessed 5th December 2020).
Salmon, G. (2014) Climbing the Learning Mountain [Online]. Available at: https://youtu.be/GbwJMKWFfbI (Accessed 5th December 2020).
Wenger, E. and Trainer, B. (2015) Inttoduction to communities of Practice [Online]. Available at: https://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ (Accessed 5th December 2020).
I am a social learner too, and love talking to others about my areas of interest. I do worry though, whether this clouds my judgement as to its value.
ReplyDeleteI know that not everyone learns in this way, many students do prefer to learn alone, and might even do better when learning alone.
At work (I am a learning designer) we are told to assume 1/3 of students will use the discussion forums. That's 2/3 not engaging at all.
We did surveys on our students on some of courses and most said they valued the readings, videos and private reflections but not collaborative tasks or forums. Though there are layers to unpick there- do some subjects lend themselves better to online collaboration? Are some better learned in a less discursive way? E.g. learning how to use and manipulate data or accountancy (I chose these as they require lots of practice to master).
As I type, I realise this is a massive gaping hole in my knowledge. I have learnt a lot about communities of practice, openness, conversational framework (Diana Laurillard), activity based learning etc etc... but not ever really properly looked into individualised learning... do students who do not join in do better or worse? Over how long? Why do they choose to study like that? Is it really a problem if they don't?I must look this up.
On my courses, I like to make sure there are plenty of good, well-planned opportunities for collaboration but try and make sure there is room for students to work alone if they prefer.
I am interested in your thoughts if you have more to add, I find this topic really interesting.
That's really interesting Vicky. When I was studying for my Maths degree I used to think that I would do better if I studied on my own. Don't get me wrong, I always did well in my exams but recently I've been reflecting on that time and thinking about how often I actually had conversations with other people - tutors, teachers, other students etc. I didn't always document it (largely because internet and online learning was still relatively new back then), but it did happen. Conversational Learning is a big part of face to face classroom practice. Maybe we just need to get better at facilitating it online?
DeleteNot engaging with discussion forums is fine too. But I would question how many people read the comments, but perhaps don't leave a reply? Legitimate peripheral participation?
did you ever look into vicarious learning on other MA ODE modules? I'll dig out the reading if not!
DeleteI've never come across the term "vicarious learning" before - would love to learn more!
DeleteWe did a bit on this for (the now defunct) H800 (it's now H880). John Seely Brown case based learning. I studied this back in 2016 and I was a different student back then (my notes are analogue) but I did a quick google and found an OU student's blog on it https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?user=35680&tag=vicarious+learning look at the post "personalisation"... there's a link to a webcast (that was part of our stufy materials) and then a link to the student's response to it. Really interesting.
DeleteAlso interesting, that I am really grateful to this student for writing this public blog (I found it using a google search) as I couldn't find my notes... another thing in favour of the blog's use as an edu tool... searching through blog posts of past students.
Linking onto this, I have found the blog posts stored for past students' h818 work (abstracts, posters and presentations) really really valuable.