Suchergebnisse

Use of the web today, particularly amongst young people, is now more social and participative. Collectively known as Web 2.0, freely available tools have emerged that facilitate communication, user-generated content and social connectivity. Facebook and MySpace have become the most popular forms of this kind of online activity and networks are formed around all kind of interest and issues whether they are political, educational, professional or hobbies. In a recent survey of 500 students, 80% claimed that they regularly use social networking tools to communicate with peers (JISC, 2008). This pervasive use of Web 2.0 technology for everyday interaction has yet to see its potential fully recognised and integrated into Higher Education pedagogy. Despite 73% of students using such tools to 'discuss coursework' and 75% of these students recognising their value for enhancing learning, only 25% were encouraged to use such social software by academic staff (JISC, 2008). This raises the question as to whether Web 2.0 technology can promote social learning within educational contexts and how this might be realised in practice. In a bid to harness this creativity, energy and sociability, the Academic Skills Tutors (ASTs) at the University of Huddersfield have been exploring Web 2.0 technologies to investigate how such tools might enhance teaching and learning. This paper introduces practical examples of social software tools; how these are currently used to foster learning communities and promote academic development. Three distinct social software tools are discussed (del.icio.us, PBwiki - now PBworks - and Ning), illustrating current use of these with students and their initial evaluation

Purpose
Although the number of higher education institutions adopting sustainability-focused faculty learning communities (FLCs) has grown, very few of these programs have published evaluation research. This paper aims to report findings from an evaluation of the University of Vermont's (UVM's) sustainability faculty fellows (SFF) program. It discusses how utilization-focused program evaluation is an important tool for developing and improving sustainability-focused FLCs. The SFF program aims to enhance sustainability education by bringing faculty members together to expand their knowledge of sustainability concepts and offer pedagogical support for integrating those concepts in higher education curricula.


Design/methodology/approach
A utilization-focused evaluation framework guided the evaluation's design and implementation. Multiple methods were used to collect evaluation data, including in-person interviews and an online survey with SFF program participants.


Findings
The evaluation's findings suggest that UVM's SFF program expanded faculty understanding of sustainability concepts, encouraged curricular and instructional reform and made progress toward developing a community of faculty interested in sustainability education. The evaluation's utilization focus was instrumental in providing useful information for improving the SFF program.


Originality/value
Evaluation findings expand what we know about the potential effectiveness of sustainability-focused FLCs, as well as challenges institutions might encounter when adopting such an approach to faculty development. Findings also point to ways in which utilization-focused evaluations can inform program development and improvement efforts.

This volume critically explores themes of belonging, learning and community, drawing on a range of research studies conducted with adult learners in formal and informal contexts and employing interdisciplinary theory from education, feminist theory, cultural studies and human geography. Dominant but simplistic and regulatory ideas and practices of learning community in higher education and lifelong learning are critiqued. Instead, Jocey Quinn argues that learners gain most benefit from creating their own symbolic communities and networks, which help to produce imagined social capital. A rich v

This article explores the findings from an action research project which tracked the evolution of The Executive Program (EP) (a pseudonym), a four-week open enrollment senior executive program at a major university in the United States. The decade-long journey grew from a program redesign initiative to a process of ongoing change through insider action research. Through the process the faculty director and collaborating faculty unexpectedly experienced an epistemological shift. The EP was transformed from a traditional 'teacher as expert' model with a focus on cognitive learning to a holistic learning community that emphasized broader participant involvement and a wider range of learning approaches. This article is the product of the authors' collaborative meaning-making through the lens of developmental action inquiry and adult learning theory.

In this paper, I describe our ongoing international project in engaged educational ethnography and participatory action research with young adults and consider its relevance for a discussion on the community-building role of adult education in a globalized context. I use the example of our case study to suggest that adult educators can generate viable communities by creating learning spaces that nurture critical consciousness, a sense of agency, participation and social solidarity among internationally and culturally diverse young adult learners. Furthermore, I argue that participation in international learning communities formed through this educational process can potentially help young adults become locally and globally engaged citizens. International learning communities for global citizenship thus present a proposition for conceptualizing the vital role of adult community education in supporting democratic global and local citizenship in a world defined in terms of cross-cultural and longdistance encounters in the formation of culture. (DIPF/Orig.)

From this push for non‐linear innovation has come a fragmented market of hardware, software, and services branded as, knowledge‐management solutions. Virtual knowledge networks provide a dynamic way of working relevant for the emergence of a post‐industrial economy. E‐learning is seen as a driver of knowledge creation across unstructured virtual communities. The paper considers the role of managed learning environments (MLEs) in the context of information‐intensive organisations operating in virtual markets (software, publishing, education, music, consultancy services plus many more), the relationship with knowledge creation across distributed networks, and finally strategies for building knowledge networks through the creation of e‐learning communities.

An initial curiosity around the variations and effectiveness of literacy coaching led to the extension of this research study, which explored the needs of adult learners in general as they existed and operated in their professional learning communities (PLCs). With a greater understanding of what adult learners sought from their learning communities, the research also established why certain adult learners pursued leadership positions, specifically was there a common profile of an adult learner who decided to lead PLCs instead of just participating. This study explored the functioning of the adult learners in their current PLCs and the perspectives of those learners as potential leaders at Westlake Middle School. Qualitative and quantitative methods of data were collected using two surveys and individual interviews. Results indicated that adult learners sought more democratic teams with more voice in the shared envisioning of the school. Structural constraints limited these two adult needs. Team trust and mutual respect were identified as areas for cultural improvements.

Drei Einzelfallanalysen in Norwegen, England und Deutschland präsentieren die Facettenbreite der Learning Communities, aus denen sich vier Grundvarianten ableiten lassen. Die Analysen basieren auf leitfadengestützten Experteninterviews, einer Fragebogenerhebung unter den Netzwerkmitgliedern sowie auf Kontextinterviews und umfassenden Recherchen vor Ort. Zudem werden sie international-vergleichend in Bezug gesetzt.
Die Ergebnisse zeigen, wie Idee und Verständnis des Lebenslangen Lernens in den theoretischen wie praktischen Ansätzen von Learning Communities deutlich werden und welche Konsequenzen damit verbunden sind.

This paper suggests a different way of theorising the concept of learning community as it relates to digital literacy, social capital and student engagement in Higher Education. Drawing on the work of Quinn (2005) and Rancière (1991, 2010) to examine texts created by students and staff in interviews and in their VLE, the normative discourses of learning community and student engagement are problematized and the role of digital literacy in group work analysed. The paper suggests the term Democratic Learning Community (DLC) as an alternative to the normative and consensus driven discourses of learning community and student engagement prevalent in higher education. DLCs recognise the presence of political subjectification, dissent and resistance that will contribute insight to those involved in teaching students using digital platforms in Higher Education.