Forum Higher Ed & Training Forum: Re: Academic Communities of Practice

By: James Dalziel

[ Reply | Forward ]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the thoughts. Regarding the first point, my sense is that K-12 school educators think of themselves usually first as educators, then second as specialists in their disciplines; whereas in higher education, it is often the other way around (although noting that those working in e-learning and academic support in higher education often think of education as their discipline!). So although it may be hard to sustain general educational communities of practice with discipline experts in higher education, my sense is that there are still many others who could be hoped to participate. I think the Moodle community illustrates that online educators communities can work at scale.

A related issue is that when you look at the raw numbers of postings in online education communities, many of them are technical - this is true of Moodle, Sakai and LAMS. Is this just a natural outcome of the development needs, or is there more to this?

Regarding the second point, again my sense is that while this may be true of some, there are others who are happy to contribute for altruistic reasons. My sense is that the biggest limiting factor is time - every educator I know is so busy, it is hard to find time for "extra" tasks like participating in online communities.

As the education side of the LAMS Community has been somewhat quieter over the past month or two, I'm keen to hear any thoughts on his general issue, and whether there is anything we can do to foster further discussion.

Posted by James Dalziel