TPOL book and questions from Doc S.

1. What role did you play in this group and what would you point to as your particular contribution? What key elements do you feel others contributed?

I played a combination of roles – part cheerleader, part translator, part facilitator. I instigated the weekly TI meetings early (as soon as we had all picked the book), so that we could have a formal weekly time an place to discuss and reflect on what we read in a real-time group setting. I often found myself encouraging others in their contributions and also synthesizing the various contributions and then bringing them together into a common set of ideas. Finally, I helped bring our discussions, ideas, reading, and reflections together in to the final artifact, our website. Each member of our team made several significant contributions. Xing and Chris brought to the table the perspective of working in the “school” environment. This was extremely helpful for me, as occasionally my thinking and reflecting became a bit stuck in the corporate “training” world and I lost sight of other contexts where Communities of Learning can thrive and evolve. Bernard, Jim, and Kari, like me, work in a more corporate environment. Actually – Bernard is a bit of a mix, his work is within the environment of schools, but with the educators more than the students. He and Chris really helped me understand the difference between training (task-based learning) and education (knowledge-based learning). It was good to have dialogue with others who are facing some of the same challenges that I am. Bernard especially helped me to see a broader set of possibilities for Communities of Learning in the corporate world. I’m still frustrated by the lack of support I currently feel (in my own workplace) for instructional design that promotes CoLs and CoPs, but the work that Jim, Bernard, and Kari are doing has helped me see the possibilities. Just being part of this Cadre has also given me a visceral understanding of those possibilities.

2. If you were to do a project like this again, what would you do differently?

The Type A part of my psyche would like to come up with the artifact plan and presentation a bit sooner in the process and thus have more time to critique it within the group and possibly as for critiques from other groups. I would also have liked to have more interaction and dialogue with the other reading groups. I did “lurk” in their Bb discussions but was unsure of the etiquette for responding “out of turn.” I was so pleased and impressed when we were all asked by the Power of Mindful learning group to participate in their research. I wish we had thought of a way to include participation for other groups into our project as well.

3. What 2-3 key concepts did you learn from working on this project? (This can be a mix of elements from concepts you learned from the book to concepts you learned from working together as part of an online team.)

There were several of varying degrees. I began to form a clearer understanding of the difference between a Community of Learning and a Community of Practice. Members of a CoL generally fill some fairly well defined roles (teacher, student) and while students may sometimes perform instructor/teacher like actions, they are still primarily students or learners. Teachers do learn from their students, but they are the facilitator in the community, the first architect of it (although the learners take on this role as well), and ultimately the one who validates much of what is learned. In communities of practice, the roles of novice, practitioner, and expert are (I think) more mutable. A person in a CoP moves from the outside through the center and back out again… maybe several times. There is no constant center. Finally, in a CoL learning is the goal, while in a CoP the exchange of ideas and experiences associated with each individuals practice is the focus. Learning certainly takes place in a functioning CoP, but it is not the number one goal.

Another key concept I took away from this project, perhaps the most significant one for my own professional practice, was the distinction between “education” and “training.” Now, this seems obvious to me, but when I first started reading TPOL, I don’t think I’d really made that distinction in my own thinking. Task-based learning experiences can be very different from knowledge-based ones. Learning something simply so that you can perform a task can have a different focus from learning it to enhance your general knowledge. This was difficult for me, as I tend to just want to know things and worry about the application later. This distinction has caused me to question the purpose of some of the instructional design work I current do professionally. I wonder if we need to stop calling it training? If, perhaps, by calling it “training” we are limiting not only our selves (as the designers and developers) but also our audience (the ‘learners’). However – I also wonder if there are perhaps circumstances where “training” is the appropriate choice. I’m still asking the questions, I haven’t found the answers yet.