https://redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk/ssswills/weblog/2621.html
Last night I attended a CPsquare call on work undertaken by Karen Guldberg and Jenny Mackness in the area of: Learner Experiences in an on-line Community of Practice.
It is great to be able to talk to authors in an informal call on the work that they are doing and its application in other areas. They had undertaken a taken an interpretative phenomenological approach to their research, immersing themselves in the learner experience and taking an insider view, on the experience of participating in the CPsquare workshop on Communities of practice. They highlighted 6 areas that they recognised as themes in the responses:
- Emotion
- Connectivity
- Understanding norms
- Learning Tensions (Duality)
- Technology
- Identity
Many participants used emotive terms when expressing their feelings about the workshop, for example "fired up" or "frustrated", and I think this reflects the type of people who take the workshop.
We had a lot of discussion about Connectivity, I cited Shirky who I believe talks about the different levels of connection that people establish.
The issue of norms, was nicely summed up by John D. Smith who gave an example where everyone in a group had said (separately) they felt like an outsider, even the acknowledged expert.
Learning tensions for me was nicely summed up by the line between Action and Reflection.
We only briefly touched on Technology and had no time for discussing Identity. We will have to make another event to talk about Identity, because that is a topic that I think is of growing importance.
I think Karen and Jenny have done a great job with their work so far. They rose to the challenge of presenting late in the evening (many CPsquare events are late evening in Europe, so that most of the rest of the world are awake).
Keywords: RedGloo
