designing a COP

This final posting in my CI 597 synthesis is the most important in my opinion.  The course readings and  discussions were great starting points for discussing Web 2.0 technologies.  Cole and Scott allowed us to form  opinions and discuss and negotiate our meaning with our peers.  But, how will we transfer this new knowledge to the creation of our own online learning environments, communities, and lesson plans?  What we may not realize is that we have already started to transfer this knowledge.  In our group projects in class, every group designed a module of instruction around a Web 2.0 technology that incorporated the ideas of community and identity.  For instance, our TeamTweet group designed our instruction with identity having two roles.  Our instruction incorporated everyone’s in-person identity and also online identity in Twitter. 

How do we get started in design as we move past this semester?  Wenger provides a starting point in the last two Chapters of his book, Communities of Practice.  Wenger discusses four dimensions of instructional design: participation vs. reification, designed vs. emergent, local vs. global, and identification vs. negotiability.  These dimensions task the designer with answering the following questions: How much reification is appropriate and necessary in learning?  How can we minimize teaching and maximize learning?  How can we link educational experiences to real world experiences and other content areas? How is success and failure negotiated in the design?  I discuss these ideas in a posting from April 15, 2008 entitled “Designing Learning vs. Designing for Learning.”   The main argument that Wenger states and I reiterate is that “learning cannot be designed, it can only be designed for”  (Wenger 1998).

We must design environments and lesson plans that facilitate (i.e. allow for) learning to occur.  We do this by creating environments where participants feel like they are part of a Community of Practice.  They can experience, do, belong, and become.  They can negotiate, develop, and share theories and ways of understanding the world.  This is accomplished through mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire.  In creating our environment and lesson plans, we must allow for collaboration and group work, discussion, and shared goals.  By providing collaboration and group work, we are facilitating social interaction and identity creation.

For anyone that is relatively new at instructional design, it is important to start with design models.  One design model that I use is Bielaczyc and Collins’ learning community framework.  The framework requires community growth, emergent goals, articulation-of-goals, metacognitive activity, respect for others, fail safe measures, structural dependence, depth over breadth, diverse expertise, multiple ways to participate, sharing, negotiation and a good quality of products.  More on this can be found in a previous post from February 4, 2008. 

The take-home point from all my posts regarding CI 597 is the following.  In instruction, you must constantly look at community, identity, and design.  Even with new Web 2.0 technologies, you still must go back to community, identity, and design.  By accommodating for all three, you WILL design for learning and WILL create environments that allow for learning to occur.

Thank you for reading my posts this semester!