The Applied e-Teaching and Support qual that was developed at the College last year aspires to build a community approach to the learning process. We ran a pilot last year, with some success, althought we certainly learned a lot.
Here are a few blogs that have posted on this issue.
Mathemagenic Blog (Lilia Efimova)
blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/17.html#a805
blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/12.html#a794
Her references are to George Siemen’s comments in elearnspace on an “Ecology of learning“.
Lilia’s view is often not positive:
Why communities are not good? Communities are nightmares for novices: lack of clear roles or structures, overflow of information, discussions that you join in a middle, strange language…
Why courses are good? Good course instructors take into account learners needs and level of being (choosing to be) self-directed and provide guidance that makes our path through learning exciting and efficient. Courses provide context that makes us more ‘disciplined’ then we would be by ourselves: pushing to learn things we would never consider important, doing assignments to articulate silent ideas or connect loose ends, initiating brainstormings that should lead to some tangible results and not only random thoughts. Link