Defining Learning Communities

Introduction:

Our civilization composes a number of varied communities that serves and almost independent with each other. Some of these communities are industrial, others are social and some could classify as political communities. Our nation as a whole contained all these communities, which served as the oxygen and blood in building our nation.

Our economic stability depends primarily on the political society and next to them are the industrial and then social communities.

To cope up with the global competency of the outside world-communities; our local communities must further or enhance its knowledge and have a proficient skills in the era of technology.

In advancing the knowledge and skills of the people in the community, its people should learn more and advance scientific knowledge and should acquire the correct and fast or reliable information of advance technological availability in innovating high technology gadgets.

In doing this, community must learn and become learning communities!

Definition:

Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves. (Wikipedia)

Learning – is acquiring knowledge. (Webster)

Learning is the ability and capacity in utilizing and storing information and the brain’s response in storing important data.

Community-is a body of persons having common rights, interest and privileges. (Webster)

Community – is a group of people living in a particular local area; "the team is drawn from all parts of the community". (www.hyperdictionary.com)

Community – origin in Latin communitas, community, fellowship < communis, meaning common. (www.yourdictionary.com)

Community is a group of people forming society and interacts with each other. The basic for of the community is the FAMILY.

A learning community is a group of people who share common values and beliefs, are actively engaged in learning together from each other. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary approach to higher education. This is based on an advanced kind of educational or 'pedagogical' design. (Goodyear, P., De Laat, M., and Lally, V.)

Learning communities is the groups of people interacts and share with each other information. The community, which has the knowledge and skill in dealing with technology, is evidently a learning community.

History:

In the old era, learning community was greatly developed in ancient Greece by the famous philosophers namely Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. They emphasized that community must learn in order to become equip with the knowledge of Philosophy and Logic.

Wolff-Michael Roth and Lee Yew Jin suggest that until the early 1990s, and constant with (until then) dominant Piagetian constructivist and information processing paradigms in education, the individual was seen as the "unit of instruction" and the focus of study. Roth and Lee claim this as watershed period when, influenced by the work of Level and Lave and Etienne Wenger among others, researchers and practitioners switched to the idea that knowing and knowledge ability are better thought of as cultural practices that are exhibited by practitioners belonging to various communities which, following Lave and Wenger's early work, are often termed Communities of practice. (Wikipedia)

Roth and Lee claim that this led to forms of praxis (learning and teaching designs implemented in the classroom, and influenced by these ideas) in which students were encouraged to distribute their ways of doing mathematics, history, science, etc. with each other. In other words, that students take part in the construction of consensual domains, and "participate in the negotiation and institutionalization of ...meaning". In effect, they are participating in learning communities. Roth and Lee go on to analyze the contradictions inherent in this as a theoretically informed practice in education. (Wikipedia)

This analysis does not take account of the appearance of learning communities in the United States in the early 1980s. For example, The Evergreen State College, which is widely considered a pioneer in this area, established an intercollegiate learning community in 1984. In 1985, this same college established the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education, which focuses on mutual education approaches, including learning communities as one of its centerpieces. (Wikipedia)

Learning communities began to gain fame at other U.S. colleges and universities during the late 80s and throughout the 90s. The Washington Center's National Learning Commons Directory has over 250 learning community initiatives in colleges and universities throughout the nation.

Learning Community Model

School is an agent of change and the source of information. School teaches its curriculum as the fundamental law to be followed or attained so that he/she develop into knowledgeable and equip in the field of their expertise. Furthermore in the school also has its sub-communities that will met the needs of students in accomplishing his/her goals and developing his/her talents. Examples of these communities are the scholastic clubs (e.g. Mathematics society, Science club, etc.) in helping the students accomplish his/her goals and non-scholastic clubs (e.g. Drama circles, School choir, etc.) in motivating students improving his/her talents.

The school had three types of general learning structures; namely:

-Student Cohorts/Integrative Seminar

-Linked Courses/Course Clusters

-Coordinated Study

(Source: http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/lcfaq.htm#21)

Student Cohorts/Integrative Seminar – School should conduct not only the subject offered by its curriculum but also the norm or standard and the updated information that can assist in developing the knowledge and expertise of students.

Linked Courses/Course Clusters – Subjects in particular page must be linked with each other or have harmonization with each other.

Coordinated Study – the technique in which faculty members must involve in integrated program of study.

Significantly Tinto, V in his article “Learning Better Together: The Impact of Learning Communities on Student Success. In Promoting Student Success in College, Higher Education Monograph Series describe five basic nonresidential learning community models such as

- Linked courses

- Learning clusters

- Freshman interest groups

- Federated learning communities

- Coordinated studies

While residential learning communities, or living-learning programs, vary from theme-based halls on a college dormitory to degree-granting residential colleges. (http://livelearnstudy.net/)

Results and Conclusion of learning communities

The results of learning communities are the following:

-Development of knowledge and skills in primarily in the field of Science and Technology

-boosting of the factual information

-Global awareness

-High in Competency

-Strong in Commitments

-Economic stability

Learning communities offer more logical and factual prospects for teaching of literacy skills such as reading, writing, and speaking, and more consistent pathways for students to employ in the general education curriculum.

Learning community syllabuses address a diversity of societal issues such as the increasing destruction of information, student hostility toward participation and engagement and the financial problem primarily concern to the poor students. With an stress on getting and updating an information, teamwork, and empirical learning within the background of multiplicity, these syllabus uses address a decreasing sense of community and connection and allow students to relate their college-level learning to larger personal and global queries.

Reference:

Webster Dictionary

Goodyear, P., De Laat, M., and Lally, V.

Tinto, V

www.hyperdictionary.com

www.yourdictionary.com

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/lcfaq.htm#21)

http://livelearnstudy.net/)

Picture References:

http://blogs.dickinson.edu/learning-communities/

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=7022203