Blog 2 - Saturday, February 12, 2011

Hi everyone, below are my thoughts on the questions from this week's readings by Renninger & Shumar, Chapters 9 through 12.

Question 1: How do virtual communities impact individuals in information seeking and knowledge construction? What are the possibilities for learning and change in this case study? (Ch. 9)

In chapter 9 we see that virtual communities and in particular self-help communities have impacted knowledge seeking and construction through sharing and networking of individuals who are seeking information. It is not necessarily positive. Individuals are questioning authoritative data and relying on others who have experiential data and this might not be where they would find the best answers. However, it supports the social networking ability of internet connectedness to facilitate learning and sharing and empowers individuals to assess the data they receive and decide to take or leave it. It has also encouraged individuals to look more closely at what government and professionals are asking them to do or expecting them to follow instead of following them blindly without question. It shows that there is a huge potential to disseminate accurate information if instituted properly and make positive changes.

Question 2: How does technology support a knowledge-building community? (Ch. 12)

In chapter 12 the authors have taken a look at the different forms of knowledge building communities and embarked on building a knowledge building community that will support a collaboration of ideas and hopefully succeed. CILT is still in the process of being built but so far it appears that it will continue to grow and one reason why is because it provides networking information that will make knowledge building easier to access and disseminate among it users. This will make collaboration in learning and building learning communities more user friendly and hopefully help sustain this site.

Question 3: What are the specific implications that you can draw and apply to your specific context (e.g., your own online course in which you are an instructor) of building a virtual learning community? (Ch. 10)

The project would need to incorporate the needs of the community. This would require looking at the available resources and time and curriculum and whether or not a virtual community would actually benefit the users. But, if you were going to go to the trouble of building such a site it seems you would also want to incorporate some kind of system where information could be shared with new users even after the original users are done with the community. For instance, in nursing, a virtual community could include discussion of patient outcomes and experiences of students (leaving out the names to ensure confidentiality) and then store that information somewhere that could be accessed and used as discussion material for future students. It would also need to have open ended questions about patient care where students could collaborate and explore nursing interventions, experiences, etc. This would be very helpful as our book in various places and other learning theories point towards experiential learning as being perceived positively by students and also known to increase knowledge. It would also help assimilate acculturation of new students into the community of nursing as perceived by the nursing student. This would all precipitate professional growth and learning.

Question 4: What do you see as the possibilities of virtual communities for learning and change in a specific context, which may be your school, school district, college, institution, or organization, after reading all the chapters so far?

I see endless possibilities. I love the fact the people are forming communities that help provide learning and increase education. Education is power and individuals would be entitled to continued learning and growth if internet access and learning community access was distributed among everyone. In particular, I would love to utilize a virtual learning community like described above to help nursing students and all nurses to increase their knowledge and skills.

Renninger, K. A., Shumar, W. (2002). Building virtual communities learning and change in cyberspace. New York: Cambridge University Press