Varying Degrees of Learning Communities
According to Bielaczyc and Collins (1999): “The defining quality of a learning community is that there is a culture of learning in which everyone is involved in a collective effort of understanding. There are four characteristics that such a culture must have: (1) diversity of expertise among its members who are valued for their contributions and given support to develop, (2) a shared objective of continually advancing the collective knowledge and skills, (3) an emphasis on learning how to learn, and (4) mechanisms for sharing what is learned” (pg. 2).
There are varying degrees as to how the Virtual Field Trips (VFT) and Globe Program meet these four characteristics of a learning community, and, thus, how they can effectively be used in the classroom. I noted the relevance of the Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI) article (Erlwanger, 1973) to this lesson as this pivotal article regarding math demonstrated that such behaviourist programs are not effective. The self-directed nature of the students’ experience, lack of peer conversation, and lack of teacher knowing the student led to a great deal of misconceptions in Benny’s understanding of fractions even though he was considered the best math student. The lack of community was greatly apparent.
Tidepools – Undergrad Study
The main focus is on the undergrad Biology student developing “their own field notebook within the hypermedia package” (348) as they complete the tasks in the Tidepools VFT (which I could not find online for review). They could collect and annotate audio, text and visual data from within the VFT; however, there was no mechanism for sharing what was being learning or continually advancing the collective knowledge and skills. The expertise of university professors was implicit in the content and replaced the traditional lecture, but a dialogue with those with expertise was lacking.
Live Cams
The various scientific live cameras available online can be used as a VFT to allow students to see animals (SafariCam, Panda Cam and Hornby Eagle Cam) and geographical phenomenon (Panama Canal and South Pole) live and in real time. There is often an opportunity to email or submit a question to an expert who is valued for their expertise as scientists, but the potential for dialogue is fairly limited. Sometimes you can take a picture of what you are seeing live to collect your own images, but there isn’t a focus on sharing or collecting data in one location and sharing that collected data. They aren’t collective learning spaces, and there isn’t any instruction on what to do with that data – the learning of how to collect and analyze data. The teacher could create a class learning space that collects data over time and is kept for future classes to use as well; however, I’m somewhat at a loss as to what data they would be collecting or how to deal with the problem of the cameras going offline or the ‘real-time’ factor—meaning you can watch and not see anything at all. (The only cam where I saw something on the live feed was the Hornby Eagle, and it was reported that some Safari cams were offline due to power failures related to flooding issue.)
Website Adventures
Nova Online Adventures (Extreme Cave Diving and Deadly Ascent) and Field Trip Earth (FTE) (Elephant of Cameroon) are similar types of VFTs. They are focused on real-life activities of scientists and/or explorers, and there is expertise that can be gleaned from the experts involved; however, there is no interaction with those experts. They are not learning communities as they lack shared objectives to advance knowledge and skills; instead it’s a sharing of knowledge with excellent interactives available for related concepts, i.e. how to build an igloo or elevation sickness effects on the body flash objects. On FTE, students can submit questions to the scientist involved and the current updates on the projects are engaging. Although there are teacher guides available, they contain lists of activities/suggestions without really providing context as to how or why they would be good scientific inquiry activities. Thus, the students are not engaging in the activities of scientists. Finally, there isn’t any mechanism for sharing what is learning. In the VFTs discussed so far, the teacher could create the learning community and determine the learning objectives and tasks that are hands on inquiry; however, the final VFT I examined is an excellent learning community model.
GLOBE Program
The hands-on, inquiry-based GLOBE science and education program that involves teachers and students gathering scientific data in collaboration with scientists is a learning community, as “[a]n important part of the program is the active participation of scientists as research collaborators with the students” (Butler & MacGregor, 2003, pg. 9). Teachers are trained to take a variety of measurements and to properly use equipment which they then teach their students. The students are also valued for their accurate daily data collection. There are a variety of active programs within GLOBE: for example, individual classes could be contributing data to be used in a database, like the National Climate Data Center or one class could be working with a scientist to solve a local issue or problem. There is a real-world purpose of gathering data for meaningful analysis, for instance to monitor global climate change (pg. 17). The compiled data is accumulating and can be accessed for analysis by future classes and scientists, so there is a shared objective of continually advancing the collective knowledge. There is an emphasis on learning how to analyze the data like scientists, but there was noted a need for the “improvement of analytical skills needed to explain or make informed inferences based on these data” (pg. 18). This type of learning community could increase student interest in science and attract more students to science-based fields.
References:
Bielacyc, K. & Collins, A. (1999). Learning Communities in Classrooms: A Reconceptualization of Educational Practice. Instructional design theories and models, Vol. II. C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.): Mahwah, NJ.
Butler, D. M. & MacGregor, I. D. (2003). GLOBE: Science and Education. Journal of Geoscience Education, 51(1), 9-20.
Erlwanger, S. H. (1973). Benny’s conception of rules and answers in IPI mathematics. Journal of Children’s Mathematical Behaviour, 1(2), 7-26.
Spicer, J.I. & Stratford, J. (2001). Student perceptions of a virtual field trip to replace a real field trip. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 17, 345-354.