Can anyone recommend literature, concepts or ideas on cohesive factors binding students together in a Community of Learners? I am writing a series of articles on Communities of Learners. Now I am wondering what factors are important to turn a group of people into a learning end knowledge sharing community and make them feel. 'one'. Thanks in advance.
Shirley Brice Heath did research on Communities of learning as well as Victoria Purcell Gates.
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My brother leads two school bands in the two high schools he works for. As he teaches music, the curriculum at his school dictates he has to teach classical composers. He teaches in a middle-class school and in another school for underserved children.
One comment is that Colombian kids on the Colombian Caribbean could care less about European composers. They would be interested in their lives, but not in their music. He told me they got bored, and what have you.
He then decided to visit their neighborhoods and saw them in action with other kids. He discovered what they liked in their communities. He started teaching them using the songs they liked and he also talked about European composers.
In this way, his two bands became the best bands in Barranquilla, Colombia.
I would recommend Marlene Scardamalia's work in this area. A sample of her work is here:
http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Courses_Folder/ED%20261%20Papers/Scardamalia%20Knowledge%20Building.pdf
She has been conducting research on knowledge building referencing communities of learners for decades. I agree that Shirley Brice Heath is another seminal resource.
In the area of internet-based online learning much research has been conducted using the Community of Inquiry Framework. See
https://coi.athabascau.ca/
Hope that helps get things started...
https://coi.athabascau.ca/
http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Courses_Folder/ED%20261%20Papers/Scardamalia%20Knowledge%20Building.pdf
I recently taught an intensive course, with 150+ students. I found a good way to build a sense of community on the first day was to get the students doing group acitivities outside the classroom, then returning wih their 'findings'.
Our session was on situational crime prevention. Following a brief lecture outlining the theory and practice, I asked the students to walk around the city in small groups (of 3-4) and take 2 photos: one location with crime prevention features; and a place with features conducive to criminal activity. Each photo was accompanied by a comment of up to ten words, then posted on a facebook page set up for the course. After lunch we opened the facebook page in the lecture theatre and scrolled through the photos, discussing as a whole group some of the issues the images raised.
One person from each group also emailed me (the instructor) their photos and the names of the group members so they could be allocated a mark for this activity (complete/incomplete).
The activity seemed to function in a cohesion-generating and community-building way: a) because students were working together, with people they may or may not have known before; and b) because they were exploring a familiar environment in a new way. And it was fun!
Feel free to test this strategy out with your own students. I'd be interested to hear how else it might work.
Check out Chris Watkins' work. He has a book on Learning Communities, as well as several articles on the topic.
Here's an article of my own that may be useful. It was published in the proceedings of the IBEC conference of 2013.
@Bob, I implement collaborative learning among my students in college. On certain weekends, the weaker students are required to come to study in my cubicle. They are required to work together for about 3 hours, help one another, and then have some fun together.
Article Facilitating Cooperative Learning Among Matriculation Biology Students
Maybe this will help: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221906075_Teams_in_Virtual_Classes_an_Experiential_Perspective
Chapter Teams in Virtual Classes: an Experiential Perspective
For me an underestimated aspect is the lurking phenomenon - community are growing and before you become part of a community you will lurking - for sure :-)
maybe this helps: http://lamp.tu-graz.ac.at/~i203/ebner/publication/05_IEEE_Lurking.pdf
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