Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Much of what we understand about the notion of online learning communities and how they develop, grow, and die away is based on examinations of formal online learning environments— primarily post-secondary courses managed by institutions of higher learning. As effective as formal environments may be, paying exclusive attention to them limits our understanding of the nature of social learning. Informal learning environments, by contrast, can tell us a great deal about how people learn together in natural settings, and can teach us a great deal about what happens when the authority for learning is entrusted to learners. This presentation considers what we have learned about learning communities in formal and informal online environments and speculates about what is at the heart of how learners make use of social interaction for the purpose of learning.
Richard is a professor of Educational Technology and Design at the University of Saskatchewan, where he is the principal investigator in the Virtual Learning Communities Research Laboratory (http://www.vlcresearch.ca). He has written and co-authored seven books and more than 150 research papers, articles, chapters and technical reports in the field of educational technology. His most recent book, Connections: Virtual Learning Communities, was released in June as a free e-book, the result of a process that was full of technical and creative challenges… and enormous fun.
Richard is a former President of the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada (AMTEC), and the former editor of the Canadian Journal of Educational Communication (now the Canadian Journal for Learning and Technology). In 2005, he was named a 3M National Teaching Fellow, the highest award for teaching in higher education in Canada. Currently, he is examining the role of instructional designers as agents of social change, cultural differences in the practice of instructional design, and leading a program of research on virtual communities in non-formal and informal learning environments.
