How to explain the usage of learning theories in a online community for adult learners and instructors?
Udemy Community is a online platform where teachers can become online instructors for an informal learning.
Cognitive apprenticeship and situated learning explained through the process of self-directed learning in a online community of practice where I am considered a novice teacher.
This is an engaging article for all online adult learners and instructors to understand learning theories throughout the following personal experience I had with Udemy Community of Instructors.
The objective of the present article is to understand how theories of learning are reflected in the online communities of practice. In order to elaborate this point clearly, I will integrate my own experience in a specific online community, try to understand how to practice my learning of the theories in this community. I will explain how much such communities can be beneficial for me, specifically as an adult learner and a teacher, and for adult learners in general.
The challenge in this study is to explain the shift of paradigm in students learning from Instructivist theory to a constructivist theory in online paid platforms where adult learners choose to pay for online individual courses than to attend classes in an institute.
In the same perspective of the paradigm shift, I will discuss how novice teachers learn from the community to explore new faces of online learning and cope with sophisticated technological tools and materials to dive in this field, and how much communities of practice are contributing in generating knowledge and methodology from experts. The theoretical framework will be focused on the different practice fields: cognitive apprenticeship and situated learning that I will explain through pictures taken from my community of practice where I am considered a novice teacher and will try to challenge myself to provide to my adult learners high quality online courses to become an expert in this field and engage my learners during their learning journey. The challenge comes from the fact that I must self-direct myself to learn the usage of the material and balance technology with my andragogical skills. I will highlight the principles of adult learning and include a process on how to develop my andragogical skills.
Our generation is going through different experiences where adults must change habits to learn and to coop with the new challenges in adult learning. This shift in learning has imposed to move from an instructional to a constructional learning. The learner has more responsibilities in constructivist environment where he can choose his learning process and create situations to build his knowledge. So, knowledge in constructivist theory is about the process (Black, McClintock, 1995) and how to achieve learning.
In communities of practice, adult learners experience this paradigm shift and can learn without feeling that they are learning. “Engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we get to know what we know and by which we become who we are” (Wenger, 1998). The learning environment is important at this stage to help demonstrate one’s experiences and practices in a certain community. To explain this point of view, I refer to Dewey (1916) who wrote “experience itself primarily consist of the active relations subsisting between a human being and his natural and social surroundings” (p. 274). Thus, within a community, we can interact and reflect on our knowledge with others through the action of learning.
To explore more on the process of learning in constructivist environment, I will discuss my own experience with Udemy. It is an application where you can sell and buy courses online. Udemy created a community to teach novice teachers several strategies and tips to provide quality learning to adult learners. I enrolled to this community for two specific objectives:
To understand what are the criteria and strategies used in online learning to engage the adult learners;
To explore how to restructure the learning process in e-learning environment.
Theoretical Review
This is a theoretical review that will be focused on the application of Udemy instructor community and the process of e-learning strategies to engage adult learners in a constructivist environment. During this study, I will refer to the theories of CoP using Udemy’s community of practice through under the titles of the REFLECTIONS. Each Reflection title will be referred to during my elaboration of the study.
Online learning is expanding to become a powerful tool for both educators and learners. It is now easier than before to find and enroll to any course of our choice according to our intersts. All we need is a server and motivation to accomplish our learning in an informal community. Wertsch (1998; 109) wrote “virtually all human action, be it on the individual or social interactional plane, is socioculturally situated”. Harasim (2012), wrote that learning in communities of practice is experimental, we learn by observing, by doing and by experiencing. (elaborated in REFLECTION-1). The transformation of knowledge from experiences to an artifact or a product is called reitification. That is what we learn to do in Udemy’s community. It is an important stage for any novice to gather his knowledge and experiences as a classroom teacher and transform them into an artifact, which is a complete course posted online.
Cognitive apprenticeship approach defines this stage where knowledge is transformed from expert to novice member. I found a beautiful expression about cognitive apprenticeship in Collins article (1991) where it is defined as a “Making Thinking Visible”. It is exactly what we need to see: the process starting from the final product and breaking it down to understand the several stages of how to conduct a quality course (Elaborated in REFLECTION-1)
During these stages, novice learners will face real-world problems and will need to have support from experienced members while conducting activities that relates to the problem-solving. Barb (1998) wrote that “these activities must be authentic. They must present most of the cognitive demands the learner would encounter in the “real world.”” In a community of practice, novice learners will face a lot of barriers during this stage. They will need the support of experts in order to guarantee their continuity (Elaborated in REFLECTION-2 and -3).
This continuity will form the historical element of the community. Experienced instructors are an important element in providing continuity to the community. As we all know, new members need motivation to keep using the community. If they loose interest they can quit at the first week. Having experienced instructors who can share knowledge is crutial in maintaining a historical heritage. Creating a common heritage of the community "through telling and retelling individuals do more than pass on knowledge". (Barb, 1998) they create a consistancy and a history for their community (Elaborated in REFLECTION-3).
REFLECTION 1 | Udemy’s training for Novice Instructors
Udemy is a community of practice that provides to the educators an approach for learning from each others and from experts how to build an online course. Udemy’s management requires from the instructor to provide quality courses to their learners (clients) in order to compete in the market with other online course providers.
The major benefit I could have from Udemy’s community is the training that Udemy provides to the new instructors. Here is a copy of my courses’ dashboard (figure 2) that Udemy provided in order to guide me as a novice instructor to build a quality course according to their standards.
REFLECTION 2 | Technical Support
New instructors need technical support in order to provide quality videos. In Udemy’s community, novices ask frequent questions about the best microphone to use or the kind of tablets they need to write on their screens. How to measure light in the room? How to reduce novices from a speech track? All these are information that anyone can spend a lot of time searching on the internet to get some useful details. In this platform, experienced teachers are providing useful answers from their own learning experience (Figure 3).
REFLECTION 3 | Quality Videos Can Fail!
Novice instructors can fail in attracting students to their videos. So, their quality videos can fail in sales and their well resourced course can fail in attracting new learners.
Experienced instructors can provide tips and tricks to raise the sales’ factor and improve the cost of the videos. They can explain why a video course is not getting much likes or why learners are dropping the course before they go further in it. We are not talking about experienced instructors only, but we have another bonus element to look after, which is an online professional and experienced instructor who have good sales too.
To sale your video fast, it means that you could engage your learners, attract new learners and provide the same content that other instructors are selling in a new way or in a different perspective that could cover different types of learners.
To do so, you will need more than a quality course, you need to go through the other courses that provide the same content and check them all in order to find out where you are going to focus your course on. Or how to engage learners to choose your course. Usually, online learners choose the newest information given, they like when the lesson is de-constructed then re-contructed. It means to give the course on steps and provide self-assemsnet at the end of each step, or to engage the learner in situated activities. So, an organized course can be more beneficial than a technical quality course.
REFLECTION 4 | Peer feedback
Feedback from peers is a collaborative and constructivist learning strategy that ensures a good outcome in learning. Peer feedback can help Udemy’s instructors to work collaboratively on a course. It helps novice instructors to learn by practicing and receive instant feedback from experts who reflect on the work and promote critical thinking. Over time, the novice instructors will show improvement in self-regulated learning, increase their motivation and learn how to focus on their educational goals and outcomes. This strategic action goes through several stages:
To establish learning goals;
To plan their learning;
To monitor their learning (to try it);
To reflect on their learning;
Then to come back again to the first point, and to establish their goals to measure learning.
It is now obvious for me that the criteria and strategies used for an online learning to engage the adult learners are much more related to:
The understanding of the learner’s individuality;
The learning that happens within a group of learners (novices and experts);
Teaching through research and providing the ability to understand tasks through practice or situations (I learned how to remove background sound when I needed to have quality sound in my course);
To restructure the learning process in e-learning constructivist environment, it is crucial to do the following;
Create authentic content allowing the learner to be opened on the newest information;
Give him the chance to learn on his pace and to understand through practice;
Give him control on technological tools by increasing his abilities; and
Monitor the activities by promoting logical content of assessments.
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