Flexibility, communities of practice, web 2.0

Technology and communication have been essential in the structuring of a flat world, new devices are constantly introduced to the market facilitating the communication around the world. Recently Apple IPhone was delivered to the market and a month later Google has announced its own phone with even more interesting capabilities and even free of charge services. The technology advancements that we are experiencing are reconfiguring the way we communicate locally and globally. These advancements are creating the conditions mentioned by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in wikinomics.

Being open, peering, sharing and acting globally describe the market of the wikis. Wikinomics describe the most important characteristics of the market and suggest the rules for successful platforms and business initiatives. We have arrived to this new wiki era primarily due to the new communication facilities.

If we are able to use one term to describe the wikinomic’s era, is flexibility and customization. Flexibility and customization are being noticed in almost any area of human endeavour –at least where technologies have implemented. Customers are able to choose among a myriad of products and even new technologies are involving the client in the process of design. Tapscott and Williams state “The new generation of digital citizens has the means of creation at their fingertips so that anything that involves information and culture is grist for the mill of self organized production”. (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, p. 285) Dell for example –and this is not an extreme example of the new trends, used the internet to allow the customers to choose and configure their computers. A trend that has been followed by other computer providers. Flexibility and customization is also influencing education. Open source education for example is creating extraordinary resources of content that might be used for individual purposes. Students might be able to assemble the courses that they want and fit their particular needs and interests.

Constructivism theories indicate that knowledge is assembled in individual’s brains, a theory that is congruent with flexibility and customization. The recognition that flexibility and customization will guide educational efforts will lead organizations to reconfigure their ways of teaching, the infrastructure they use, the services they provide, the way in which curriculums are restructured and delivered, and the technologies they will use to reach their students.

Flexibility constitute the most important element of the paradigm shift in education and understanding how it works will mark the difference between institutions that are going ahead and other that would lag behind.

Hill (2006) asks a question “How might we, the larger educational community, address the concerns raised by educators, learners and researchers in order to improve what we do in online learning environments?” (p. 188) and answer the question without dismissing traditional education but arguing in favor of a more flexible approach to learning. Hill in his article explores the key features of flexible learning and indicate that flexible learning environments include flexible delivery and flexible learning. Also indicate that flexible learning is the product of negotiating what, where, when, why, and how to learn.

Flexibility in Education involves flexible delivery and flexible learning (Hill, 2006). “Flexible delivery focuses on options regarding access for learners: the what, where, and when learning occurs. Flexible delivery is concerned primarily with managing and administering the provision of access, content, delivery style, logistics, and productivity (Smith, 2000; Taylor, 1998). In contrast, flexible learning focuses on options related to how learning occurs; that is, the learning process. The goal is to provide quality learning experiences through consideration of the learner’s personal characteristics, learning styles, work responsibilities, learning needs and desires, an personal circumstances (Nikolova & Collins, 1998; Nunan, George & McCausland, 2000; Smith, 2001)

Robert Barr and John Tagg sustain that a paradigm shift is taking hold in American higher education and see that a renovated mission is “not instruction but rather that of producing learning with every student by whatever means work best” (Barr & Tagg, 1995, p. 13)

Education and the instructional paradigm followed some of the paradigms of the industrial revolution, mass production and standardization. Schools were designed following the same thinking, the educational system designed as if students were empty vessels were knowledge and content could be poured. On the other hand, flexibility considers that learners are individual builders of knowledge –a constructivist approach.

In 1993 the Wingspread Group (1993) concluded:

“There is a growing body of knowledge about learning and the implications of that knowledge for teaching. What is known, however, is rarely applied by individual teachers, much less in concert by entire faculties. We know that teaching is more than lecturing. We know that active engagement in learning is more productive than passive listening. We know that experiential learning can be even more so. We know we should evaluate institutional performance against student outcomes. We know all of this but appear unable to act on it. It is time to explore the reason for our failure to act” (p. 14)

The Wingspread Group conclusion shows the effect of applying mass schooling following Taylorism ideas. Learning in fact goes beyond lecturing but consists of providing a learning meaningful experience. The role of teachers will gradually change from lecturing to facilitation of meaningful experiences.

In opposition to the instructional paradigm, the idea of flexibility might be introduced to facilitate the emergence of a learning paradigm seems to be a powerful concept. According to Hill (2006) the underlying principles of flexible delivery and flexible learning are: Learner centered instruction, facilitation of learning, and negotiation. In learner centered instruction learners make their own decisions or actively participate in the decisions made by their instructors. Facilitation of learning implies primarily a change in the teachers role to adopt a guiding role. And negotiation occurs when instructor and students discuss a learning contract and determine roles and responsibilities and ways of interaction.

Flexibility and customization act as the driver to facilitate the paradigm shift from teaching to learning. Barr and Tag (1995) indicate that “the very purpose of the Instruction Paradigm is to offer courses. In the learning paradigm, on the other hand, a college’s purpose is not to transfer knowledge but to create environments and experiences that brings students to discover and construct knowledge for themselves, to make students members of communities of learners that make discoveries and solve problems. The collegue aims, in fact to create a series of ever more powerful learning environments”

Robert B. Barr and John Tag in his article “A new paradigm for Undergraduate Education” analyze what they call a paradigm shift from teaching to learning. Barr and Tag differentiate the mission and purposes of the instruction paradigm and the learning paradigm in this way:

The learning paradigm in contrast to the instructional paradigm elicit students discovery and construction of knowledge in agreement with the theories of connectivism (Siemens, 2004), social constructivism (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Vygotsky, 1978), and communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1999),

The new paradigm is focused in producing learning and not only in delivering instruction, one of the most important elements of producing learning is clearly emphasized by “learning by doing”. Several instructional theories recognize the importance of creating the conditions were students are able to practice –“practice is always social practice” (Wenger p. 47). Lave and Wenger for instance introduce the concept of Legitimate Peripheral Participation and explain how newcomers learn by becoming legitimate participants in a community of practice. Newcomers learn by observing and by gradually engaging and participating in the community affairs. For Etienne Wenger, participation is a key element of learning, he says “participation here refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but o a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (Wenger, p. 4). Participation is also an essential element in Vygotsky’s zone or proximal development that sees social interaction as a key stone of human development. For Brown, Collins and Duguid, in their acclaimed model “cognitive apprenticeship” argues that participation is a key element of learning. Although these theories are well known they are not the only ones that manifest that participating in communities of practice is essential to produce learning. Wenger emphasizes “communities of practice are the prime context in which we can work out common sense (meaning) through mutual engagement” (p. 47)Learning is a product of community engagement and participation and can not be detached from the experience of living. Wenger explains that our perspectives of learning matters, and as well as Barr and Tag proclaims a paradigm shift starting by changing our ways of thinking about learning. “But perhaps more than learning itself, it is our conception of learning that needs urgent attention when we choose to meddle with it on the scale on which on which we do today”

We are experiencing a flexing point a paradigm shift that would affect our perceptions about education. One of the things that educational institutions should be concern about is that “something has changed” and we are traveling through out an inflection curve, an inflection point happens when the slope of a curve changes sign. For instance, going from negative to positive or viceversa. The concept of flexibility in education is the key element that is motivating a flexing point. Web 2.0 describes new powerful tools that are revoluzionazing how users interact with information on the internet and might be used to support flexible educational environments. Working with wikis, blogs, or social bookmarking for example stimulates participation and communities of practice. A central idea of web 2.0 tools is that people would collaborate and create virtual points of convergence, virtual spaces that serve as a meeting point for communities of practice. The reality is that web environments of these social networks are able to empower new ideas, peering, and sharing resources locally and globally. According to Kronski (2006) “community is the new consumption. With the emergence of new web 2.0 tools, the new Web 2.0 tools, the non-technical person has been given a major voice online”

For educators, the potential changes in the ways our teachers and students learn are momentous. The tools of the new internet give us opportunities or collaboration and for constructivist learning, and allow students to become meaningful contributors to the vast body of knowledge that is the [social] internet.(Richardson, 2006)

* We need more about the teacher/learner 

Communities of practice

Etienne Wenger, builds upon his previous work and in Comunities of practice provides the following premises to construct his Social theory of learning: 1) We are social beings, 2) Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises 3) Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises, 4) Our ability to experience the word as meaningful. Related to the idea of communities of practice,

We need to unlearn the idea that we are the sole content experts in the classroom, because we can now connect our kids to people who know far more than we do about the material we're teaching.

Barr, R. B., & Tagg, J. (1995). From Teaching to Learning: A new paradigm for Undergraduate Education. Change(November/December ), 13-25.

DiRamio, D., & Woverton, M. (2006). Integrating Learning Communities and Distance Education: Posibility or Pipedream? Innovative Higher Education, 31(2), 99-113.

Hill, J. R. (2006). Flexible Learning Environments: Leveraging the Affordances of Flexible Delivery and Flexible Learning. Innovative Higher Education, 31(3), 187-197.

Lewis, C. C., & Abdul-Hamid, H. (2006). Implementing Effective Online Teaching Practices: Voices of Exemplary Faculty. Innovative Higher Education, 31(2), 83-98.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms.: Corwin Press.

Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2006). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London: Portfolio.