Building the DISCUSS community Group

I totally agree, there is no "one way" !

hi George, thanks for sharing your ideas. I think that everybody can agree, that learning from others' experience in the course of mobility actions can be of great value, and it seems even more promising if we can connect it to existing European traditions like the "journeyman". However, I also guess that there can be no one-best-strategy to transfer innovations. Education and training are dynamic and open systems. They function in context, such as local traditions, learning cultures, institutional setups and belief systems. Thus, a solution found in one place might remain rather meaningless in another, and innovative solutions might be mainstream elsewhere. At best the effectiveness and impact of a practice can explained by its fitness for purpose, whether this be the achievement of a strategic goal or a solution to a problem, its compliance with the local context, practices and routines in place, and the local conventions determining the “value” of a certain practice. Taking these...

Dear Randolph and Brian, happy to join your conversation. I hope I can bring my small contribution. You say that « beneficiaries, such as local learner communities or educational institutions usually do not have the capacities to identify, critically analyse and develop the mechanisms required to successfully adopt innovations ». This is right, but our experience shows that knowledge exchange and transfer of innovation should go viral through physical encounters ! We were very surprised by seeing how spontaneously Ecett trainees bring innovations back from their internships abroad. This is a result of the personalized matching between the trainee and the experts but also of the « journeyman learning philosophy». To me, the biggest obstacle for transfer of innovations is bridging the gap between hearing or reading (theoretically) about someone else innovation and being involved in a global and integrated learning situation, which means : I hear, I see, I ask, I hear other colleagues...

Building the DISCUSS community

Ideas and suggestions towards building the DISCUSS Community of Practice

www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-p…

Reflections on Communities of Practice | Audio series by Chahira Nouira.

Reflections on Communities of Practice: The audio series Reflections on Communities of Practice is an audio series created to bring together experts in the EdTech and Lifelong Learning field in general. This initiative… www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-practice-3/item/259-reflections-on-communities-of-practice-the-audio-series.html

New in the library: 'Communities of practice as stimulating forces for collective learning'. The purpose of this research publication is to get a clear view on how we can judge groups in relation to the characteristics of a community of practice (CoP), and the presence of collective learning in these groups.

www.discuss-community.eu/library/communities-of-pr…

Georgiana Giba

www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-p…

Webinar "(Virtual) Communities of practice for lifelong learning - Approaches, success stories and challenges" Communities of practice are learning partnerships and offer opportunities for professional development; members share information, resources, learning from each other's experience and create new knowledge… www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-practice-3/item/234-webinar-virtual-communities-of-practice-for-lifelong-learning-approaches-success-stories-and-challenges.html

Georgiana Giba and Imloul Ylo

The EACEA just published the results of the EPALE call, according to which the European EPALE platform for the next 2 years will receive 5.5. million Euro funding. Wow! Big money going into Lifelong Learning

Paul

Had a 3hrs skype conference with Chahira Nouira in the afternoon. During the session we also did a follow up of the Munich conference. A bit exhausted now, but will try to wrap up things later in the evening and share our thoughts with you.

Paul and petra kleine

Paul Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback. 8 years ago

Randolph Seems yesterday I was too ambitious. When trying to wrap things up, I realized that it will take another few hours to bring our "tacit" knowledge in a somewhat coherent structure. So, please be patient with us 8 years ago

Expanding the notion of communities of practice | Findings...

Dear all, last Friday Brian Dillon and I discussed a range of options towards developing our community further. As a result of this discussion, we concluded that complementary to reflection and spreading of project results, we should also have a closer look at the transfer of project outcomes into educational and social practice. Findings from recent K4 projects show that European projects often start from the implicit assumption that good products and dissemination strategies are decisive for the impact of projects, and once these factors are given they become fast-selling items: "Look what great things we have produced, don’t you want to try them out?” However, there is little evidence for this really happening. As a matter of fact, the bulk of products developed in European products never makes its way to the world of education and learning, and their "impact" remains limited to a small number of partners or experts associated with the partnership. The KA4 project Xploit recently...

Building the DISCUSS community

www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-p…

Stimulating communities of practice in lifelong learning: the local dimension Prof. Norman Longworth in this blog entry presents three case studies of communities of practice, all of which have developed from local and regional initiatives… www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-practice-3/item/187-stimulating-communities-of-practice-in-lifelong-learning-the-local-dimension.html

Just preparing a new blog entry on the local dimension of communities of practice. Thanks to Norman for sharing his invaluable expertise with us.

Prof. Norman Longworth in this blog entry presents three case studies of communities of practice, all of which have developed from local and regional initiatives on lifelong learning around the world. In his understanding a community of practice is a group of people which learns how to improve its knowledge, its behaviour and its influence as a result of interaction between each other and with other groups. The case studies make evident that successful communities of practice promote 5 basic ideas: a strong belief that the actions taken will be of benefit to all communities, the participation of many people in their development, clever leadership that persuades rather than directs, a common sense of purpose with a community ethic and a willingness to learn from experience and to keep on learning.

Stay tuned ...

Michael Excellent - and as you know i have been approaching other to contribute. Soon we will have inputs from Peter Kearns and Leone Wheeler in Australia, Jean Preece from Wales and Denis Barret from Ireland. I have yet to hear back from Ron Faris in Canada. I produced two sets of guidelines for each of two groups of 3 people and it is will be interesting to see how they respond. Once we see their contributions I will work on extending the invitation to contribute more widely. 9 years ago

Randolph Dear Mike, this sounds fantastic! Thanks a million for your support and linking all these great poeple with our community. 9 years ago

www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-p…

How Communities of Practice change our practices and help us to create impact | Talking to Ana Raducanu, community host of RestartEDU Interview with Ana Raducanu, host community for RestartEDU Romania (Community of Practice on Transforming Education in Romania). The interview was conducted by Magda Balica in… www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-practice-3/item/186-community-of-practice-on-transforming-education-in-romania-interview-with-ana-raducanu-community-host-of-restartedu.html

Georgiana Giba and Ana Răducanu

www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-p…

The Art of Building Communities of Practice in Lifelong Learning | Interview with Dr. Cristina Costa In this article we present an interview with community activist Dr. Cristina Costa, who is a lecturer in Lifelong Learning (Technology Enhanced Learning) in the… www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-practice-3/item/185-the-art-of-building-communities-of-practice-in-lifelong-learning.html

www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-p…

European Communities of Practice - A View from Inside | Interview with Graham Attwell DISCUSS only recently conducted a series of interviews with European project actors engaged in Communities of Practice. In this article we present an interview with… www.discuss-community.eu/building-communities-of-practice-3/item/182-european-communities-of-practice-a-view-from-inside-interview-with-graham-attwell.html

10 Social Psychology Hacks To Drive Higher...

This is a short video we created to highlight some of the incredibly simple hacks you can use to get more people participating in your online community.

Can a mentoring plan help retention in online communities? Our project, Common Spaces (www.discuss-community.eu/developing-basic-skills-a…) foresees the creation of a VCoP with a varied provision of e-mentoring plans for the various sub-communities, based on their specific needs (professional, academic, special needs such as disadvantaged groups, etc.). Do you have any experience in the use of e-mentoring programs in VCoPs? Do you believe they work?

www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring101/truluck10…

Establishing a Mentoring Plan for Improving Retention in Online Graduate Degree Programs As online distance education courses continue to increase in popularity for graduate programs it is becoming evident that retention issues are much greater in this… www.westga.edu/

Dear Andrea Spila,

Thomas Fischer suggested to include the "CommonSpaces" project in our project section. If you want I can prepare a short presentation based on the welcome text found on your website.

Best
Randolph

Georgiana Giba

Show previous comments (1)

Randolph Ok, will do. Have a nice weekend 9 years ago

Randolph Done!

www.discuss-community.eu/developing-basic-skills-a…

If you want to add / change something, just go to the article. In the upper left corner you will see an edit button.

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CommonS - Common Spaces for Collaborative Learning

The CommonS (Common Spaces for collaborative learning) project aims at the development of Common Spaces, an international co-learning and e-mentoring...

9 years ago

Andrea Spila Thank you Randolph! I'm available to answer any questions from fellow members here on DISCUSS. Have a great day 9 years ago

Great online meeting! Thanks to all participants for highly valuable contributions. Have a nice weekend

Georgiana Giba

Andrea Spila It was a pleasure to meet you all. Looking forward to developing a partnership of
mutual benefit for our projects! 9 years ago

I would like to comment on the ambiguity in the title of our project. I made the same experience as Randolph when I discussed with the participants of the EDEN Annual Conference about to DISCUSS. They understood first that we are working on CoPs in general and not on CopS FOR Lifelong Learning.

Randolph From my recent conversation with Chahira Nouira I learned that we could capitalize on both subjects. Although I think it's a good idea to emphasize lifelong learning as the major domain, this does not necessarily count out discussions around the effective building of communities of practice. 9 years ago

Georgiana Giba Any decision related to this topic should be made asap. We will produce the video very soon. I think DISCUSS can be build as a brand itself, known by the people in our direct network and then extended networks. The brand will be build based on how we promote it via online activity rather then the name itself. 9 years ago