Welcome to the TELedvisors shared reading activity for May!
Reading for TELedvisors is intended to be a monthly ‘slow chat’ where you can engage with your peers and discuss a current topic related to educational technology.
Each reading is intended to be not too long (avoid the TL;DR) and openly accessible and to support the ASCILITE community. We are keen to feature pieces from members. Have you recently published a book, book chapter, article or blog post? Tell us about it and we may feature it!
Wendy Taleo and Keith Heggart are your facilitators this month. Grab a brew, get comfy and join us in this reading.
[Reading time: 5 minutes]
This month’s reading: ‘Growing together: what makes a successful learning community?‘
Growing together is a great aim but can be hard to develop – especially in increasingly remote working arrangements. This week we are going to look at a post by the well-known educational technologist Alexandra Mihai discussing professional learning communities in her new post at Yale: Growing together: what makes a successful learning community?
Read the article at the direct link: https://educationalist.substack.com/p/growing-together-whats-the-key-to?s=r
or read and annotate it together at the Hypothes.is link: https://via.hypothes.is/https://educationalist.substack.com/p/growing-together-whats-the-key-to?s=r
Three provocations:
Creating a space where faculty can “come as they are”, where they can afford to be vulnerable, imperfect and share their experiences with peers.”
- Describe a situation where you have felt this kind of safe space in a learning community or education setting.
Arguably, the value of a learning community increases proportionately with the effort and commitment participants put into it. So does the perceived value.
- What are some hindrances to the development of professional learning communities (PLCs) that you’ve noticed in your own experience? Can you identify any ways that these hindrances were overcome?
- Mihai mentions a couple of ways to build PLCs – starting with the enthusiasts, bringing a friend. Can you think of other ways to build community? Have they been successful?
Three ways to share:
In the interests of building our community as a reading group, why not share your responses:
- Annotate together. Sign up for hypothes.is and then use this link to annotate the article: https://via.hypothes.is/https://educationalist.substack.com/p/growing-together-whats-the-key-to?s=r
- Go social: Twitter mostly but hey, you might have your own blog, be it in Mastodon, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok or the next place!
- Use these tags: #TELedvisors #Maychat
Bonus reading
Tinnell, T., Ralston, P., Tretter, T., & Mills, M. (2019). Sustaining pedagogical change via faculty learning community. International Journal of STEM Education. 6:26. Open access at https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-019-0180-5 or https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s40594-019-0180-5.pdf