Communities of Practice. Using the Open Web as a Collaborative Learning Platform [iLearning Forum 2008, Paris, 4-5 February 2008]

Rachel Panckhurst (1) , Debra Marsh (2)

1 Praxiling - Praxiling
2 iconnect - iconnect

The current interest and popularity in Web 2.0 applications has led literally to an explosion in popularity of social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. A social network focuses on the building and verifying of communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Participants engage in a variety of forms of communication and information sharing, which can include personal Web pages, blogs, and discussion groups. Social networking places its focus on the learner and the interactions and provides a relatively informal space that allows learners to exercise their own thoughts, reflections, make their own connections. These features in particular have caused some educators, disillusioned with the highly structured virtual learning environments currently deployed in education which focus on course and content delivery, to ask: How can the potential of these networks be harnessed to promote and support learning? Since May 2007 the authors of this paper have explored the use of social networks in three different educational contexts and evaluated the relative merits and challenges of social networking within the context of higher education professional development programmes (Montpellier 3 University in France and University of Hull in Great Britain).

Mots clés: life-long learning; Social networks; international bilingual collaborative eLearning; higher and further education; life-long learning.

Domaines: Linguistique; Education

Rachel Panckhurst, Debra Marsh. Communities of Practice. Using the Open Web as a Collaborative Learning Platform [iLearning Forum 2008, Paris, 4-5 February 2008]. iLearning Forum 2008, www.ilearnforum.eu/, 4 et 5 février, 2008, Paris, Feb 2008, Paris, France. 6 p. ⟨hal-00291874⟩