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Community Portraits: collaborative learning online. Liz Timms, University of Edinburgh, Scotland and Pirjo Helppikangas, University of Lapland, Finland. the three main aspects of Community Portraits.
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Community Portraits: collaborative learning online Liz Timms, University of Edinburgh, Scotland and Pirjo Helppikangas, University of Lapland, Finland
the three main aspects of Community Portraits • the community as a context for welfare practice • collaboration as a method for working and learning • the Internet as an enabler of collaborative learning
the aims of the module • to promote a pattern of social work practice and service that is based on active appreciation of the community context of people's everyday lives. • to recognise differences as positive for learning and development
the task • to produce ‘portraits’ of the communities in which they work for presentation online
the process • collaborative work • in small groups • via the Internet • chatting, • sending messages, • writing statements
the programme Week 0 Introductions Week 1 The concept of community Week 2 Thinking about collaboration Week 3 Introducing the communities Week 4 Planning for the task Weeks 5 - 11 Doing the work Week 12 Presenting the portrait online (group task) Week 13 Assessing the portraits; debriefing Week 15 Reflective study on collaboration(individual task)
preparing for the virtual classroom (1) • We confirmed that: • educational goals should drive the use of technology • teaching material has to be re-designed to capitalise on the technology • We learned that: • preparation is tedious, time consuming and, for the novice, often de-skilling, but it is vital
“at each step of construction it was necessary to reflect on how every tiny detail of the material - the tasks, the timing or whatever - would be experienced by the participants” Timms & Helppikangas, 1999
preparing for the virtual classroom (2) • the start is important: be ready for it • keep instructions short, clear and simple • watch the pace - don’t rush: - collaborative relationships take time to establish
is education via the internet worth the effort? YES! • high potential for inclusion: • can overcome barriers of place, time, social distance, social inhibition but only if there is access for all
the technology must be reliable and any demands it makeson users must be minimal material and social barriers such as poverty, social class, gender, must be addressed
SCHEMA Social Cohesion through Higher Education in Marginal Areas Web site: http://www.stir.ac.uk/schema SCHEMA is co-ordinated by the University of Stirling, Scotland, with partners in Finland (Lapland and Oulu), Germany (Stuttgart) and Sweden (Orebro and Karlskrona-Ronneby). It is funded by the EC Educational Multimedia Taskforce.
