1. Comparing Communities of Learning:
Incoming Bachelor Students & Working Professionals
Martin Rehm, Bas Giesbers, Bart Rienties (Maastricht University)
S-ICT 2009, Amsterdam
Wednesday, 16th of December 2009

2. New Educational Challenges
•Setting
–Institutions of higher education
•Bachelor –Master structure
•International Students
–Organizations
•Lifelong Learning’
‘
•cost-saving / efficiency
•Learning Methodology
–Acquisition è Participation

3. ICT in Education

4. Community of Practice
“
group of people who share a concern, set of problems
or passion about a topic and who deepen their
knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting
on an ongoing basis”(Wenger, et al., 2002, p.4)
Community of Learning
“
engaging in collaborative learning and reflective
practice involved in transformative learning”
(Paloff & Pratt, 2003, p. 17)

5. Community of Learning (CoL)
•Open dialogue
H1: On average, working professionals will contribute less
often, but more elaborative than regular students
•Level of participation
H2: The level of activity in CoLs will be positively skewed
•Spaces for informal discussions
H3: The amount of informal communication will be higher
for the bachelor cohort

6. Platform
• Blackboard™
– Hosting ‘
static content’
– Asynchronous discussion forums
• practical, real-life task
1. Café Talk
2. Content-driven

7. Online (Preparatory) Course
“Economics”
N = 82; N = 158;
6 CoLs; 14 CoLs;
∅ members = 13.66; ∅ members = 11.29;
∅ age = 19.00; ∅ age = 44.73;
50 % female 53.79 % female
--- ---
8 weeks 11 weeks
6 modules 5 modules
Workload: 60-80 hrs. Workload: 60-70 hrs.
40% of Final Grade 50 % of Final Grade

8. Hypothesis 1: “Open Dialogue”

9. Hypothesis 2: “Participation”
70,0
35
60,0 30
50,0 25
C o n tr ib u tio n s
40,0 20
C o n t rib u t io n s
15
30,0
10
20,0
5
10,0
0
0,0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Week
Week
Average Contributions Average Contributions

10. Hypothesis 3: “Informal Discussions”

11. Participants Expectations and
Perceptions
•Bachelor students were more eager to
create a positive image of themselves
•Working professionals appear to be
more critical about the quality of the
course

12. Conclusions
•CoLs provide a valuable learning
enviornment
•Facilitation is of crucial importance
•CoLs ‘ work’ across different target
groups
è (neo)apprenticeship style learning

13. Comparing Communities of Learning:
Incoming Bachelor Students & Working Professionals
Martin Rehm, Bas Giesbers, Bart Rienties (Maastricht University)
S-ICT 2009, Amsterdam
Wednesday, 16th of December 2009