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Theories and models of and for online learning

Article  in  First Monday · October 2007

DOI: 10.5210/fm.v12i8.1976 · Source: DBLP

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For many years, discussion of online learning, or e–learning, has been pre–
occupied with the practice of teaching online and the debate about whether being
online is ‘as good as’ being offline. The authors contributing to this paper see this
past as an incubation period for the emergence of new teaching and learning
practices. We see changes in teaching and learning emerging from the nexus of a
changing landscape of information and communication technologies, an active and
motivated teaching corps that has worked to derive new approaches to teaching, an
equally active and motivated learning corps that has contributed as much to how to
teach online as they have to how to learn while online, with others, and away from
a campus setting. We see the need for, and the emergence of, new theories and
models of and for the online learning environment, addressing learning in its ICT
context, considering both formal and informal learning, individual and community
learning, and new practices arising from technology use in the service of learning.
This paper presents six theoretical perspectives on learning in ICT contexts, and is
an invitation to others to bring theoretical models to the fore to enhance our
understanding of new learning contexts.

Contents

Introduction
Living technology (Bertram C. Bruce)
Co–evolution of technology and learning practices (Richard Andrews)
Technology and tie formation: Social and technical foundations for latent ties (Caroline
Haythornthwaite)
Community–embedded learning (Michelle M. Kazmer)
The learner–leader model (Rae–Anne Montague)
Braided learning: Promoting active professionals in education (Christina Preston)

Introduction
A major transformation is happening that has some worried and others delighted –
this major transformation is the rapid and pervasive adoption and diffusion of
online learning or e–learning. Whether for formal degree completion or personal
development, individuals and their communities are going online in increasing
numbers to learn, teach each other, and create their own communities of inquiry. In
wholly online environments and in hybrid, on and off–line contexts, new
technologies are giving rise to new educational and learning practices, and the new
environments are engendering new behaviors. Although treated as created
yesterday, online learning is now about 17 years old [1] and, in many cases, builds
on years of success in distance education (Thompson, 2007), and on computers in
teaching (e.g., the PLATO system, http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/history/PLATO.htm).
In those 17 online years, teachers have been preoccupied with how to teach in the
new online setting, and now there are conferences, journals, books, and degrees
that address how to teach online. Administrators, students and employers have
been preoccupied with whether online is ‘as good as’ offline, and many studies
have addressed this topic, largely coming to a draw on which is better (see for
example, Russell, 2001).

The authors contributing to this paper see something different emerging from this
17–year incubation period. We see changes in teaching and learning emerging
from the nexus of a changing landscape of information and communication
technologies, an active and motivated teaching corps that has worked to derive new
approaches to teaching, an equally active and motivated learning corps that has
contributed as much to how to teach online as they have to how to learn while
online, with others, and away from a campus setting. These three components
operate against the backdrop of continuous societal change in online practice,
including the massive growth in online resources available via the Internet, and the
foreground of minimal change in academic practice, with bricks–and–mortar
colleges still acting as the one best way to attain an education. Online learners
would disagree. Online learners would point out that there is no college where they
live, that driving two or more hours to the nearest college takes away from hours
they could spend learning and/or with family. Online learners would tell you about
their lifelong ambition to attain the degree they are pursuing, and how taking it
online makes it possible to combine work and learning. As members of classes,
and as members of online communities, they would tell of being proactive in their
learning, engaged with others, sharing social and emotional experiences, belonging
to a community, gaining and sharing learning with their on and offline embedding
contexts, and learning to be a online citizen.

The authors of this paper have all been working with and researching online
learning for most of its lifetime. We combine expertise in examining teaching,
learning, and social interaction online in degree–granting and professional
development environments. We share a common focus on practice – emergent
practice – occurring at the intersection of teaching, learning and ICT use, affecting
and affected by social change, community practice, and individual meaning–
making around technology and online social interaction.

Our experiences lead us to see the need for a different tack to achieve forward
motion. We see the need for, and the emergence of, new theories and models of
and for the online learning environment, addressing learning in its ICT context,
considering both formal and informal learning, individual and community learning,
and new practices arising from technology use in the service of learning.

This paper presents six theoretical perspectives on learning in ICT contexts, and is
an invitation to others to bring theoretical models to the fore to enhance our
understanding of new learning contexts. The theories and models presented here
address:

 Living technologies (Bruce)

 Co–-evolution of technology and learning practices (Andrews)
 Technology and social tie formation (Haythornthwaite)
 Community–embedded learning (Kazmer)
 Learner–leaders (Montague)
 Braided learning (Preston)

The following section briefly introduces the transformative effects of ICT that
affect learning before turning the text over to each author to present their own
learning theories and models.

Transformative effects

The kind of technology effects that are creating the new ground for learning derive
largely from the impact of computer–mediated communication (CMC) on
communication. As many researchers have articulated (e.g., Culnan and Markus,
1987; Wellman, et al., 1996; Haythornthwaite and Nielsen, 2006; Herring, 2002;
Sproull and Kiesler, 1991), CMC changes the exposure of individuals to the group
as well as the immediacy of group characteristics to the
individual. Anonymityand invisibility of physical attributes, local setting,
distractions and side activities deprive others of non–verbal sources of information,
but also provide cover for individuals who may then feel freer to contribute and to
experience a more level playing field. The group or audience is also anonymized.
The physical appearance of individuals and of the group, including dress, gaze,
seating arrangement and number, are not apparent to individual speakers. Also
invisible is the distribution in geographic space; cues are not present in the online
space that show where individuals are currently situated (home, office, coffee
shop), and where in the world they are located. During most online learning
sessions, all that is seen via CMC is text and perhaps a list of identifiers for the
people online. Cues about personality, background, engagement, and location all
come through the exchange of text. Hence the emphasis in many discussions of
online teaching and learning about encouraging participation, gaining collaboration
and sustaining presence (Garrison and Anderson, 2003; Swan, et al., 2006;
Haythornthwaite, et al., 2000).

As well as anonymity, another major transformative effect of CMC is

its persistence (particularly explored by Thomas Erickson and Susan Herring
regarding ‘persistent conversation’,
seehttp://www.visi.com/~snowfall/HICSS_PC.html). Texts entered in CMC exchanges
remain present for others to read now or later, in sequence or out of sequence, as
part of the current learning event or retrieved long after discussion has ended. In
online learning, conversational text persists, remaining as a record, retained and
accessible for at least the span of the learning activity, and possibly for longer
depending on the practices of each community and institution. As for other online
communities, these texts, and the online environment where they are created and
retained, act as a living repository for the experience and expertise of the group.
They contain evidence of identity – individual and communal – and of purpose.
These texts enact the ‘mutual engagement, joint enterprise,and shared repertoire of
actions’ that denote a community of practice (Wenger, 1998). In online learning
environments, these characteristics adhere as much to the practice of being an
online group as they do to the learning purpose and to the profession, interest or
hobby that comprises the learning content. Such online practices arise locally, but,
with the current growth of online communication in general, they also derive from
norms emerging about online practice, such as the use of smilies and short message
text (for more on emergence of practices in online and distributed groups, see
DeSanctis and Poole, 1994; Orlikowski, 2002; for more on online communities,
see Baym, 2000; Kendall, 2002; Haythornthwaite, 2007; Jones, 1995; Kiesler,
1997; Wellman, et al., 1996).

A third transformative effect bears on the locus of engagement. Distributed

participants divide their attention between local and remote constituencies. A
parent at home, learning online, may have simultaneous responsibility for
managing children’s interactions; an employee at the office may choose to retreat
from local work obligations, or they may engage more substantially with work that
is synergistic with their learning. At home, individuals may juggle access to and
space for computers, while at work they may need to negotiate for time and
permission to use computer resources. All add learning as the ‘third shift’
(Kramarae, 2001) and a new social world (Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, 2002).
Being off–campus means each individual negotiates and reformulates their
learning place and time in their local setting, and across settings such as home,
work, and community (Bruce, 2004; Crook, 2002). Who is available for support,
help, and common inquiry is centralized online, but decentralized offline. This
change is revealing new configurations to learning, including enhanced
engagement with the local community (Kazmer, 2007), and enhanced exchange of
experiences among students (Montague, 2006).
These technical effects are leading the transformations evident in the practices of
learners and others who engage online. Learners are increasingly taking part in the
learning process. By creating, directing and sharing their own learning experiences,
online learners are beginning to create a new standard for learning practices,
changing the way education is and can be practiced. Certainly some of this sounds
utopian, that learners are taking charge of their own learning processes, but that is
precisely what is happening in environments that provide the scope to enhance
learner experiences with teachers stepping back but not out of the picture.
Prominent in this view are Garrison and Anderson’s (2003) ideas of social,
teaching and cognitive presence, as well as the many calls for participation,
engagement, and collaboration, as in the field of computer–supported collaborative
learning (CSCL; Koschmann, 1996; Miyake, 2007), and treatment of the online
learner as a member of a community of practice (Thorpe, 2002; Stuckey, 2006).

New models and theories

At the same time as this transformation is taking place, many retain an idea of
online learning that is fed by old notions of individuals sitting alone at computers,
interacting only with a programmed tutor, learning out of context, lacking contact
and engagement with real people. While tutoring systems exist, and in some
contexts online learning does mean following through a tutorial program, the kind
of online learning being promoted and enacted in educational institutions,
communities of practice, and online groups and communities are based on
principles of collaboration, dialog and conversation, active structuring of learning,
and open sharing of resources and experiences. This kind of online learning
appears under the names asynchronous learning networks (ALN; Harasim, et al.,
1995; Hiltz and Goldman, 2005; Swan, 2005), computer–supported collaborative
learning (CSCL; Koschmann, 1996; Koschmann, et al., 2002; Miyake, 2007), and,
more recently, e–learning (Andrews and Haythornthwaite, 2007; Haythornthwaite
and Kazmer, 2004; Lea and Nicoll, 2002; Land and Bayne, 2005).

Theoretical approaches guiding these efforts cluster at the collaborative,

constructivist and cognitivist end of the spectrum – encouraging active
participation and contribution by learners – and carrying principles of adult
learning (andragogy; Knowles, 1984; Bransford, et al., 1999) graduate learning
(Gullahorn, 2003), and expert learning (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1996) to e–
learners of all ages and stages. To date, however, much of the focus on online
learning has been on guiding interactions in the online environment, effectively
continuing the notion of isolation of learners (albeit now isolated with other online
learners), even if not continuing the notion of passivity. Moreover, while there is
consideration of the role of technology in online learning, this is too often confined
to choices about learning management systems. What is only minimally explored
is the role of technology as a constituent in e–learning practice (e.g., examining
what online learning technologies afford for learning; e.g., Robins, 2004) and as
part of an e–learning activity system (Engeström, et al., 1999; Russell, 2002). The
emphasis on teaching has also overshadowed consideration of embedding contexts,
giving sporadic attention to institutional actions, the embedding context for
teachers (e.g., Hiltz and Turoff, 2005; Lankspear, et al., 2002; Noble, 1998) and
learners (Crook, 2002); home and work contexts for learners (e.g., Kramarae,
2001; Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, 2002); the online context as a place of
community rather than just of instructional learning (e.g., connecting to the
literature on online community noted above; Haythornthwaite, et al., 2000;
Renninger and Shumar, 2002; Barab, et al., 2004), and the impacts of
decontextualizing place from educational space (Cornford and Pollock, 2002;
Crook, 2002; Lankspear, et al., 2002).

These areas of consideration demonstrate how the activity system of online

learning, including its technologies, people, institutions, purposes and embedding
contexts, is a complex assemblage, resting on the interactions of multiple factors in
multiple contexts. Planning and design can only go so far in predicting and guiding
outcomes. Teachers and program directors can initiate or direct certain actions, but
the configurations which emerge depend on how these are taken up and enacted.

The contributions that follow each address themes of emergence, complexity, and
embedding contexts, providing models relating to online learning that address
these configurations as continuously emergent, with technology and practices co–
evolving as parts of a living, active system. Emergence appears as a theme in the
models’ treatments of configurations of technology and practice, of learning and its
context, and of norms of social interaction and participation. Andrews, et
al. address evolving and emergent effects of technology and learning practices;
Bruce, et al.address the enmeshing of learners with their contexts and
communities; Kazmer, et al. address emergent roles for learners and emergent
practices in online interactions. Complexity is addressed regarding the multiplexity
of people, tasks, texts, technologies, and settings, including multiple learning
contexts (Kazmer), multiple technologies and relationships (Haythornthwaite), and
multi–threaded, ‘braided’ conversations (Preston). Kazmer, et al. provide
synergistic models of the learner experience that attend to interactions stimulated
by the embedding contexts of online and offline settings.

In what follows, each author presents a brief piece on their model, and with
pointers to where other work of theirs can be found. We present these as a
beginning to further discussion of emergent, embedding, and complex interactions
of technology and practice in the service of online learning.

Living technology (Bertram C. Bruce)

Living organisms grow throughout their individual lives; they change in response
to their physical environments as well as to communities comprising other
organisms; and species change over generations as individuals are differentially
successful reproducing (see three senses of wholeness in Bruce, in press). These
three characteristics are in fact key to the very definition of “living things.” We
think of that definition as we distinguish organisms from inert matter, or from
constructed things, such as computers.

My computer is not alive. Yes, it may act at times in a way that I describe as
helpful or at other times as cantankerous. Although I may have an opinion of it
(sometimes an unprintable one), I know that it has no opinion of me. If it breaks, it
can’t repair itself; it has no community; and it will never have a family. This
conception is fundamental to computer training and information literacy programs.
We say “it’s just a machine,” “it does only what you tell it to do,” “it’s just 1’s and
0’s.” It is not alive.

Seeing the computer as not–alive makes abundant sense, and yet that view leads to
some unproductive, if not dangerous, conceptions. First, we see the computer as
incapable of growth. Yet, in many ways the computer grows every day. It
incorporates new software, usually at our command, but sometime automatically,
or in the case of malware, in ways we never intended. Its operation as a mediator
of the Web grows continuously as the Web itself grows. Seeing it as a fixed, non–
living object leads us to minimize our own role as active (re–)creator of the
computer.

Second, we see the computer as independent of its ecology. That leads us to think
we have a single well–defined device, which operates by prescribed procedures. In
fact, even a non–networked computer depends for its operation on a complex
information ecology (Nardi and O’Day, 1999). And once a computer is networked
it cannot be understood as independent of a system of relations with other
technologies.

Third, we see the computer ahistorically. That leads us to conceive its use as free
from cultural practices, including our own. We see it then as value–neutral, and
therefore as factual, rather than as a text composed in a particular place and time.
These implications of seeing the computer as not–alive are so ingrained that it may
be difficult to imagine an alternative, unless we enter a sci–fi realm of biological
computing, cyborgs, and androids. What could it mean today to think of the
computer more as we think of living things?

Roland Barthes (1974) might deem a computer to be a writerly text, one which
locates the reader as a site for the production of meaning. In doing this,
users reinterpret, adapt, and reinventtechnologies (Eglash, et al., 2004). Thus,
regardless of how well resources have been collected and organized, curricula have
been designed, or even training delivered, the power of the reader/user to
appropriate the system in ways that make sense within a local context should not
be underestimated. Accordingly, how well a technology meets needs depends on
how it is designed, distributed, interpreted, and re–created through use (Bruce and
Hogan, 1997). See Merkel (2002), for an excellent study of technology use in low–
resource communities and the many disjunctions between the designs of well–
meaning developers and the circumstances of community members.

In her dissertation research, Xiaohui (Christine) Wang (2003) showed how

children collaborated in a first–grade classroom. The teacher had allocated five
minutes for each child at the computer. On their own, children developed a system
in which one child used the left half of the keyboard, a second used the right half,
and a third used the mouse. Thus, they managed to get 15 minutes each at the
computer, while achieving greater success in navigation or game–playing, than any
would have alone. The meaning of the applications, the children’s use of time and
space while interacting with the computer, and the learning that occurred were only
in part determined by the hardware and software design. A similar re–
interpretation and re–design of the human–computer system is repeated in many
contexts and nearly always underestimated by developers (see Twidale, 2003, for
similar examples involving adult use).

The children in Xiaohui’s study were very pragmatic in the sense of making the
technology work to meet real human needs, accommodate to users, and reflect its
situatedness in time, place, and social world. They also demonstrated a good
example of a more technical sense of pragmatic technology. This is a conception
of technology from pragmatist theory, especially that of John Dewey, in which
technology is the means for resolving a problematic situation. Dewey’s definition
sees technologies as both means of action and forms of understanding (Bruce,
1999, 2003; Dewey, 1938; Hickman, 1990). In this example, the children acted to
solve a problem, manifested their understanding of the situation, and in so doing
created a technology. Using the biological metaphor, we could say that the
computer grew as it adapted to a new environment.

This is a constructivist view of technology itself, which is helpful for

understanding divergent or unintended uses. It also helps in understanding whose
problem is being addressed as technology practices emerge. Technologies can then
be conceived as the thing we get when we extract meaning from experience. The
tie of technology to lived experience is central to its aliveness.

Viewing technologies as alive calls for different approaches to design,

interpretation, use and evaluation (Bruce and Hogan, 1997). We can no longer
think of them as fixed, easily isolable, inert objects. One approach is situated
evaluation, a framework for understanding innovation and change (Bruce, et al.,
1993), which emphasizes contrastive analysis and seeks to explore differences in
use across settings (ecologies). It assumes that the object of study is neither the
innovation alone nor its effects, but rather, the living realization of the innovation –
the innovation–in–use. It produces hypotheses supported by detailed analyses of
actual practices, which make possible informed plans for use and change of
innovations (Bruce and Rubin, 1993).

We don’t need to anthropomorphize when we conceive technologies as we

conceive living things. We simply need to recognize that above a minimal
complexity level, a technology grows throughout its life. Like a living organism it
changes in response to its ecology; and its “species” changes over generations.
Viewing technologies in this way can help us understand them better and use them
more effectively.

Co–evolution of technology and learning practices (Richard Andrews)

The introduction to Andrews and Haythornthwaite (2007) sets out the author’s
model for future research for and about e-learning: one in which the relationship
between new technologies and learning is considered as reciprocal and co–
evolutionary. In other words, the relationship is not seen as causal or one–way as is
conventionally the case, with assumptions that ICT has a causal impact on
learning; rather, new technologies and learning are seen to develop alongside each
other. In summary, the model looked like this:

Figure 1: Co–evolutionary model for e–learning research.

The vertical axes of ICT and learning represent changes to the state–of–play in
each area in time; the horizontal axes represent reciprocal and symbiotic
relationships between the areas. Diagonal axes indicate residual and/or predictive
relationships between ICT and learning. The model is thus suitable for ‘snapshots’
of the relationship between ICT and learning (horizontally), and also for staged,
longitudinal studies (vertically). It is useful for such studies about online learning
and communities of practice, but can also be used for such research, as a tool for
mapping the design of new e–learning resources and programs. For brevity’s sake,
I call this model a co–evolutionary model for e–learning research. For example,
the development of wikis in Web 2.0 technologies allows for an interactive and
dialogic revision by a number of people of a text that might be lodged on a Web
site. Further development of interactive technologies on the technologies side,
and/or of learning practices in the co–editing of a common text on
the learning side, might (most likely, will) create further possibilities in due course.

In the present section, I focus on one aspect of the model: the question of what
kinds of e–communities are created by online or e–learning. Learning communities
– like the one suggested in the previous paragraph on the revision of a common
text via a wiki – are important because learning takes places not just individually,
but within a group.

Two points need to made about the model and about these questions before further
discussion. First, a number of questions appear on the ICT side of the model in the
figure above. These questions are not primarily technological in nature.
Information and communication technologies enter existing communities and
create new communities on the basis of accessibility. If a person of whatever age
does not have a mobile phone or an iPod or access to a computer at home, he or
she cannot take part in the communities that are enabled by those technologies. If
he/she has one or more of these kinds of hardware, he/she will be able to
participate in some aspects of these communities. Second, if, as Rogoff (1990)
suggests, learning is an effect of community, we need to know more about the
nature of that effect, its parameters and its quality in e–communities. Her
formulation suggests that the very act of being part of a community has a direct or
indirect impact on the learning that will take place as a result of such participation.
My own gloss on Rogoff’s point for the purposes of understanding e–learning is
that her phrase should be revised to ‘learning is an effect of the interaction of a
number of communities’.

An e–community suggests a group of people who have come together via ICT
technologies at a particular point in time to learn with and from each other. The
community is engendered and sustained through a common purpose: learning. It
may be a time–limited community. Learning itself can be characterized as learning
independently within that community, e.g. by listening in to others’ conversations,
by processing ideas and material ‘internally’; by re–configurations of existing
patterns of knowledge; by acting as a node within that community; by engaging in
explicit and recordable verbal and (other media) exchanges and thus acting out an
observable dialogic interaction; by memorizing – and by any combination of these
activities. It is more than an effect of community as there will be more than one
community operating; and learning is more than a ‘read–off’ or naturally occurring
result of the communication that the communities engage in.

The fact that more than one community is operating in online learning and e–
learning at any one time is one of the key features of learning in the twenty–first
century. Ito (2005) suggests that the younger generation of mobile–phone/MP3
users is adept at moving between hardware and information seamlessly; and of
keeping several channels of communication and information open at the same
time, while concurrently operating in the ‘real’ world of social interaction
according to (often unspoken) rules of etiquette. Indeed, the very management of
information and resources from different sources, and in different formats, plus the
re–shaping of them for particular purposes (steering clear of plagiarism and other
forms of appropriation) is an art that could be described as active learning in itself.
Learning, in this sense, is a matter of attention, composition and re–composition.
The learning in embodied and manifested in the process and the product of re–
shaping.

Such re–shaping happens to a degree in any form of learning. A philosophy student

cogitating for two or three hours on a particular conundrum or problem in his or
her field is doing so, perhaps with minimal information and communication tools
at his or her disposal. In interactive online or e–learning, however, the learning in
manifested in the text and texture of the exchange. It is distributed or shared. It also
takes place at individual and community level, and in the interaction between those
two levels of operation; and in the four sectors of operation: real world formal
education communities; real world informal learning communities; via
conventional media for learning; and via multimodal communication. The zones
from independent thought to distributed learning and on to the communities that
support and validate that learning, along with the four sectors mentioned above,
can be depicted thus:

Figure 2: Communities of learning and the individual learner.

In the above diagram, the learner is positioned at the centre of the model. He or she
transforms and re–shapes information and other material to take forward his or her
own learning. He/she can do so independently and without much reference to or
engagement with others; or he/she can operate in the zone of mediated,
communication–based (dialogic) exchange, which is spoken, textual, visual,
auditory or a combination of these. These forms of communication are in turn
embedded, validated and tested and/or applied within social contexts. In terms of
communities of learning, there are four sectors depicted: each of them represents
different forms of community existing alongside each other, with permeable
boundaries.

Although the above model sets out how the different communities of learning
stand in relation to each other, and how learning might be an effect of a number of
different communities of practice and engagement, it does not take account of how
the communities might interact for the individual learner nor of the quality of
learning. Each of these requires a separate paper. As far as the interaction between
communities of learning is concerned, case studies will need to follow individual
learners on their passage through various ‘units’ (formal and/or informal) of
learning. With regard to the quality of learning, further investigation will be a
matter of determining the quality of attention (cf. Lanham’s notion of the
‘economics of attention’) and re–shaping (together constituting ‘thought’) in the
act of learning.

Technology and tie formation: Social and technical foundations for latent ties
(Caroline Haythornthwaite)

Online learning classes present a model of time–limited, zero–history groups.

Students come together, work in a semblance of cooperation for a semester,
occasionally produce joint work, and disperse. Although some students may know
each other beforehand – for example, when the online class is embedded in a
sequence associated with a whole program – in most cases students will be meeting
for the first time, spending time finding out about each others’ knowledge, abilities
and personalities. They must, in social network terms, do the work of turning non–
existent ties into weak ties (acquaintances, fellow class members), and, for some,
turning these weak ties into strong ties (close friends, collaborators). In this short
piece I want to highlight the role of technology in this tie formation procedure, and
in particular to describe a theory of media and ties based on my social network
studies of online environments.

By now everyone is familiar with the concept of ‘social software’, and how
technologies such as Facebook and MySpace provide a means for weak–tie
formation. But what is the theoretical positioning of such media? How does what
happens with those media relate to what’s happening in online learning? When a
class is convened in Second Life or in any of the many asynchronous learning
environments rather than a physical classroom, what have these settings set in
place? Beyond bridging time and space, what is the impact on bridging people of
having discussion online rather than face–to–face?

For the last 15 years I’ve been studying online environments, primarily from a
social network perspective. These studies have shown that media connect people
differently according to the strength of the tie between them. Weakly tied pairs
know each other only through the mandated media (e.g., scheduled meetings on or
offline), but strongly tied pairs know and work with each other through many
means (bulletin boards + chat + e–mail + phone). In face–to–face settings, the
‘mandated’ medium can be the physical classroom or building (precipitating
contact in hallway encounters). Online, the medium can be a chat tool use for
synchronous classes, or a class–wide bulletin board mandated for topic discussion.
In each environment examined, those maintaining weak ties sustain their tie
through only one medium, and it is always the mandate, unavoidable, medium.
Those in strong ties also use this mandated medium but add other media to their
repertoire; in particular they add media that afforded private, person–to–person
contact (e.g., e–mail, phone). Just as strong ties have been shown to engage in
multiple kinds of interaction with each other (relational multiplexity) and to
include intimacy and self–disclosure in those interactions, these studies found that
strong ties also use multiple media (media multiplexity) and include means that
afford intimate communication (Haythornthwaite and Wellman, 1998).

Finding that weakly tied pairs are bound only by a medium established by others,
suggests that this medium lays the foundation for weak ties. But, since there are no
ties before the medium is established, I have suggested that such a medium creates
a latent tie structure, i.e., a structure on which ties are technically possible but have
not yet been socially activated. Using these media, and posting to the medium
rather than to other individuals, provides visibility and awareness of all class
members, which then affords weak tie formation. The mandated media provide a
substrate of connection among class members. Media such as asynchronous
bulletin boards or synchronous chat provide visibility of all class members and an
easy way to get to see and know others at least at a weak level. Although this idea
holds equally well for face–to–face as online classes, the more equal participation
possible in online venues, where turn–taking is eliminated, attention is not limited
to by overlap in time, and class discussion can stretch across weeks, makes
visibility of all class members possible. Constraints such as the one to three hour
time limit on lectures, the fixed location of seating, the differentiation between
front and back of the room, the dominance of individual classroom talkers, and the
limited reach of office hour discussion can be side–stepped online, with dramatic
impact on the visibility, presence, and presentation of individual class members.

The complete theory – which I refer to as latent tie theory – holds that establishing
a group–wide medium creates latent ties from which weak ties may build. Where
such a group–wide medium already exists, a change in this medium recasts weak
ties, both disrupting existing ties which have only been maintained because the
medium has made such casual interpersonal connection easy, and creating new
latent ties which may then become new weak tie connections. While a major
reconfiguring is expected for weak ties, such a change in medium is likely to
have minimal impact on strong ties. Strongly tied individuals not only have more
reason to make the effort to continue their connection and are likely to work
together to do so, they also tend to use more media already, and thus can continue
their connection via other means. (For more on latent tie theory and the studies
behind it, see Haythornthwaite, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2005).

Although any group–wide means of contact, from a simple e–mail list to a

traditional classroom setting, can potentially effect a latent tie structure, only one
that is used by all participants can actually provide the social structure that enacts a
complete network. Thus, while technology provides part of the equation, there is
an equally important social component of participation that matters. In the time–
limited, zero–history context of classes, it is the instructor who must bootstrap
student visibility – by choosing one medium for group–wide interaction, and
stimulating, cajoling and mandating online presence. In many grassroots
initiatives, it takes little to bootstrap such action, with voluntary participants
rapidly making their presence known and visible online. Friendster, MySpace, etc.
seem to suddenly appear and provide the latent tie structure on which weak ties are
being created, and indeed on which weak tie counts are often the goal (Donath and
boyd, 2004). However, those who have worked with non–voluntary groups, and/or
have tried to stimulate equal participation in classroom discussion, can only
wistfully wish that their classes exhibited the kind of prolific interaction depicted
for those online spaces. In reality, even these now popular social software sites had
to start and build up a critical mass of participants. Time–limited groups cannot
wait for critical mass to form itself, but need authorities beyond group members
who can intervene to get interaction and network formation going.

Latent tie theory helps explain the role of different kinds of media and different
kinds of social implementations accompanying such media. It draws attention to
the role of the instructor, manager, and administrator in providing and following
through on directing use of particular media for class or group–wide contact.
Without such direction, without some kind of social impetus, the medium is likely
to remain unused and unable to sustain a social network. The theory also predicts
that where such media already exist, change will have its greatest impact on
current and future weak ties connections. Thus, when implementing innovative
information and communication technologies, consideration needs to be given
equally to both what the technology enables and what it disables in terms of access
to resources, exposure to others, and formation of social ties.

Community–embedded learning (Michelle M. Kazmer)

Community–embedded learning (CEL) is both a theory about learning in

distributed contexts and an approach to pedagogy. It addresses the way in which
knowledge is built and applied by learners who stay in their home settings while
taking online courses (Kazmer, 2005a). It takes into account the way this
knowledge is used, distributed, and adjusted in relation to ties students already
have to their communities, family and friends, and members of clubs, social, civic
and volunteer groups (Kazmer and Haythornthwaite, 2001). Community–
embedded learners are embedded in work as well as social communities, often
employed in jobs that are related to the academic degree they are earning online.
When students come together online to learn, they bring with them and share each
remote workplace. As each workplace becomea part of the learning community,
there is also the potential for it to be shaped by that community. Students not only
bring their workplace into the online class, but also bring what they learn in their
courses into the community that they know well and that knows them. Taken
together, these conditions define the concept I have named community–embedded
learning, or CEL (Kazmer, 2005a).

The idea of embeddedness derives from Granovetter (1985) who developed the
concept to explain the relationship between economic action and social structure.
Embeddedness acknowledges that humans are “closely embedded in networks of
interpersonal relations” (p. 504) that provide a social context for their actions.
Embeddedness acknowledges that decisions are contingent on local conditions and
occur within changing networks of social relations rather than being influenced by
an unchanging “generalized morality” (p. 493). This idea of embeddedness serves
as the underpinning to the association between online learning and social structure
described here.

Before continuing it is necessary to clarify terminology. In discussions of e–

learning it is often unclear whether “community” refers to a local physical
community (sometimes referred to as the geo–community) or to an online (virtual)
community of learners (Barab, et al., 2004; Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, 2004;
Renninger and Shumar, 2002). In order to be clear here, two different terms will be
used to distinguish between off and online worlds. Community will be used to refer
to communities local to the student, and social world (from Strauss, 1978) will be
used to refer to the shared online engagement that exists with other online learners.
In both arenas students engage in meaningful, lasting relationships, sharing ideas,
working together, and supporting each other to reach their goals. The distinction is
not one of offline versus online, because where formerly the distinction between
offline and online might have separated the two arenas, now members of local
communities are as apt to be contacted online as face–to–face. Thus, the distinction
is not technical. Further, there need be no intentional interaction between arenas:
while the related “community–centered” model of learning (Bransford, et al.,
2000; Swan, 2005) addresses deliberate involvement between learner and
community, CEL requires no deliberate action, and instead recognizes the
inevitable and unavoidable – but potentially enriching – co–mingling of arenas of
learning and life.

What is unique about the student in such a settings is the way they occupy a hybrid
space “which comprises both physical and virtual space, and in action is framed
simultaneously by the physical space, the virtual space, and the relationship
between the two” (Harrison and Dourish, 1996, p. 72). In CEL, each student is
embedded in and communicating with members of a proximate local setting with
its physical limitations and cultural norms while simultaneously engaging in an e–
learning setting online (Fuller and Soderlund, 2002; Kazmer, 2005b).
Community–embedded learning knowledge transfers

The framework of CEL is established via the transfers of knowledge that occur
between social world members (e–learners) and the local community. Five major
types of transfer have been identified in community–embedded learning (Kazmer,
2005a):

 Knowledge from the community to the social world: From their

community–embedded positions, individual learners provide
knowledge and information to classmates and to the e–learning social
world in general.
 Knowledge from the course to the workplace: Students take course
content, and their collaboratively built knowledge, and apply this to
the workplaces in which they are embedded.
 Knowledge from the course to the home community: Individual
learners bring learning from specific courses, and knowledge shared
in the social world as a whole, into home, social, educational, civic,
and other non-work activities.
 Contacts from the social world to the home community: Students
develop weak tie connections through indirect contacts shared from
community to community through the e–learning social world
(Granovetter, 1973).
 Connections from institution to institution: CEL provides institutions
of higher learning with opportunities to build relationships with
distant communities and other institutions in ways not possible before
(see also Brown, 2002).

In keeping with other views of the benefits of collaborative learning, these five
types of transfer occur when students interact frequently with one another and with
their teachers, using various technologies to communicate one–to–one and in
groups rather than when being provided information from a distance (Anderson,
2003). For CEL to achieve its potential, learning needs to be active and
collaborative, with knowledge co–constructed from course materials, student
experiences, and shared interpretations of situation and material.

Implications for e–learning

A CEL perspective draws our attention to important implications of e–learning,

including the role of friendship networks, creation of collaborative knowledge,
issues about assessment and evaluation, and the relation with embedding contexts.

Friendships. E–learners make friends in the online learning social world,

friendships that are maintained using multiple communication media. As the
friendships turn into professional networks, they continue to rely on a variety of
communications media to provide access to existing relationship ties (Kazmer,
2006, 2007; Nardi, et al., 2002). E–learners have the potential for large, distributed
professional networks to support them long-term through varied work tasks and
career moves.

Collaborative Knowledge. Community–embedded students build collaborative

knowledge in addition to learning the basic materials delivered in class (e.g., by
readings and lectures). Students bring their own knowledge, share it with others,
combine it with the course materials and the opinions of others, and come away
with more knowledge than if each individual had worked solely with the course
materials. However, it is important to ensure through assessment and evaluation
that individual students can later apply the knowledge independently.

Assessment. Given the changed nature of the relationship between learner and
community, and among learners, short– and long–term learning outcomes for
community–embedded learners should be measured in part through application,
rather than measuring knowledge abstractly. However, assessing applied student
performance can be a problem because it calls on employers to take on the task of
academic assessment, and because creating objective measures of applied learning
is difficult (Andresen, et al., 2000; Kazmer, 2005a).

Embedding contexts. Community–embedded learners may face difficulties because

they are using their workplaces as extensions of the classroom. Traditional students
taking a practicum or internship are allowed leeway for mistakes and are expected
to learn as they go. An embedded learner being paid full wages to do a job may not
enjoy the tolerance for error or the explicit instructional support provided in
structured experiential learning situations (Granovetter, 1985, p. 490). On the other
hand, workplaces benefit when new knowledge is applied in the workplace; clients,
co–workers, and the community can benefit from innovations and improvements in
professional practice. E–learners may also encounter resistance to change in their
local communities when new practices violate standards of expected behavior
(Granovetter, 1985, p. 498) and organizations resist things “not invented here”
(Katz and Allen, 1988). Community members or coworkers may distrust
“academic” ideas brought into their environment even if they trust the student who
is their co–worker (Granovetter, 1985, p. 491). This distrust can be compounded
by e–learning because of doubts about the effectiveness or quality of online
education. On the other hand, a general resistance to change, no matter what the
basis, can provide a necessary and useful inertia to prevent change being
implemented for its own sake.

Lack of change. Although a CEL student may benefit from the synergy of online
interaction and local practice, some who stay in familiar environments while they
learn online miss the opportunity to experience new physical and geographical
places and to examine their home environments from a distant perspective (Hearn
and Scott, 1998). While they gain from interacting with other e–learners from
various settings, they do not gain perspective from time away from home, or from
living in the academic environment or in a new town. Some may even experience
pressure to focus their learning on the needs of the local community rather than the
broad variety of concepts offered by taking full advantage of academic offerings
(see Wilson and Bagley, 1999). However, not all can participate in educational
opportunities at all if they have to leave jobs or families, and students who stay put
continue to benefit their communities as they continue to provide services and
support. While engaged with their community they can focus their academic
choices toward local community and enhance local practice

Summary

This brief overview presents some of the essentials of CEL, a new perspective on
online learners and their relations with embedding local communities and online
learning social worlds. As e–learning develops and spreads, the role of local
communities will become both more interesting and more relevant to e-learning
both as a base for learning practice, and for theoretical understanding of new
learning processes.

The learner–leader model (Rae–Anne Montague)

The learner–leader model highlights the role of students as participants in their

own learning, but also in the learning of others. While the model was developed
from observation of graduate student education, [2] the learning interactions
discussed here are likely to appear and flourish in any collaborative learning
setting. In brief, the learner–leader model sees students as active participants in a
learning community, not only bringing experiences to the learning community but
also leading its direction. They engage in an emergent and iterative process of
leading and learning by providing and receiving information, experiences, and
opinions to and from fellow students (and others). Moreover, this leadership begins
to be demonstrated beyond the learning community. In the same way as for
community–embedded learning discussed above, students take their online
learning and apply it in their embedding community; the learner–leader model
emphasizes the leadership role in such contexts, and how learners lead new
directions in their communities as a result of their learning experiences.

Graduate learning and collaboration

Graduate education, like adult learning, is not a “simple extension of coursework

beyond the bachelor’s degree.” (Gullahorn, 2003, p. 204). It entails affective and
social growth as well as cognition, the acquisition of a new socially–based identity
(Van Maanen and Schein, 1979), and experience toward becoming a member of a
new community (Anderson and Swazey, 1998).

Students’ active involvement in the learning and discovery process is promoted by

faculty mentoring and frequent interaction between faculty and students as well as
among students in structured and informal settings. Together, the faculty and
students form a graduate community of scholars that enhances learning and
discovery as well as personal growth and professional socialization. (Gullahorn,
2003, p. 204)

Effective teaching practice in graduate education reflects these needs, particularly

those of interaction. As McKeachie, et al. (1986, p. 63) explain,

[T]he best answer to the question ‘What is the most effective method of teaching?’
is that it depends on the goal, the student, the content, and the teacher. But the next
best answer is ‘Students teaching other students.’ There is a wealth of evidence
that peer teaching is extremely effective for a wide range of goals, content, and
students of different levels and personalities.

Interaction and sharing of ideas are central to the notion of collaborative learning
(and also to community–embedded learning (Kazmer, above), and braided learning
(Preston, below)). Equally important is that learners take responsibility for their
learning and interaction: “individual accountability is the key to ensuring that all
groups’ members are in fact strengthened by learning cooperatively” (Johnson and
Johnson, 1991, p. 58). This kind of active, responsible interdependence is also
emphasized in professional realms, and thus, where graduate education promotes
this kind of learning it also provides effective experience for professional life.
Although some still doubt the effectiveness of online learning, it potentially
provides more interaction than traditional classrooms, including support through
the many modalities available, from synchronous chat to asynchronous bulletin
boards and e–mail. Yet, this will not be fully achieved without emphasizing
collaboration in such settings, e.g., through class associated group work, or through
extracurricular opportunities to participate in student organizations or within
community forums.

Learning and Leading in Online Learning

The learner–leader model was developed from extended study of students seeking
graduate degrees in library and information science (LIS). The students join a
programming option known as LEEP (Library Experimental Education Program)
that lets them complete the entire degree online, primarily supported through live
lectures sessions that involve broadcast of audio and class materials and
synchronous chat for interaction with the teaching faculty and with other students,
class–related bulletin board discussions during the week, and community–wide
bulletin boards for a variety of topics (for more on this program, see
Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, 2004).

Students enter this degree program as talented and curious individuals, with
experiences in LIS, technology, academics and research, teaching and youth work,
administration, communication, service, and international/intercultural contexts.
Incoming students’ prior experiences learning and leading offer much potential
capacity for engagement in this new context. Within the program, students act as
both givers and receivers of encouragement, perspectives, information, and
questions. LEEP students deem sharing facets of diversity – particularly
dimensions of geography, age, and parental status – as beneficial to learning.
Students thus are both willing to give (lead) and receive (learn) from other
students.

Within this context of ongoing support and interaction, students reveal they draw
upon much of their pre–existing knowledge base as part of LEEP activities. In
terms of collective engagement, as givers and receivers, students have ample
opportunities to exchange information and create learning. Students’ comments
reveal the presence of an underlying competency based on service orientation plus
communication. This seems to be the basis of leadership development in LEEP,
which is manifest in supporting others’ adaptation and adoption.

As part of their experiences in LEEP, students encounter challenges, which may be

considered counterforces. These include individually and collectively based issues.
Some students struggle to manage intra–program responsibilities — in particular
those related to time and group projects — in combination with other roles. In the
context of the learning environment, which is filled with largely positive forces,
these types of struggles are often considered as opportunities to develop new
competencies and build understanding.

Leading beyond school

In LEEP, learning extends beyond classroom and program boundaries. As part of

program exit surveys, students provided varied examples of how they shared their
learning in professional settings. Statements illustrating a range of beyond school
applications (perspective, action, attitude) are presented below:

 It’s making me look at the work that I do differently.

 I have been able to translate the experiences that LEEP has given me
to the work that I am doing with an online reference service.
 I think that as students we need to keep that enthusiasm and carry it
back and kinda rub a little bit of it off on the others. Light a fire.

Summary of learner–leaders in LEEP

Within this online learning environment, students have ample opportunities to
share encouragement, perspectives, information, and questions. They “find their
voice” and apply it to “coconstruct knowledge and to share classroom authority”
(Smith, 2005, pp. 192–193).

Learning and leading is supported and facilitated by existing and emerging

community structures (e.g., pedagogical and curricular models, technologies and
technology support, access to ample library resources, etc.). Here, a sense of
community is promoted and continually reinforced. Students build academic,
professional, and technical knowledge simultaneously. At first there is a shift into
unfamiliar circumstances. Then, an authentic, multifaceted experience similar to an
apprenticeship emerges where there are opportunities “for interaction with
practicing professionals, and the acquisition of the attitudes, norms, and ‘expert
thinking’ that define true professional practice” (Anderson, 2001, p. 16).

Towards the end of their programs, students perceived increased levels of

competency related to a variety of general professional and LIS–specific areas. In
an environment concerned with developing leadership, there are many forces at
work. Leaders rely on many kinds of learning as well as abilities to function across
varied levels of complexity. For example, Gardner (1993, p. x) emphasizes
learning to develop intelligence as “the ability to solve problems, or to create
products, that are valued within one or more cultural settings.” According to
Brown (2000), this may be facilitated in Web–based learning communities where
multiple intelligences emphasizing professional norms are developed. A
multimodal model facilitates growth within individual learners and throughout the
community. Here, many factors integrally contribute to the development of the
learning environment, in particular, as described in this study, the constituents.
Participant–based action has the potential to meet existing needs while also
adapting to emerging needs. Unified forces lead to synergetic advancement.

West (1993, p. 105) offers a useful metaphor for considering these sorts of
individual and collective transformations in the context of leadership development.

The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity
imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groups that reach a
dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz
quartet, quintet, or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase
the creative tension within the group – a tension that yields higher levels of
performance to achieve the aim of the collective project.

As in this example, when transformations occur, individual sensitivities shift

toward collective sensibilities. Capacities are extended and new opportunities
emerge. Within a multimodal learning context, such as LEEP, when a similar
merger occurs, students are presented with many potential opportunities, and the
time and space to learn and lead and lead and learn.
Braided learning: Promoting active professionals in education (Christina
Preston)

Braided learning is a theory that has emerged from the observation of modes of
online learning as the MirandaNet community of professionals has matured in
digital competence. The MirandaNet Fellowship is a professional organization of
educators, researchers, policy makers, and developers of software and hardware
who have a uniting conviction that teaching and learning can be transformed by the
use of digital technologies. Established in 1992, the Fellows began their
association online in 1994. Over the last 12+ years, MirandaNet has developed into
a mature, online community of practice (Preston, 1999, 2005). This history has
reveals a three–dimensional process of learning and practice which entails coming
to understand and participate in a creative, progressive ‘braiding’ of text, opinions,
and ideas. These processes reveal how learning by professionals, for the purpose of
strengthening both the profession and individual understanding, unfolds in the
online context.

There are three identifiable stages in the process professionals in MirandaNet adopt
and practice in their professional, online, learning. In the first stage the community
engages in creating abraided text online that supports diversity and change of
opinions. Some members act as e–facilitators or braiders who help to shape the
argument, provide interim summaries and change the direction of the discussion
(Preston, 2002; Preston and Holmes, 2002; Cuthell, 2005). These are stored along
with forum discussions and teachers case studies in the MirandaNet Braided E–
journal (Preston and Cuthell, 2000–2006). In the second stage, braiders
demonstrate meta–learning by constructing braided artifacts, which re–interpret
the online debate in different styles for different audiences, e.g., newsletters for
their local communities and reports for their school senior management team. In
the third stage, accomplished fellows take the initiative to set up working parties to
explore a subject in more depth. At this point the participants become active
professionals, using collaborative knowledge to build new theories and policies
that will impact their profession in the longer term (Preston, 2007).

The following draws the elements of this braided learning process together in more
detail through an exploration of MirandaNet practice that continues to mutate.

A community of practice as a nucleus of learning

This concept of a Community of Practice (CoP) is key to understanding how

braided learning works online. The term CoPs was coined by Lave and Wenger
(1991) with acknowledgement that it refers to a human process of working and
learning together that has been operating for centuries (e.g., as in medieval craft
guilds). However, newly explored in a socio–cultural context, the concept provides
a useful perspective on knowing, learning and knowledge building in professional
life, and has been particularly useful for online contexts for focusing attention on
the interests and practices that keep communities together rather than just the
geographical co–location (see also Wenger, 1998; and the sections in this paper by
Kazmer, and by Montague).

MirandaNet is such a community of practice. It has been described by researchers

as a CoP “with an active and passionate core’ (Stuckey, 2006, p. 66), and in a
UNESCO report as a successful CoP that effects change in teaching and learning
worldwide, using digital access to provide a platform for the disenfranchised:

Such collaborative problem solving is important to many ICT teacher educators,

who have relatively little access to technical support or to view new developments.
Exchange visits between countries have strengthened community members’
resolve. The exchange of information is two way, as it flows from the wealthy to
the less well resourced and back again. (Resta, 2002, p. 29)

MirandaNet’s CoP is founded on voluntary, informal participation, and active,

directed learners. Members decide on their learning agenda rather than waiting
passively to be taught from a curriculum decided by others. This active learning
accords with Sachs’ (2003) belief that educators, like doctors, should be active
professionals closely involved in the development of policy and practice
(MacGilchrist, et al., 1997). In MirandaNet, this active practice moves further out
into the community as educators in the more mature stage of their collaborative,
braided learning come to influence professional policy and create theories and
policies of their own.

Staged models of learning

Braided learning joins other models and research that described stages in online
learning (e.g., Salmon, 2000, 2002; Haythornthwaite, Kazmer, Robins and
Shoemaker, 2000) and/or group dynamics, but differs in representing a community
that is not delimited by the need to complete a course, write a final exam, or
deliver a product. Braided learning does have in common with these models stages
relating to access, motivation and socialization in joining the community, exchange
of information and experience relevant to the joint venture, development of joint
practice, and development of shared meaning. In particular, Braided Learning is
grounded in Salmon’s seminal five–stage model for online learning, developed in
relation to business courses (seehttp://www.atimod.com/e-moderating/5stage.shtml).
These stages address:

 Individual access and motivation to use computer–mediated

communication
  Online socialization and formulation of online identities
 Information exchange among learners relevant to the courses
 Knowledge construction through collaborative discussion and
interaction
 Development of meta–thinking and application of knowledge and
online skills to their own goals and purposes that are often exam
related.

Observation of MirandaNet practice shows that both individual members, and the
CoP as a whole, progress through stages of access, motivation and online
socialisation, information exchange, and collaborative knowledge and meta–
knowledge building. Braided learning processes begin to appear when members
engage with MirandaNet, revealing who they are. As a community, the relevance
of such disclosures was recognized after a few years, and profiles for members,
which would now be called blogs, were introduced in 1999. They continue in the
information exchange stage when members begin to publish their case studies and
articles in MirandaNet’s e–journals. The CoP as a whole began to see and benefit
from this kind of publication in 1999. Although braided learning begins in these
stages, its most important contributions come in the stage of collaborative
knowledge building. Thus, Braided Learning as a theory of learning practice most
significantly addresses the way in which knowledge is jointly construction through
online texts created by and for their fellow CoP members. In MirandaNet, this kind
of learning has been observed since 2000, when the community had gained a
mature capacity to use the listserv to enrich their professional learning.

Braided Learning Stages

Stage One: Braided text

The first evidence of Braided Learning is the appearance of braided text. Debates
can be started by any member on any subject relevant to the group. In these
braided digital exchanges, members interweave their comments, judgments and
evidence to create shared insights, which have influence on current professional
thinking, formally or informally. (Text is the primary medium of exchange in
MirandaNet as it provides a means that is accessible to as many users as possible;
it is possible that, in the future, communities may see braiding occurring in use of
other means of communication).

This dynamic process of braiding depends on trust between the participants, plus
humour and passion; it builds over years with knowledge of past exchanges that
cannot be communicated easily to the outsider. This kind of online closed
publication can support contradictions and disagreements. Conflicts are not
necessarily smoothed over or resolved in the pursuit of greater understanding. Nor
is the style homogenised, as it might be in a more public presentation. Individual
approaches can be recognised which is not possible in official publications or
reports.
This stage of building a collaborative online text is a form of learning by
collaborative knowledge building. Members learn by participating in this jointly
owned braided text, and by observing the process. There is evidence of learning
when particular participants post about their increase in knowledge on the topic or
about a change of opinion as a result of the online debate. The validity of the text
depends on the full membership of the e–community having immediate input to the
debate online.

Braiding, in the form of posting evidence of learning, is of key importance to this

CoP. Without posting about learning, i.e., without reflection on what has been
gained from online discussion, the texts remain undistinguished and no more
collaborative than a question and answer forum. Braiding is important as more than
an image; weaving individual threads of text together makes a stronger knowledge
fabric, one that represents, and creates the representation of the community as a
whole.

Learning to braid text

In MirandaNet senior Fellows contribute by promoting braiding. They run courses
for learner–braiders in order to enrich the group discussion. Others volunteer for
this role either because they have the confidence as senior members or they have a
natural talent for understanding how braiding is done and when the skill is needed.
Braiders may show their meta–learning by changing the direction of the debate or
bringing it back to the subject; they may summarise the debate at various stages to
remind the participants what has happened or draw out the conclusions signaling
the end of the period of online collaborative knowledge construction. These
braiders also encourage reluctant discussants to explore their theme further, calm
the agitated and revitalise areas of discussion by clever questions that suggest they
know less than they actually do — all good teaching techniques. The difference is
that the braider cannot see the participants and must, therefore, be more sensitive to
other clues. The braiding helps to clarify aspects of the e–community vision on a
particular topic and increase a sense of participation and ownership.

Stage Two: Braided artifacts

The second stage of braided learning is associated with Salmon’s fifth stage of
development. In this stage braiders reinterpret text for a variety of purposes,
creating a braided artifact. MirandaNet braiders create these texts for those outside
their CoP, reaching a wide range of audiences depending on the circumstances of
the braider. Such artifacts are also often summarised for the MirandaNet online
newsletter and archive, which means they also reach and act as example for the
CoP members as well.

Stage Three: Influencing and making policy

There is a third stage of learning in which the braiders, individually or in groups,
learn to use the braided artifacts that express the meta–thinking of the group to
have influence over the policies which affect them professionally locally,
nationally and internationally. The speed of creation and the international outreach
of MirandaNet braided artifacts have group authority that is enhanced by the reach
of digital technologies, and the permanence of the online archives.

Some artifacts have been used as the basis of an article in the educational
technologies section of a national newspaper. For example, a synthesis of a debate
about the reasons for a sudden reduction in the numbers of regional advisers in
digital technology in England was reported in the U.K. Guardian. Other artifacts
have been used by teachers in reports written to influence the decisions of senior
managers. For example, an ICT coordinator summarised the advice he was given
about social software on school networks to inform the head teacher who was
threatening to close down these network services. Another artifact was sent to the
government in response to a request for contributions to a consultative document
on e–learning (Department for Education and Skills (U.K.), 2003). Since members
come from 43 countries these patterns are repeated internationally.

Moreover, some uses suggest that braiders are not just influencing policy, but are
also creating new theories and policies. For instance, sometimes working groups
are convened as a result of a braided artifact composed by a member who wants to
take the topic further. These working groups then raise funding to explore the
subject more thoroughly in research projects. They build face–to–face events into
the funding whenever this is viable because collaboration at this level online
requires high levels of group understanding and trust. Although young learners
may be able to strike up this kind of relationship entirely online, MirandaNet
professionals find they still need some social interaction to underpin collaborative
theorising. At this point the professionals begin to create policy and theory through
their evidence, rather than merely influencing the policies developed by others. At
this third and final stage the braiders emerge as active professionals, taking charge
of their professional destiny.

Summary

The professional network of MirandaNet has, over its lifetime since 1992, grown
into a mature community of practice that has its own model of learning and passes
that on to new members of the community, and beyond. The textual basis of this
community affords visibility of ideas, and creation of braided and reflective texts.
The community is able to create interim summaries and repositionings through
braided texts and continue these into more refined braided artifacts that reach
outside the community. Overall, this community shows a new way of learning –
braided learning – that builds on the affordances of digital technology to effect and
support a learning community of practice that can engage in the highest levels of
collaborative thinking, developing theory and policy.
About the authors

Caroline Haythornthwaite is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of

Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign. Her research focuses on the way computer–mediated interaction
supports and affects interaction for learning, community, social networks,
information exchange, and the construction of knowledge.

Richard Andrews is a Professor of Education at the University of York, U.K. His

work focuses on e–learning, literacy, and co–evolutionary processes of technology
and learning practices. He co-directed a series of systematic research reviews on
the impact of ICT on literacy learning for the EPPI–Centre (Evidence for Policy
and Practice Information and Coordinating Centre), part of the U.K. government’s
drive to develop the research evidence base for education.

Michelle M. Kazmer is Assistant Professor at the College of Information at

Florida State University. Her research focuses on social processes in online social
worlds. Recent research examined the social world disengaging processes of
distance learners and academic researchers, as well as community–embedded
online learning.

Bertram C. Bruce is Professor of Library and Information Science at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His central interest is in learning, the
constructive process whereby individuals and organizations develop as they adapt
to new circumstances. This has led to the development of Community Inquiry
Laboratories, simultaneously a suite of Web–based tools, a set of communities, and
a research project on inquiry.

Rae–Anne Montague is Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the Graduate School
of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign. Her research addresses multimodal education, learning technologies,
and diversity. She has written and given many presentations on innovative and
effective practice for online and distance education.

Notes

1. The 17–year lifespan was arrived at by dating the beginning of online learning
from the publication of some of the earliest books on online learning (Harasim,
1990; Hiltz, 1994), events such Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s first grants to
institutions for online learning initiatives (1992; for a history, see Hiltz, Turoff and
Harasim, 2007), and the U.K. Open University’s dating of their “massive
exploitation of the Internet” to the mid–1990’s
(http://www.open.ac.uk/about/ou/p3.shtml).
2. The learner–leader model emerged from study of a highly interactive,
multimodal (synchronous plus asynchronous plus brief residential) graduate
program in library and information science (LIS). The program, known as LEEP
(Library Experimental Education Program), is a program option at the Graduate
School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at
Urbana–Champaign. Further details on the study are available in Montague, 2006.

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Editorial history

Paper received 16 May 2007; accepted 8 July 2007.

Copyright ©2007, First Monday.

Copyright ©2007, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Bertram C. Bruce, Richard Andrews,

Michelle M. Kazmer, Rae–Anne Montague, Christina Preston.

Theories and models of and for online learning by Caroline Haythornthwaite,

Bertram C. Bruce, Richard Andrews, Michelle M. Kazmer, Rae–Anne Montague,
and Christina Preston
First Monday, volume 12, number 8 (August 2007),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/haythorn/index.html

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