Bakgrunnur:
Vitað er að hófleg skráning minnispunkta úr námsefni, ýmist í kennslustundum eða bara úr kennslubókum, er af hinu góða. Margir ef ekki flestir festa hluti betur í minni sér ef þeir skrifa þá niður auk þess sem þeir hlusta eða lesa.

Að auki er brýnt að kunna til verka við glósuskrif eftir munnlegri framsögn (e. Note Taking in Lectures) þar sem á slíkt reynir hjá flestum í atvinnulífinu, t.d. á fundum þar sem verið er að kynna eða móta hugmyndir sem ekki hefur unnist tími til að koma á blað. Fleira mætti nefna sem rök fyrir því að þjálfa skólanema í glósun í kennslustundum.(#sjá meira).

Vandinn er bara sá að víða, og um langan aldur (#sjá dæmi) hefur það tíðkast að miðla svo miklu efni í fyrirlestrum, efni sem nemendur hafa ekki komist yfir með öðru móti en að hlusta og skrifa, að sjálf vinnan við skriftirnar verður svo  íþyngjandi að hún kemur að hluta eða iðulega að öllu leyti í veg fyrir virkt nám.  Þegar álagið er orðið svona mikið þá má segja búið sé að breyta heilu bekkjunum "handvirkar fjölritunarvélar".  Þetta er hrein sóun á tíma nemenda jafnt sem kennara.   (#sjá dæmi).

En hve mikið er eðlilegt að nemendur skrái hjá sér í hverri kennslustund?  Hve mikið má glósuálagið vera án þess að trufla eða koma í veg fyrir nám? 

Eftirfarandi tilgátu setti ég á námsárum mínum í  HÍ (1968-1969).  Hún er að minni hyggju mjög líkleg til að standast enda byggir hún á alkunnri þekkingu um minni mannsins sem er sú að ekki dugir að leggja of mikið á það á skömmum tíma því eftir því sem álagið vex þá minnkar það sem menn muna, bæði hlutfallslega sem og í heild sinni. 

Lítum á tilgátuna.
Hún er þessi:  "Eftir að komið er yfir 3-4  síður A4  af sæmilega þéttskrifuðum glósum í hverri kennslustund (miðað við 45-50 mín)   þá snarlega þrengt að möguleikum nemendanna á að muna eða hvað þá heldur skilja það sem fram fer í kennlustundinni.
Þegar glósuálagið er komið upp í 4-6 síður þá er andleg geta nemedanna nánast fullbókuð í afritun og nánast ekkert nám fer fram.   Þegar svo er komið má segja að viðkomandi bekk hafi verið breytt í "handvirka fjölritunarvél af verstu gerð".

Á þeim tíma sem fyrr gat (1968)  var það algengt að sumir kennarar virtust líta á það sem keppimark og góð vinnubrögð að fylla sem flestar töflur í hverjum fyrirlestri með útreikningum eða texta. Oft voru skrifaðar ca 4-6 "töflur" í hverjum tíma að mig minnir þegar mest gekk á.  Skriftunum fylgdu útskýringar sem margar þuftti einnig að færa á blað.

Þegar ég hafði mótað þessa hugsun árið 1968 gerði ég mér það til gamans að reikna hve miklu dýrara það væri "að stunda handvirka fjölritun námsefnis   með 25 manna bekk" en að gera það hreinlega í vél.  Þessi útreikningur miðaðist við að nemendur væru á verkamannakaupi við þessa "námsvana fjölritun". 

Niðurstaðan var vægast sagt "sjokkerandi.
- Það var ca. 50-200 sinnum dýrara að fjölfalda námsefnið á þennan hátt en að gera það bera með vél!
- Ekki þarf að spyrja að því hvor aðferðin hefur meiri gæði!
   (#sjá nánar um gloppur og villur í fyrirlestraglósum)
   Ég yfirfór þennan reikning árið 1998 og fékk svipaða eða heldur verri útkomu aftur. 

Rétt er að geta þess að eftir að ljósritunarvélar urðu útbreiddar í skólum þá hefur víða dregið mikið úr vinnusóun af því tagi sem hér getur. Í mörgum tilvikum er þetta komið í gott lag.  Kennarar dreifa megninu (beinagrindinni og etv. fl.)  (e. Partial Notes) (#Sjá Kiewra) af því sem farið er í tímanum til nemedanna.  Nemendurnir geta síðan bætt við eigin útskýringum á fjölritin.  (#Sjá hvernig þetta var leyst þegar árið 1969 í verkfræðideild HÍ).  Þetta eru góð vinnubrögð sem tryggja að tími nemendanna nýtist í virkt nám!  Þrátt fyrir þetta er hitt einnig þekkt enn þann dag í dag að gósuálagið er óhóflegt og það er ekki fyrr en á síðustu áratugum eftir að aðgangur að ljósritun varð greiður að verulega fór að draga úr fyrrgreindum "handabakavinnubrögðum" og sóun á tíma nemenda.   Vinnusóun með stórfelldri  handvirk fjölritun á námsefni eru vinnubrögð sem hafa viðgengist í skólum af öllu tagi um allan heim ekki bara áratugum heldur árhundruðum of lengi. Þau tíðkast víða enn þrátt fyrir nægan aðgang að tækni til fjölföldunar sem oh hinni nýju upplýsingatækni.  Tæknin ein og sér dugar ekki til að vinna á rótgrónum hefðum. Meira þarf til.  (#Sjá Wason)

Spurningin og tilgátan:

http://www.hi.is/~joner/eaps/wh_SCHAN.htm

NL_Gardiner and Restructuring
http://www.ala.org/acrl/invited/guskin.html
http://www.eriche.org/Reports/title.html
http://www.nmu.edu/soa/Success.html
http://www.aacu-edu.org/Publications/understanding.html

NL_Long Term Retention
NL_Long Term Retention for T
http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JVTE/v13n2/Abu.html

http://psynt.iupui.edu/kjohnson/cognition/LTM/index.htm

http://www.ppct.com/CJTN/html/cd1.html

http://www.nctm.org/jrme/abstracts/volume_17/vol17-01-jan1986.html
http://www.learner.org/theguide/journals.html

http://www.opusedu.com/methodology.html

NL_Long Term Memory

NL_Long Term Memory not lide for Psychology&
http://onesun.cc.geneseo.edu/~intd225/cpshrtrm.html

http://onesun.cc.geneseo.edu/~intd225/cpoutln.html
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/cog/index.html

http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/biblio.html

http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/cog/index.html

http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronaldl/noncartphil.htm

http://people.delphi.com/gkemerling/dy/index.htm

http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronaldl/noncartesian.html

http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itcon.html

Dynamic Learning Communities: An Alternative to
Designed Instructional Systems
Brent Wilson University of Colorado at Denver
Martin Ryder Storage Technology Corporation

NL_Lanny Arvan

NL_Dynamic Learning Communities

Instructional Technology Annotated Bibliography
This On-line bibliography is being constructed by the 1995 Doctoral Comps group at the University of Colorado at Denver,
Division of Instructional Technology. Members of this group include:

http://ouray.cudenver.edu/~pakonema/biblio.html

http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/ilt/papers/JohnBrown.html

NL_Long Term Recall

(C)  Jón Erlendsson 99.09.05

NL_Asynchronous Learning

http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/

NL_Asynchronous Learning for Higher education
    http://www.coe.ufl.edu/Leadership/Distance/6066/Resources.html

http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/aect_96.html   http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/Ryder.html
http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/martin.html

http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/iscrat_99.html

http://onesun.cc.geneseo.edu/~intd225/cpoutln.html

Dynamic Learning Communities: An Alternative to
Designed Instructional Systems

Brent Wilson
University of Colorado at Denver

Martin Ryder
Storage Technology Corporation

In the wake of the constructivist movement in psychology and education, the field of instructional design (ID) is reexamining its
relationship to learning and instruction. Many ID theorists are calling for more situated approaches to the design of instruction,
encouraging teachers and local groups to take ownership of the design process and adapt their methods and goals to the needs
of students and stakeholders (e.g., Wilson, Teslow, and Osman-Jouchoux, 1995). Others have defended traditional views of
instructional design as a prescriptive science, charged with developing universal methods and strategies that will result in
effective, efficient instruction (Merrill, Drake, Lacy, & Pratt, 1996).

The problem is exacerbated by the growing negative connotation of instruction. To many constructivist educators, what they
are trying to accomplish with students cannot be captured by instruction. Instruction is typically thought to have clear,
prespecified learning objectives, teacher-determined activities and instructional strategies, and clear boundaries in time and
space. What happens when learning happens, but not in such clearly directed, controlled terms? ID theorists are examining
alternate metaphors such as "learning environments" to understand and describe learning where the learner assumes more
direction and control over goals, content, and methods (e.g., Wilson, 1996).

The idea of learning communities has also been discussed as an alternative metaphor to traditional instruction. What happens
when groups of people gather together to provide mutual support for learning and performance? How would that work? Rather
than being controlled by a teacher or an instructional designer, learners might "self-organize" into functioning communities with a
general goal of supporting each other in their learning. That is to say, the function of guidance and control becomes distributed
among group participants. Specific roles of group members are not assigned but rather emerge from the interaction of the
whole.

This paper is our initial effort to outline the concept of a dynamic learning community as an alternative to teacher-controlled or
pre-designed instructional systems. We argue that dynamic learning communities constitute an important alternative to
specifically designed instructional systems, and that communication technologies can serve to support learning communities in
their efforts. We present below an outline of our current thinking. For future papers, we intend to gather more examples or case
reports concerning specific learning communities.

What is a Dynamic Learning Community?

Our definition for DLCs is offered in Table 1. We see DLCs as decentralized groups focused and interacting enough to form a
stable community. Let us first unpack the elements of the term:

Communities


Groups become communities when they interact with each other and stay together long enough to form a set of habits
and conventions, and when they come to depend upon each other for the accomplishment of certain ends.

Learning communities


In truth, all communities learn. One of the lessons of postmodernism and situated cognition is that learning cannot be
separated from action. We are learning every day, in everything we do. We add the qualifying term to our defin ition to
suggest a community sharing a consensual goal to support each other in learning. Everybody expects to learn and is
prepared to engage in activities at least partly for that reason. This would distinguish learning communities from those
solely concerned with entertainment, political action, or the performance of an immediate task. We would note, however,
that groups can have complex agendas, and that a group may have multiple goals that are commonly shared throughout
the membership, such as sup porting both work performance and learning among its members.

Dynamic learning communities


The term dynamic is added to distinguish the construct from traditional, centralized groups of learners found in many
classrooms. In a dynamic community, all members share control, and everyone learns, including the teacher or group
leader (cf. Wilson & Cole, 1997; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). Transformative communication is the norm, with both
sender and receiver of messages changed by the interaction (Pea, 1994; Ryder, 1995). Thus a classroom wherein the
teacher assigns a project, expecting the students to learn something but not expecting herself to learn--such a classroom
would not yet be a dynamic learning community because all participants are not engaged in the learning experience.

Dynamic learning communities (DLCs) are groups of people who form a learning community generally characterized by the
following:

distributed control;
commitment to the generation and sharing of new knowledge;
flexible and negotiated learning activities;
autonomous community members;
high levels of dialogue, interaction, and collaboration;
a shared goal, problem, or project that brings a common focus and incentive to work together.

We would expected to see the following additional characteristics over time:

Positive Outcomes

capacity to adapt to local conditions and evolve over time;
creativity and innovation;
crossing of traditional disciplinary and conceptual boundaries;
appreciation of diversity, multiple perspectives and epistemic issues;
community members who are responsible and skilled at diagnosing and addressing their learning needs;

Negative Outcomes

short-term inefficiencies;
lack of central control;
lack of predictability.



Table 1. Definition and characteristics of dynamic learning communities (DLCs).

DLCs are the sort of open, adaptive system described by Kevin Kelly in his book Out of Control (Kelly, 1994). Open systems
are defined by "(1) the absence of imposed centralized control; (2) the autonomous nature of subunits; (3) the high connectivity
be tween the subunits, and (4) the webby nonlinear causality of peers influencing peers" (Kelly 1994, p. 22, reformatted).

According to complexity theorists (see also Gleick, 1987; Hayles, 1991; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984; Waldrop, 1992), a
complex, adaptive system takes on life-life qualities such as intelligence, intentionality, self-correctability, and self-preservation.
Examples of complex systems include the stock market, ecological systems, and living organisms. Similar qualities of
intentionality and adaptivity should emerge in a learning community if they have the characteristics noted in Table 1 and further
discuss ed below.

Distributed control. In a typical classroom, the teacher is in charge. The teacher makes all the important decisions, such as
what to teach and how to teach it. In a DLC, nobody is in control--everybody is! Conventions, shared understandings, rules for
settling disputes or for governing communications--All of these are negotiated and agreed upon by the group as a whole. So are
learning goals and methods. If one member has a different vision for where the group should be going, this is presented to the
group and discussed. The community is bigger than any single member, yet it encompasses the perspectives of all members.

Commitment to the generation and sharing of new knowledge. Everybody learns. Nobody stands apart, pulling the strings
for the sake of the others. By sharing, listening, imitating, and watching, all members of the learning community benefit. Those
with greater expertise play critical roles in helping and modeling, yet they are expected to learn, solve problems, find answers,
right along with the rest of the group.

Flexible and negotiated learning activities. Specific learning goals and activities largely happen. There is a sort of natural
selection of activities--Those that are successful and lead to learning are repeated and developed and shared, while those that
are not supported by the group fall into disuse. This can lead to inefficiencies and a meandering process of development, but it
can work.

Autonomous community members. One of Kelly's key components of complex systems is that of autonomous agents; that
is, community members must have a certain room to direct their own activities and make decisions. There needs to be room for
variation and differences among community members; otherwise the system devolves down to a single controlled perspective.

High levels of dialogue, interaction, and collaboration. High levels of connectivity are essential to complex systems and to
DLCs in particular. A neighbor may be doing great things, but if that information is not shared via constant communication, then
other community members will not be aware of it. Information is what drives the feedback loops that lead to new learning and
change in the overall system.

A common focus and incentive to work together. DLCs need a reason to exist. This may come from shared interests, or a
common goal, problem, or project. Outside constraints, such as market or job demands, may provide an incentive for a group
to form. Work groups may be motivated to keep their jobs. The free market of Internet listservs may allow communities to
coalesce around very localized interests, such as breeding border collies or following the fortunes of an NFL franchise.
Public-school students may converge on a project or major assignment, such as a yearbook or newspaper. Students in
Carnegie-type classrooms may be hard-pressed to find a threshold of common purpose sufficient to create a truly dynamic
learning community. Certainly such a concept competes with the bulk of school conventions and cultural forms.

Consistent with other complex systems, we would expect to see a number of additional features emerge in DLCs, some
positive and some negative. These are briefly discussed below.

Positives

Capacity to adapt to local conditions and evolve over time. Because DLCs depend upon each member for information,
DLCs should be able to pick up on changes in the environment more quickly than controlled instructional groups. Behavior of
DLCs are more fluidly defined and more flexible than fixed-goal and fixed-strategy systems, allowing easier adaptation and
change over time.

Creativity and innovation. DLCs will tend to be more pluralistic than instructional systems because behavior is not centrally
controlled. Much variant behavior may prove unfruitful, but in amid the diversity, some ideas will show promise. Thus creativity,
change, and innovation should be more prevalent than in instructional systems. The DLC may experience more failures, but
more innovative successes as well.

Crossing of traditional disciplinary and conceptual boundaries. Typically, a DLC cares less about its disciplinary base than
the problem it is trying to solve.(1) Workers from a variety of backgrounds, for example, may form a DLC if they face a
common challenge or problem. Each person brings the baggage of their prior experience, and each submits to being influenced
by the community. The cross-fertilization that results can lead to new categories and new perspectives not previously perceived
by established communities.

Appreciation of diversity, multiple perspectives, and epistemic issues. Expertise is inherently multi-perspectival in a DLC.
Members come to respect knowledge that comes from a variety of sources--people of different backgrounds and information
of different types. Likewise, community members develop their own methods for testing proposed knowledge against a variety
of standards and codifying that knowledge in a way that can be shared throughout the group and across situations and time.
The upshot of this diverse environment is that community members progress in their epistemic understanding, perhaps moving
from black-and-white views of knowledge toward more sophisticated views of how we come to know things.

Community members who are responsible and skilled at diagnosing and addressing their learning needs. Here is both a benefit
and a challenge to DLCs. When control is distributed throughout the group, more demands are placed on individual members.
Becaus e teacher is no longer doing the hard work of deciding on goals, methods, and new knowledge, community members
must meet the challenge of assuming these roles. Metacognitive knowledge--knowing how to monitor one's learning and how to
address ill-defined problems--becomes an essential part of the community, which hopefully can also be shared throughout the
group. A systemic analysis may conclude that a given group cannot become a DLC because of deficiencies in this area. On the
other hand, a group may progress incrementally in these skills and move steadily toward more self- (or community-) directed
learning.

Negatives

Short-term inefficiencies. Just as a Vermont town meeting can be more laborious and inefficient than a professionally
managed city's well-defined processes, so DLCs can be more inefficient and indirect than controlled instruction. A
well-packaged instructional program may be able to teach a fixed set of rules more efficiently. If such a product were reliably
available, then a DLC would be wise to recommend its use. In the absence of such structure, however, DLCs may tend to
"muddle through" (cf. Bateson, 1972, pp. 3-8) with its share of redundancies, inefficiencies, lack of focus, and lengthy
processes.

In the long term, however, DLCs may be an efficient route toward learning. A cow does not look for the shortest route up a
hill, but rather keeps its head down and looks for a steady way up without noticeable climbing. The result is the most efficient
use of its energy (Allen, 1996). DLCs will tend to meander. But like the cow up the hill, the shortest path may not always be
the wisest path, and certainly not the most efficient path.

Lack of central control. DLC's decentralized control can be a handicap. The leadership and vision of a charismatic leader can
marshal community resources and stimulate purposive action. At times, the unwieldy, amorphous character of a DLC can
frustrate those who expect well-defined, focused directions in the learning process.

Lack of predictability. DLCs can frustrate the intentions of the best designers. A constant among initiators of DLCs is the
reported surprise at the direction the group takes. DLCs seem to have a mind of their own, and where they end up is not where
they start. This is true of distance-learning groups, workgroups, and learning communities within classrooms. Often the surprises
are pleasant, but the evolving nature of the group can be difficult for people trying to plan for the future.

In one sense, DLCs can be thought of as being learner-centered. Community members must take more responsibility for their
own learning than in most designed instructional systems. In another sense, however, the "centeredness" is found in the
community rather than the individual learner. Ideally, community members lacking metacognitive skills may participate and
receive support from the group. The group often dictates the learning agenda--or at least engages individuals in dialogue
concerning that agenda. The thought of individuals isolated, setting individual goals, pursuing those learning goals
individually--This is contrary to our conception of a dynamic learning community. So we tend to think of DLCs not simply as
tools for self-directed learning, but as supportive communities wherein a variety of learning goals may be pursued, some
individual and some shared throughout the membership.

Three Scenarios

In this section, we present three scenarios we have observed, where dynamic learning communities (or DLCs) are beginning to
take root.

Workplace learning. Martin works with a group of engineers charged with developing new products and specifications for
supporting those new products. Martin finds himself working on products whose standards have not yet been finalized, which in
any case will be replaced within 18 months by another standard or a newer, more capable product. When a standard doesn't
exist, where does an engineer go to get answers? Off-the-shelf training is no help except for generic skills. Customized training
products such as computer-based training take too long too develop and would not be cost-effective for the specialized needs
of the small engineering workgroup. Hiring a consultant/trainer to come from the university and give lectures is a possibility, but
often the expertise is not available, and when it is, the costs of pulling people away from their work in a high-pressure
environment can be enormous. Even traditional performance support systems--electronic or otherwise--exact a toll in time and
effort. These systems must be designed, and therein lies the problem: nobody knows enough to design them, and if they did,
they would be too busy putting out immediate fires to take the time. In short, expertise is scarce and doesn't exist in any form
specifically designed for instruction or support.

As an alternative to traditional training and performance-support solutions, Martin has been promoting the concept of shared
problem solving and archiving of solutions. When an engineer needs help, she asks for help among the workgroup. If someone
has an answer, the solution is shared publicly and archived for future reference. Getting engineers to think in terms of mutual,
collaborative support is a challenge, but given the pace of change and the demands for expertise, they really have no choice.
They must learn to share expertise, or they will not survive in their competitive environment. This general approach of mutual
support for learning is further discussed in later sections of the paper.

Academic culture. What is an academic program? Is a masters program the sum of courses required of students for the
degree, or is it something more? How does an academic unit's local culture serve to encourage learning--within classes, on
collaborative projects, or among individual students and faculty? Brent has been reflecting on ways that students, faculty, staff,
friends, and alumni all work together to foster learning and professional growth. The communications infrastructure provided by
e-mail and the World-Wide Web can serve to facilitate higher levels of connectivity and participation and new learning.

In the case of higher education, faculty members benefit as much as students from the interaction and sharing of expertise.
Because faculty members do not typically return to school for more degrees, they rely on professional interactions--including
stim ulus from students--as a key resource for new learning.

For the last couple of years, Brent and colleagues have been exploring ways to strengthen the collaborative sharing and
out-of-class learning that naturally occurs in and around the academic program (see Wilson, Ryder, McCahan, & Sherry, 1996
for a report of their work). Students with resources of their own become less dependent on professors and courses as sources
of expertise, and move toward a wider variety of learning activities and interactions. Over time, these informal interactions come
to constitute a learning community, and become as important to the education of participants as formal courses.

Internet discussion groups. Globally, a swell of informal or distributed learning initiatives have taken shape, using the Internet
as its medium. Indeed, the Internet serves as a sort of "petri dish" wherein a variety of informal cultures have begun sprouting
up. Many of these learning initiatives are independent of traditional instruction. Participants in a listserv such as IT Forum, for
example, may engage in high-level discussions concerning technology in education, yet their participation may not be reflected in
course credit and may not be governed by a teacher or instructional designer (Rieber, 1996). People may especially benefit
from participating on global forums when expertise is rare within their local environment. In a way, the monopoly of expertise is
being shaken loose from the universities, big businesses, large cities, and developed countries, and is being distributed
throughout the world via the Internet. The opportunities afforded by new communication technologies will eventually have
profound implications for how we think about learning and instruction.

The DLC Learning Process: The Dialogical Case

Learning can happen in a variety of ways within a DLC; however, a pattern of mutual support will tend to emerge, outlined in
Table 2 below. Each step is described in turn.


1.Articulate the learning need. This becomes the learning "problem" or goal.
2.Seek help in a group forum.
3.Engage in a help consultation.
4.Assess learning.
5.Share the solution with the group. Restate the problem and solution if necessary.
6.Archive the interaction or the restated solution for future reference.
7.Repeat this process, of any part, as necessary to support learning.



Table 2. A dialogical approach to learning within DLCs.

Articulate the learning need. A community member becomes aware that she or he lacks some skill or knowledge. The
learning need may not be fully analyzed; that is, how the needed knowledge relates to a particular problem or performance
need not be fully specified at the outset. The need to know becomes a "problem" or learning goal for the individual.

Seek help in a group forum. The community member then seeks help, often in a public forum, such as a distribution list or
listserv maintained by the DLC.

Engage in a help consultation. Another community member helps or consults with the first member. Help consultations may
draw on a variety of resources:

human resources
archived interactions
FAQs
information search tools
performance supports
instruction

Community members may discuss the issue at length, publicly--Or the help consultation may be simple, direct, and private.

Assess learning. Community members have a variety of tools to use in testing out new knowledge or skill. If the help
consultation provides incomplete information, the community member may succeed in filling in the missing information. A
recommended procedure can be tried out; if it fails and the problem can't be solved, the person goes back and reports the
problem and repeats the interactive process. If new knowledge is offered, it is tested against prior knowledge and
understanding. New Knowledge can also be compared across members of the group. Typically, a combination of
self-assessment and consensual agreement is the norm.

Share the solution with the group. After new knowledge or skill is tried out and confirmed, the solution is shared with the
group. A restatement of the original problem and its solution may be helpful, especially for future reference.

Archive for future reference. Ideally, every DLC interaction should be archived for future retrieval. If an automatic archiving
system is not in place, then each solved problem or significant interaction should be stored in a public location for future access
by any member of the group (Ryder, 1995; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994).

Repeat as necessary. Although listed in steps, the general process is flexible. Any step or set of steps may be repeated in the
process of generating solutions to learning problems.

The process above typifies interactions where a specific learning need is identified. A common alternative is the kind of informal
discussion characteristics of many listservs and discussion groups. Frequently, knowledge sharing is not problem-driven but
rather conversation-driven. In those cases, the learning activity is less strategic and less defined, but learning is nonetheless
supported by mutual sharing and concern around a topic of interest.

Managing Expertise in the DLC

One challenge DLCs have is keeping both experts and novices happy interacting within the same group. Novices have a
tendency to ask inappropriate questions and to not use the full resources available to them. Experts can feel overworked,
exploited, or unchallenged--feeling that they aren't learning anything. How does a learning community deal with the varying
needs of its members? Before we specifically address this question, a few general comments are in order.

Expertise is relative and multi-faceted. Expert and novice roles fluctuate within the community. Brent is an expert at one thing,
Martin at another. Some members may be expert at group cohesion, serving a critical support role in keeping the community
together. Others may participate irregularly, but have important input at certain junctions. Certainly labels such as "expert" or
"novice" do not capture the richness of the expertise that is distributed throughout a learning community.

There must be a legitimate self-interest to sustain individual participation. At the individual level, community members must each
feel a personal return on their investment in the group. In this sense, a perceived self-interest must accompany continuing
involvement with the community. There are, however, a number of grounds for self-interest. Some people get tremendous
satisfaction out of helping others. Some people like to think of themselves as being a source of expertise to others. Some
people have a need to feel connected to groups of people, even when significant new learning happens only irregularly. Some
people develop a sense of loyalty and constancy, committing time and resources to a community because it helps them find a
"home." All of these may be reasons why a person with considerable expertise may choose to participate in a diverse learning
community.

Martin has an example from engineering. An Internet discussion list exists around new standards for the next generation of the
SCSI interface. List members have a variety of motives for participating. A sales and marketing person may feel like a novice,
with a need to upgrade his understanding of technical details. An experienced engineer may participate because she feels a need
to maintain a link to "people out there" and understand people's reactions to proposals and possibilities. This knowledge will
then help her in establishing better standards. The list thrives because people depend upon each other and need the different
kinds of expertise available among the group.

We return again to the different needs of novices and experts within learning communities. Novices often feel intimidated, or
may tend to under-utilize available resources, while experts' time is often overtaxed with questions and service demands, leaving
little time for the renewal of their own expertise. We offer several possible strategies that DLCs might choose to adopt in
addressing the general problem, summarized in Table 3 below.


For Everyone:

Varied levels of discussion and activity (e.g., beginners vs. advanced)
A process that inducts beginners and moves them through increasing levels of expertise
Moderated lists

For the Expert:

Public and private accounts
Allowing anonymous posts
Private groups
Temporary consultations, participation

For the Novice:

User-friendly search and navigation tools
Private consultations and re-directions
Paid advisors/help specialists (e.g., AOL guides)
Standard problem-solving protocols (e.g., "have you read our FAQ?")



Table 3. Possible strategies for managing expertise within dynamic learning communities.

The strategies suggested in Table 3 are possibilities only. Several would curtail or constrain free interaction within the group,
thus inhibiting the "dynamic" nature of the learning community. Care should be taken not to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
Specific policies can best be determined by consensus among the local community, and evolve over time as needs change.

ID versus DLCs?

Both instructional design (ID) and DLCs can lead to learning. However, other things being equal, we believe that open systems
are preferred because they address more fundamental learning outcomes, e.g., self-directed inquiry, learning-how-to-learn,
metacognition, etc., and are more closely situated within a natural performance environment. The following table presents an
outline of variables to consider when choosing between DLCs and designed instructional systems.

Use Instructional Design if these conditions apply:

stable content over time;
well-defined content;
best for algorithms and rules;
heavy representation demands;
mastery of discrete knowledge is valued.

Try DLCs if these conditions apply:

volatile, changing, or new content;
ill-defined content;
best for complex problems and content;
heavy literacy and metacognitive demands;
community-directed, situated support for learning is valued.

The following are relevant (but NOT determining) factors:

level of expertise;
criticality of content.



Table 4. Factors to consider when deciding between designed instruction and dynamic learning communities.

Note that the criticality of the learning or the advancedness of the skills are not determining factors when deciding between
designed instruction and DLCs. That is, DLCs can be effectively used at varying levels of expertise, and with critically important
content. Where certification of expertise is necessary, however, individuals should demonstrate their expertise using accepted
assessment methods, regardless of the method of learning support.

In general, the more stable, defined, and discrete the content, the more sense to design instruction to meet the learning need.
Contrariwise, the more volatile, ill-defined, and complex the learning needs, the more sense to try dynamic learning communities
as a support strategy.

In the end, the decision between designed instruction and DLCs is partly one of utility and partly one of value. That is, given the
same ends, DLCs may prove more or less effective in accomplishing learning. Seen in this way, the issue is one of utility . Taken
the next level, however, designed instruction cannot be said to accomplish the same ends as DLCs, and vice versa. At this
point, the decision necessarily rests on the question: What learning ends do we really value? Members of dynamic learning
communities will come out of their experience with different skills, perspectives, and appreciations than graduates of an
instructional program. These differences must be respected and considered when choosing between approaches to learning
support--in addition to the utilitarian considerations mentioned above.

Costs. Modern in-school environments are conditioned to the structure of designed instruction and a dramatic shift from
traditional instructional models to DLCs would not come without the significant investment toward committed cultural change in
school environments. Such investment would include tools and structures that support new users, new strategies and new
understandings for teachers and students about the learning process. The dramatic successes for learning demonstrated by the
Dewey school of the 1930s is far outweighed by the dramatic failure of that model to become adopted by the traditional
educational infrastructure.

Out-of-school environments are more natural habitats for DLCs (see Resnick, 1987) and this mode of learning prevails, albeit
informally, as a dominant training culture in industry. However, the informal character DLCs rarely enjoys the same recognition
as formal training in the budget and planning activities of an organizaiton. The cost of DLC's in industry is the cost of allowing
employees to break away from their isolated duties to enable apprentice observation, collaboration, and formal discussions
about work related tasks and issues, the ability to archive new knowledge in retrievalbe structures, and the ability to engage in
Internet discussions and research activities that relate to job-specific problems and issues. At this point, we really don't know
enough about cost comparisons to offer a definitive cost-benefit analyses. More data on this subject will be helpful as DLCs
become more widely recognized, more heavily used, and formally studied.

Control of DLCs

As we made emphasized above, because DLCs are open systems, control is distributed throughout the community. This can be
both a strength and a weakness. Examples of problems that can arise include:

pornography access in a middle school;
bomb-assembly instructions two or three links away from your homepage; (2)
competitor "air space" on company-sponsored net;
flaming and dissent on discussion groups;
addictive and inappropriate behaviors;
mismatch between DLC learning and externally-defined curriculum objectives.

Deciding how to deal with these kinds of problems brings us back to the core differences between open learning systems and
closed instructional systems. We may choose to respond to problems by seeking to limit the openness of resources available to
a DLC . Possible methods for exerting some measure of control over DLCs include:

list moderation;
control over membership;
externally mandated rules and conventions;
imposed problems or learning activities;
imposed assessment standards.

Such attempts are controlling DLCs constitute a compromise of their open nature. Thus the learning community becomes
something of a hybrid between a DLC and a designed instructional system. Such compromises may be necessary in schools or
other real-life settings, but they should be implemented very carefully, since interventions can have unpredictable effects on
group functioning. This again is another area that we know very little about, in need of further research.

Conclusion

Heretofore, instructional designers have thought they were in the business of designing instructional systems to meet
prespecified learning objectives. But first the constructivist movement--and now communication technologies themselves--seem
to be thre atening this conception as the sole way to support learning. People are learning without help from designed
instruction! In many settings, in fact, "natural" learning is more prevalent than "designed" learning (Resnick, 1987). We believe
that the situation requires a reexaminination of our core roles. Are we in the business of designing instruction or are we in the
business of supporting valuable learning, wherever it may happen? The answer to this question will result in either a narrow or
broad interpretation of our role and its relationship to non-instructional forms of learning.

Our own belief is that dynamic learning communities are proper objects of study. We should seek to understand how such
communities function, how they grow, how they can be nurtured, and how they can be replicated across diverse settings. But
nurturing is different than designing. We must respect the integrity of the community. In time, we may come to think of ourselves
more as learning technologists than as instructional technologists, and learning support specialists more than
instructional designers. But these are issues best addressed at length in a separate paper.

In conclusion, the development of new communications, storage, and representation technologies constitute a watershed in the
history of open learning environments, making DLCs more feasible than they have been in the past. This is a situation where the
technology allows a concept to take shape, and the interplay between technology and theory will likely continue in the years to
come.

The decision rule concerning DLC versus ID may slide toward DLCs as we learn more about what works. In particular, we
need to better understand how established instructional systems (e.g., school classrooms) can migrate toward greater openness,
eventually resulting in a displacement of instruction for a community model. A transition model that outline this growth trajectory
would be a most welcome research agenda in the coming years.

In the meantime, we will continue studying how dynamic learning communities take shape, how they self-organize, and how
they support learning. Documenting cases empirically is an important part of that agenda, and will help to clarify several issues
mere ly touched on in this paper.



References

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NL_mryder   and  Erlendsson
Mryder Erlendsson

Notes

(1) Note our attribution of intentionality to the DLC (it "wants" this or "seeks" that). This issue is somewhat controversial; for
example, Bateson (1972) avoids such language because it leads to a category error--thinking that systems have a mind in the sa
me way humans do. Part of our message, however, is that complex systems do seem to have minds of their own; that is, they
come to behave as though they had intentions. Whether this crosses a boundary of appropriate discourse, and moves into an
anthropom orphic error, we will speak of systems as having intentionality because it is a useful shorthand for understanding
complex systemic behavior.

(2) This example comes from our own experience maintaining Instructional Technology Connections
(http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itcon.html). In response to a student's complaint, we can only shrug our shoulders and
mumble something about the wonders of an open system!

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