The learner community is a magical place that allows many people who have never met to realize their dream of working together through an online model. It allows a group of people to communicate with each other and share past stories and successful experiences with each other. “community allows us to be around others who hold a common set of ideals and ideas and who can validate our own experiences and beliefs” (Major, 2015, p.227)
For myself, I was benefited by this learner community. When I was a freshman of university. I still remember that my first class was law. Because law have so many problem that need to be discussed, there are group assignments. So the teacher is divided us into many study groups. I have four members who come from all over the world, including Americans, Indians, Chinese, and Koreans. Because everyone’s personal time is different, everyone has their own arrangements. So our time is difficult to be unified. So a team member suggested that we use the cloud of chrome. That’s a platform where we set up an account and we can manipulate each other like a learner community. Then we began to divide the work and each person completed a part and made a note. Because I was in contact with this form for the first time, so I still have a very skeptical attitude. When it was my turn, I opened the community cloud and I was excited to find that the previous work was done very well. There are comments each parts, I just need to finish my part. This greatly saves us time to meet. Then we stipulate that if there is any doubt, we will leave a message and every student will go online to modify it at each night. And also we shared the experience of each other’s problems and smooth solutions. This greatly improves the efficiency of working together and makes things a lot easier.
In addition, I also agree with major’s point of view. It is difficult to contact students to create a learner community in online courses. But if, like my experience, if we have a lot of contact with the learning members. Putting forward their own ideas, communicate more, and develop a variety of programs. Then nothing can stump us. And now there are a variety of technologically advanced social media, like bluejeans, facebook can help us study well.
Reference
Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching online: A guide to theory, research, and practice. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press
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