RSA

http://www.deakin.edu.au/dro/eserv/DU:30017596/stacey-sustaininganonline-2008.pdf

We talked about the capacity of the individual being the dividing line between being effective and failing attempts to create a learning community online, or at all. Focusing on the online or technology-based communities, there is a severe hurdle for students trying to accomplish this. There must be in the home an environment to facilitate this and if not the school. While we cannot control the home environment with the effect desired, we can control the curriculum that feeds the students’ ability to function at advancing levels. And Kniep asserts we should hold the administration culpable for this gap, that “a schoolwide focus on learning, inquiry, and reflective practice and a climate that promotes courage and initiative…. Schools that have low readiness for professional learning communities can also be characterized as having low leadership capacity” (57). Courage and initiative is a product of rigorous training that they should have before engaging in the online community—keyboarding is still our first class for freshman (mandatory)… keyboarding.
The article references the efforts of the Toronto Ministry of Education’s attempt to make this part of pedagogical dogma in the province. “In 1993, the Ministry of Education of Ontario and the Ontario Teachers'Federation provided funding for the creation of The Education Network of Ontario/Le Réseau éducatif de l'Ontario (ENO/REO) with two overriding objectives: a) to ensure that all teachers in Ontario had free access to the Internet as well as to each other, and b) to encourage the development of skills in the area of information and communication technology with the ultimate goal of using those skills in the classroom” (4).

The conclusion of the decade long study are awfully fscilinating:

Designers will have to balance the needs of the
community and the needs of individual members. The success of future
online communities will be heavily dependent on:
• the level of information overload,
• the tone of the environment (including all of the communitybuilding
practices needed for a healthy community), and
• outreach and marketing.

Perhaps that is the goal of the coursework in which I am currently enrolled.

Martin-Kniep (2006). Communities that Learn, Lead, and Last . , , 77-110. Retrieved from http://www.mcrel.org/PDF/LeadershipOrganizationDevelopment/5031TG_proflrncommfolio.pdf
Riverin S. & Stacey, E. 2008, Sustaining an Online Community of Practice. Journal of Distance Education. 22(2). 43