What is a professional learning community and why be in one? I’ve had the fortune of being in a positive, growth-focused professional learning community (part of the Quality Enhancement Plan) at UT Arlington since 2012!
Co-Facilitators are: Melanie Mason (Dept. of Communications) and Nila Veerabathina (Dept. of Physics). The project is led by Andrew Clark and supported by the Provost’s office. Justin Dellinger (UTA Link Lab) helps behind the scenes.
At my university, we have a Professional Learning Community comprised of faculty and staff who gather about once or twice a month to collaborate, talk, and work towards learning together on a shared topic. We apply our knowledge towards a spring project which is focused either on best practices or action-research and individual, but around a common theme, in this case, virtual teamwork.
This year I will be facilitating-as part of team-a professional learning community. The goal of the group is multi-faceted: 1) learn together 2) grow together professionally around a shared subject: virtual teamwork in higher education teaching and 3) network. These all go together. PLC’s are an informal way to share ideas, talk outside of the constraints of formal meetings (although we will be gathering together at designated times).
Some of the topics we will be talking about (starter list of broad-based questions to consider):
- What is virtual teamwork? How does it function across various subjects inside and outside of higher education? What frameworks of learning and development inform virtual teamwork (e.g., networked learning, distributed learning).
- Who is doing the teamwork? Examples: instructor-focused virtual teamwork; instructor-staff teamwork; instructor-student teamwork (e.g,. digital mentoring);
- What are the tools of virtual teamwork and what are the “best practices” of connecting, both formally and informally?
- What are useful and practical ways to incorporate virtual teamwork into online and/or face-to-face courses? We will likely take a baby steps approach here and not try to bite off too much right away.
I’m a huge fan of the cross-pollination approach to learning, informally, where we can share ideas across departments and content areas. I love that PLC is a semi-grassroots, yet sanctioned, way to learn together. Looking forward to sharing ideas!
In addition, we’ll likely have some guest speakers and will be reading from three books and some additional readings. The three books from Harvard Business Press are:
Drawing on ideas from Jennifer Thoma, Amy Hutchison and colleagues (Thomas, Hutchison, Johnson, & Stromer, 2017) on facilitating PLC’s we will discuss and do the following in our meet-ups. Some of the meet-ups will take place virtually so we can enact the ideas of virtual teamwork:
- Talk about our aligned mission and aims.
- Regularly reflect on our teaching practice.
- Engage in reflective discussion.
- Provide feedback to one another on application of ideas to teaching, our own professional development, and new learning.
- Maintain a focus on learners.
Looking forward to a great year of learning, networking, and productively hanging out!!!!
Last year’s projects are here and overview video highlights are here!
Reference:
Thoma, J., Hutchison, A., Johnson, D., Johnson, K., & Stromer, E. (2017). Planning for Technology Integration in a Professional Learning Community. The Reading Teacher, 71(2), 167-175.
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Professional knowing involves a set of regulations or methods that point out how
folks can easily gain understanding and also acquire
brand new capabilities. The most common forms of
professional understanding include talks, workshops, seminars, seminars, training class, instruction programs,
and also hideaways. In these plans, folks learn about subject matters through corresponding along with an instructor, along with a teacher, or even with various other learners.
Training products and mixeds media presentations are
often made use of to supply courses. Some plans
permit individuals to take notes on research materials or on numerous activities, while others demand students to
respond to collections of concerns and to write documents based
upon the topics presented in the lesson.
Casual learning activities, on the contrary, develop when learners are actually engaged in group
scenarios. Group activities enable students to apply what they have actually learned in talks
and also in various other group activities and also to use what
they have discovered in various other group circumstances.
Some instances of informal discovering tasks feature activities, discussions,
staff activities, work ventures, seminars, and also academic vacations.
The majority of team activities are arranged around a specific
subject matter or objective.
Group tasks may have beneficial impacts on
understanding. Group activities encourage learners to talk to inquiries, to check out concepts,
to take part in dialogues, and to connect with others. Learners discover well, nevertheless, when instructors direct them in their group experiences.
When teachers are actually reactive and helpful, folks learn finest.
Many people find out most effectively when coaches
deliver very clear, succinct directions and when they listen to
what the students have to state and when they do traits depending on to
the instructions. Trainers likewise require to become responsive.
During group situations, if a concern is actually asked
that does unsuitable right into the lesson planning, instructors must address the question quickly.
Likewise, instructors should ensure they reside in a position to
urge questions and to answer all of them. Additionally,
if a participant carries out certainly not
acquire a question responded to, the trainer ought to take time to hear what the individual must claim as well as to
react to the person’s query.
Timeless conditioning as well as operant conditioning both
entail the procedures of lessening a response to a stimulus (condition) as well as of changing a behavior (operant).
Individuals discover most effectively, nonetheless, when they are taught what to accomplish (classical conditioning), when they
are actually shown what they should do (operant conditioning), or
even when they experience an motivation ( adaptation).
Based upon these guidelines, it seems likely that timeless conditioning will be most successful
for folks knowing just how to ride a bike. Folks
know most ideal, having said that, when they are actually motivated
to perform so. This may be obtained, partially, through supplying
all of them along with the chance to obtain self-worth through showing their skill-set ( adaptation)
or their experience (operant conditioning).