Designing for online communities of learning

This paper will explore the development of online learning communities among postgraduate students at Deakin University who were studying while working. The main objective of the research project being discussed here was to identify impediments to the development of online communities of learning and to suggest how these may be overcome so that students could benefit from the enhancements that online learning communities bring to communities of practice in students' workplaces. While communities of practice develop quite naturally among people working in the same physical space, as people learn from each other as they carry out their tasks at work, they are more difficult to establish in an online setting. Interviews were carried out with students and teachers and the data collected are described. Differing designs of courses, particularly the role of the teacher and the size of the classes, are considered and learning community development in both blended and distance learning environments are discussed.

Learning through research : a regional university and its community

Regional universities bring a research capacity to their home locations that is rarely available through other mechanisms in the region. University initiated research projects conducted locally can provide an opportunity for regional communities to examine their practices through a different lens. Through these projects, researchers in regional universities whose research includes sites internal and external to the region are able to connect their region to national and global contexts. Research presents many opportunities for regional universities and their communities to learn together.

There is some evidence that policy-makers are aware of the importance of behavioural relationships in the engagement of regional universities with communities. Policy documents tend to focus on the macro, institutional level benefits, structural incentives and impediments to university and community engagement. This paper examines research from one faculty based on a regional university campus: the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania in Launceston in Australia. It takes a micro view, considering benefits and factors influencing success for small research teams and individual researchers and their community research associates. A learning community approach, where synergies from collaboration can generate new knowledge for the benefit of all university and community players, emerges as an effective model for regional engagement through research.

O where are you going? O do you imagine? Reproduction and response : a reflexive sociology of scholarship of teaching and learning in practical legal training

My doctoral research studies Australian PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning. I argue that many PLT practitioners are motivated to engage with scholarship of teaching and learning in their work. There are, however, individual and extra-individual impediments.
PLT practitioners are lawyers that teach in institutional practical legal training (“PLT”). Satisfactory completion of mandatory PLT is an eligibility requirement for admission to the Australian legal profession. The PLT requirement is additional to academic legal qualifications. PLT is undertaken at a post-graduate level with, or after, the academic law degree.
My study investigates PLT practitioners’ motivations and capabilities to engage with scholarship of teaching and learning (“SoTL”). I study organisational symbolic support for SoTL in PLT, and organisational allocation of resources to SoTL in PLT.
The study involves individual and extra-individual domains of PLT practitioners’ work. It considers how social structures (e.g. “the juridical”) are inscribed into individuals’ practices (“teaching”) and, conversely, whether practices influence social structures.
My research adopts qualitative methodologies. These involve inter-disciplinary exchanges between law, legal education, practice research, sociology of law, cultural theory, and theory and practice of teaching and learning. My theoretical framework draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s “reflexive sociology”, and Michel de Certeau’s “heterological science”.
I sourced data from documents, and semi-structured interviews with 36 Australian PLT practitioners. Documentary sources include statutory instruments, speeches, reports, practice directions, histories, and scholarly publications.
To analyse the data I adopted Kelle’s characterisation of “theoretical sensitivity”, drawing on “explicit” and “emergent” analysis strategies derived from “grounded theory”. The explicit strategies were based on my theoretical framework. The emergent strategy involved sensitivity to non-explicit concepts and theories that emerged from the data. Computer-aided qualitative data analysis software expedited these methods.
My findings to date question dominant legal structures’ readiness for change, the implications of this for teaching and learning in PLT, and in particular for PLT practitioners’ engagement with SoTL in PLT.
The espoused rationale for mandatory PLT (in statutes) is improvement for the protection of clients, the administration of justice, and to assure quality legal services. The tacit rationale is improved quality of legal education, and experiences, for lawyers-to-be. My thesis argues dominant structures in legal education impede the espoused and tacit objectives, and impede PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning.