Building Learning Communities
Building Learning Communities is the act of environment innovation wherein people meet together and share mutual knowledge, experiences, and resources for learning. These communities play a crucial role in cooperation, promotion of different views, and the increase of personal and professional development among its participants.
The creation of learning communities not only the collaboration but also the fostering of a sense of belonging and the support for a collective knowledge sharing. To illustrate, teachers in a professional learning community may work together on different teaching strategies that will in turn, help improve student performance and allow for carried-out professional development.
Technology has been beneficial in the areas of communication and resource sharing in the learning community through tools such as online forums, video conferencing, and collaborative platforms such as Google Drive. For example, educators can create channels of messages in Slack and exchange the practices they have found to be the best, in real-time, regardless of the geographical distance that separates them.
It is intriguing that the association among members can be formed by conducting routine assembly sessions, holding interactive workshops, and implementing some shared programs that resonate with members' interests. To instance, a book club inside a community of learners can motivate the members to share their perspective and make it possible for them to discuss novels profoundly.
The success of the learning communities in their paths through the leadership is strongly dependent on the effective leadership and the active participation, and the latter is one of the issues dealt with by the leaders in the end. Visioning, facilitation, and provision of resources are the three aspects of the leader that are mostly compared to a facilitator, who is the one that allows the active participation and that of the group is mostly on target "group" keeper.