Undergraduate Communities of Practice: Improving
the student experience, leadership skills and
professional identity of
Bachelor of Midwifery students
Sarah S. List, Jane Warland, Colleen Smith
The Healthcare Reality
•By 2025: Australia faces a drastic shortfall in nurses and midwives
•Compounded issue: students choosing to exit study
Why are they leaving?
•feelings of disconnect: university and profession
•make few friends
How can a sense of community help?
• Trust built with learning communities
• lowers sense of risk
• increases engagement and activity
Student communities
On campus: ↓ likely to drop out, better levels of academic success
BUT
Online access & timetable flexibility = ↓ time spent on campus
↓ likely to make friends
Online: lack structure, moderation, behavioural issues
Growth in off-campus flexible study
Almost 30% of students at UniSA study at least one course online
UNISA
1 Online course
28%
Fully off-campus
11%
Mature >30yo
25%
This Project: Created communities
Aim:
to determine the theoretical and practical roles of
undergraduate Communities of Practice, and the
structural and practical issues of developing and
implementing one
Research plan: Action Cycle
Evaluating
Planning
Acting
Observing
McTaggart; Greenwood.
Planning: Literature review for community design
Previous use of learning communities? Types of communities?
Student initiated and run communities
• Face to face: ‘hidden’ from academics
• Online: ‘hidden’, tends to be short term practical information
Academic initiated communities:
• Year level or small class group
• Often cease after course/year/project completed
Communities of Practice (CoP)
"...are groups of people who share a concern or a passion
for something they do and learn how to do it better
as they interact regularly”
The Domain: member connected via a shared domain of interest
The Community: they engage in joint discussions, share information, and
learn and support from each other
The Practice: members are practitioners that develop a repertoire of
resources, experiences, tools, and ways of addressing reoccuring problems i.e: shared practice
Needs to be ongoing
(Wenger, 2006.)
How to build an active, engaged community?
"...are groups of people who share a concern or a passion
for something they do and learn how to do it better
as they interact regularly” Wenger 2006
• Need an identity and to establish a sense of identity early:
Bachelor of Midwifery students (cohort size: 342 Jan 2013)
• 1 year UniSA development grant
How have CoPs been used?
Professionals - lots!
Undergraduates.... little
Lots of unanswered questions
• How to build an active, engaged community?
• Facilitation: Peer vs academic?
• Structure?
• Location?
Engagement is linked to facilitation
Staff directed
Garrison's Community of Inquiry
less community commitment by members
• post quality?
• unlikely to continue to contribute after specific use
• facilitation?
• Link to assessment (carrot and stick)
To be a sage, guide or ghost?
(Mazzolini and Maddison, 2002)
Engagement is linked to facilitation
Student directed?
Baran and Correia (2009)
Student leaders were inspirational, motivated students to
participate and provided a risk-free environment.
Correia and Davis (2008)
When led by students, interactions were more meaningful and
created a stronger sense of community
Poole (2000)
Student facilitation resulted in longer and a greater number of
postings**
Partnered Community Leadership
McDonald et al (2012) ‘nurtured’ CoP
Direct
activities/
content/
moderate/
advocate.
**time
Review and
advise
Student
Consultation
Panel
(9 students)
Reference
Group
Research
Team
Support and review of project
Community location - online
20% of UNISA’s total enrolments study in the SoNM
•
•
•
•
SoNM
UNISA
1 Online course
64%
28%
Fully off-campus
21%
11%
Mature >30yo
40%
25%
300 Midwifery students
Students are time poor
Midwifery Accreditation: 50% of time in placement
Following births – on campus classes may be missed
Creating the Community
Students did NOT want facebook for their platform
Informal groups already present, but no academic rigour
and issues around behavioural guidelines.
• Technical: easy to create and maintain
• Login: no special account required
We:
Evaluated platforms (Weebly, Dolphin, Google communities,
Wordpress, Buddypress, yammer, wikispaces, ning, meetup)
comim.weebly.com
Website areas chosen to encourage debate but link to assessment themes
Encouraging activity
Amount of activity in online spaces in an ongoing issue
• Link to assessment reward?
•"Students learn what they care about" (Biggs 1989)
Relevance to study not enough.
‘Distance’ to the community
Encouraging activity – Recreated in facebook
More members and
viewers
But few
posters/responders
Content type did not
influence response rates
Outcomes
Evaluative studies: broader cohort and more activity
Time commitments ongoing issue (panel and general members)
- professional programs have lower engagement rates)
(Alsford et al.)
Timing of project
- facebook student group already present (50 members)
Needs of the group: student version focuses on
- assessment issues
- pregnant ladies
- Humour
Read, but may not contribute
Selected references
•
Wenger, E. (2006). Communities of practice: a brief introduction.
www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm
•
Baran E, and Correia A. (2009). Student Led facilitation strategies in online discussions". Distance Education. 30.
•
Biggs, J. B. (1989). Approaches to the enhancement of tertiary teaching. Higher Education Research and
Development, 8(1), 7-25.
•
Correia, A. P., & Davis, N. (2008). Intersecting communities of practice in distance education: the program team and
the online course community. Distance Education, 29, 289-306.
•
Poole, D. M. (2000). Student participation in a discussion-oriented online course: A case study. Journal of Research
on Computing in Education, 33(2), 162-77.
•
Garrison, D.R., Anderson, T., and Archer, W. (2001). Critical thinking, cognitive presence and computer
conferencing in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education. 30, p339-361.
•
Mazzolini, M., and Maddison, S. (2003). Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor interventionon student
participation in online discusion forums. Computers & Education. 40, pp237-253
•
University of South Australia Development Grant.