Projet 9
Communauté d'apprentissage en ligne pour membres de comité de retraite

Description

Comment les membres de comité de retraite peuvent-ils utiliser l'Internet afin d'explorer des stratégies d'investissement socialement responsable? L'Internet est le contexte d'apprentissage qui grandit le plus rapidement, mais il demeure aussi le plus incompris. L'Internet permet aux gens de communiquer avec les autres peu importe l'heure ou l'emplacement géographique, mais la technologie à elle seule ne peut assurer leur participation ou leur apprentissage.

Est-ce que les gens peuvent apprendre les uns des autres sur le Web? Est-ce que les gens peuvent apprendre sans les signaux physiques et sociaux qui nous aident à communiquer? Certaines recherches soutiennent que ce manque de signaux physiques et sociaux pourrait démocratiser les relations et encourager l'échange d'opinions divers. L'habileté technique de communiquer avec plusieurs personnes à la fois pourrait contribuer à une pratique inclusive et au développement d'une identité collective.

Ce projet explore comment les membres de comité de retraite pourraient collaborer les uns avec les autres et apprendre en ligne. Cette collaboration sera facilitée et appuyée par des éducateurs syndicaux ayant des connaissances sur l'investissement socialement responsable des fonds de pension. Chercheurs et participants travailleront ensemble afin de rendre cette communauté en ligne autosuffisante.

Pour plus d'informations, veuillez contacter Sherida Ryan : sryan@oise.utoronto.ca

Outputs

Présentations d'Universitaire

Sherida Ryan - "The Internet, Informal Learning and Unions". 14 octobre 2005. Conférence Des régimes de retraite qui travaillent pour nous, Toronto, Canada.

Sherida Ryan, Marilyn Laiken et B.J. Richmond - "Building Community - One Message at a Time". 17 octobre 2004. Conférence Des régimes de retraite qui travaillent pour nous, Winnipeg, Canada.

Michael Lizée - Commentary on "Building Community - One Message at a Time". 17 octobre 2004. Conférence Des régimes de retraite qui travaillent pour nous, Winnipeg, Canada.

Bibliographie

This book is directed toward closing the gap between theory and empirical research and improving social scientists' capacities for generating theory that is relevant and useful to their research. It introduces an entirely new paradigm for doing rigorous research based on a qualitative methodology. Glaser & Strauss show how theory emerges from the data, as an ever improving understanding of the significance of what is discovered. This book also presents a robust way for a researcher in any field, but particularly in the human sciences, to approach day to day research. It is the living method of creativity and innovation, presenting a system for understanding one's discoveries and framing them to producing meaningful knowledge.

In arguing against the conventional concept of learning that assumes a separation between knowing and doing, treating knowledge as an integral, self-sufficient substance, the article suggests situated features of cognition that represent people’s ways of knowing and learning. Drawing on research into cognition as it manifest in everyday activity, the authors provide explanations in terms of why activity and situations are integral to cognition and learning, and how different ideas of what is appropriate learning activity produce very different results. Their major point that knowledge is situated, being in part of a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. Based on this view, the authors argue that conventional schooling too often ignores the influence of school culture on what is learned in school. As an alternative to conventional practices, they propose cognitive apprenticeship that embeds learning in activity. They examine two examples of mathematics instruction that exhibit certain key features of this approach to teaching. This article is thought-provoking in that the insights into the relationship between situated cognition and cultural learning would have significant implications for theory, research methodology, and pedagogy in this field.

In this article the authors questioned the usefulness of weak ties within an electronic framework. Concepts about weak ties suggest they can be useful if they are numerous, diverse, and if the help providers have resources. The authors of this particular research suggested that the organizational motivation of the help providers as well as their firm-specific resources would be a better indicator of their usefulness. Their conclusions generally supported their hypothesis but there were unique aspects of the research that must be considered. One organization was studied and this particular organization was a global computer company that put a great deal of importance on their computer network and for 6 years encouraged staff to use it. As the authors acknowledge, technology alone would not facilitate the kind of weak tie sharing that would be useful. Many other nuances of this type of weak tie sharing are explored in this article.

This article reviews literature associated with communities of practice online. The author describes definitions put forward in other literature and offers clarification as to definitions and therefore direction of research. Firstly, the author points out that communities of practice are emergent within a community by the ways their contributors use the designed community. The studies reviewed indicate that not only is there a social structure to communities of practice, but also learning-by-doing and master-to-apprentice components. Secondly, virtual communities offer a milieu that reduces group norms that generally accompany face-to-face types of groups. However one of the problems identified by Johnson is that of withdrawal or attrition from virtual communities. The author argues that adequate scaffolding meaning technical support, loose facilitation, and communication skills can alleviate attrition. The author concludes by offering a framework for developing a case study for online communities of practice and suggests a number of questions that could be asked to facilitate researching the case study.

The purpose of the book is to set up a framework for discussions on social and technical issues of online communities. Designing usability and supporting sociability lays a solid foundation on which online communities can grow and thrive. Intended for both students and computer professionals, the book addresses the development of new online communities as well as the improvement of existing ones. It contains 12 chapters which are divided into two parts - Getting Acquainted with Online Communities and Developing Online Communities. The author illustrates the application of proposed community-centred guidelines with two case studies. The book explores the future of online communities and identifies areas for further research, such as communities and culture, consideration of ethical issues, adaptive interfaces, multilingual and interlingual support, security, scalability as well as human-computer interfaces capable of revealing behavior and representing content and emotion. This book provides a good balance between theory and practice. It is well-organized, comprehensive, and high-quality guidelines of community-centred development of online communities. It is highly recommended for students, community developers and organizers, investigators, and moderators and researchers in the field.

In this paper Tu and Corry use a sociological filter through which to evaluate the current research into online communities. Primarily the authors use Goffman’s notion of self-presentation to explore issues related to the online self, online self-presentation, online social presence and online interaction. Initially the authors point out that the current research into online learning is lacking in several respects. Research discussing the differences between traditional and online learning communities is absent. The vast majority of studies focus on end products rather than discussing the development of an online self. Lastly, most studies are short-term and therefore unable to truly understand the social life that results from an online community. The authors make a strong argument for viewing the research into online communities in a new way and they also make suggestions for future research direction including a more long-term approach.

These authors take on answering several important questions posed about computer-supported social networks (CSSNs). The authors look into the implications for society with the proliferation of CSSNs. They ask fundamental questions as to whether supportive relationships can be developed and fostered between people that may never meet and what would be the structure and nature of these online networks. Issues explored are communication and support online, social networks online, telework online, and global networks. There is an extensive discussion on strong, intermediate, weak ties and stressful ties online. The article argues that even though participants can be drawn away from “real-life” networks that this is a sign of the strength of the strong ties that can develop in CSSNs. The authors pay little attention to some of the antisocial behaviours found on the internet and most of the discussion focuses on the perceived positive attributes of the net. This article was written in 1996 and since that time there have been many rapid advances in online communication and networking, and more research on some of the less positive attributes of the internet.

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