Using Traditional Communities to Build Online Communities of Learning

I did a conference session for the AmeriCorps NW Network this week.  One of the things I do in some of my sessions is do a little exercise on traditional communities.  We split up and pick different types of communities  – all offline.  Then we talk about the characteristics of those communities and relate them back to Social Learning and how to build these communities of learning.  Doing this exercise we find a lot of insights into how they work and how to build.

This group gave the best examples I have seen: The impoverished community, a group of Ultimate players, Burning Man and a 4×4 group.  This was such a great cross-section of different type of communities that we learned so much (at least I did – I hope the others did as well!).

For example, how do you join?  The impoverished community is by circumstance, the Ultimate players by coming and playing, Burning Man by signing up and registering, the 4×4 group by being voted in.  Each of the questions I went through brought great insight into how and why we might form communities of learning.

There is a lot to learn about a learning community if you step back and take a look at how ‘normal’ communities work, and how they don’t.