Online learning communities - Stephen Heppell
In the 20th century we built big things that did things for people. In the 21st century we help people to help each other. And helping people to help each other in learning is a whole different place to just delivering stuff to them. I think that is very challenging; I think it is very interesting; and I think it's very exciting and it is very different - we are moving to a very different place in terms of learning it’s a viral, agile, peer to peer, collegial sort of place that we’re moving to.
What technology has done is given us a much flatter playing field - it’s a much more collegial thing. Young children aren’t young online they can be whatever age they want to be; that means they can be in really engaging debates and they can be making a contribution - pensioners aren’t old they can be just interesting people. And I think that has built us these flat rather collegial hierarchies and I think people fall to collegiality quite naturally. I think they enjoy working together; they enjoy diversity in their learning; they enjoy the challenge of working with older people and the confidence of working with younger people. I think they enjoy all that. Technology allows all that - I think some of the models we had before were so rigid that learning in a natural way was a very difficult thing to do.
Belonging to two or three communities online is very powerful indeed. Communities that practise where other people are sharing what you doing; where sometimes the place you have gotten to already is somebody else’s aspiration - you can help them to get there. And somebody else has already arrived at a place that you are aspiring to be and you can swap ideas with them and its that joining up - it’s incredibly powerful.
It’s always fascinating to see what happens when children learn together and freed sometimes from the need to come together which can be quite an imposition sometimes. You do see some quite remarkable progress. I have seen primary school children… I had a primary school child who was leading an online debate about badgers and everybody else in the debate had a PhD and was average age 28. You couldn’t tell she was a primary school child - she was out researching like mad to make sure she stayed ahead of the people and knew what she needed to know and you do see people grow. But one of the nicest things about them is - it’s all of the hours people research and they represent and they retract and face to face sometimes they become very adversarial.
Online you don't get that - online people swap and exchange. There is sort of a parative esteem of contribution that is actually electrifying. Whether people are playing online games, managing their family tree, trying to work out how to sell their boat faster, you know the quality of discourse you get is gratifying.