Communities
and Welfare Practice:
learning
through sharing
Liz
Timms, University of Edinburgh &
Pirjo
Helppikangas, University of Lapland
Background paper for a workshop at the conference of the
European
Association of Schools of Social Work
June
10 - 13 1999
PART I Rationale
The
community as a context for welfare practice
Collaboration
as a method for working and learning
The
internet as an enabler of collaboration/collaborative learning
PART II The experience
SCHEMA and Community Portraits
The
Community Portraits proposal
Preparing
the programme
Meeting
the technology
Community
Portraits: starting the trial run
PART III Lessons learned and questions raised
The
teaching-learning shift
The
importance of an effective start
Mixing
the media of communication
Collaborative
learning or collaborative working
Personal learning from the collaborative context of Community Portraits
Introduction
The subject of this paper is Community
Portraits, an online course designed for welfare professionals. The course topic is the community and the
teaching method is collaborative.
This course has been developed within SCHEMA, (Social Cohesion through Higher Education in Marginal Areas) an EU funded project which is
investigating the use of the Internet
and computer mediated communication for collaborative learning in continuing
professional development. Simply put
the collaborative learning base of all courses developed in SCHEMA must be
applied via the Internet.
The first part of the paper sets out the
rationale for the three main aspects of Community Portraits:
The
community as a context for welfare practice
Collaboration
as a method for working and learning
The
Internet as an enabler of collaboration/collaborative learning
The second part outlines the
experience of a trial run of the course
to date (late April 1999), and the final part presents some of the questions
raised for us by this early experience.
PART I
Rationale
The
community as a context for welfare practice
The literature of social work has always
recognised the professional relevance of the social situations and social
institutions that impinge on clients’ problems. Families and communities are implicitly part of this backdrop to
practice as are broader political issues such as poverty and exclusion. What has not been so readily accepted is that incorporating
this recognition into professional
practice can take as its starting point either
clients and their problems or communities,
their dynamics and their implications for community members.
The casework origins of professional
social work and government policies for service development have each
encouraged practice that starts with clients and their problems. The case for the alternative, community focussed,
starting point has been less commonly stated but has been presented by a number
of authors including Hadley & Leidy (1996), and case studies exist of
social work practice and service with a community based approach in both
statutory and voluntary sector agencies.
In Britain, the Barclay Working Group
(1982) presented a case for community oriented social work based on their
definition of community in terms of “local networks of ... relationships with their capacity to
mobilise individual and collective responses to adversity” (p xiii) and their perception that:
“Social workers, as the
spearhead of the personal social services, may find ways of developing
partnerships between informal carers (including self-help groups), statutory
services and voluntary agencies.”
(p.202)
In an article developing ideas from the
Barclay Report, I suggested that:
“Social workers at local level will need to obtain a grasp of
community life - cultural patterns and the meanings these hold for members of
the community. ....... Clearly what is
needed is a service that works in partnership with the community as a whole,
supporting existing support systems, promoting new support systems when
appropriate and mobilising appropriate specialist help only when that is the
most precisely suitable action. In
working with the community the
emphasis would be on supporting and extending the caring systems that already
exist - neither taking them over nor supplanting them.” (Timms, 1983 pp 405-415)
This partnership is well illustrated by
Green (1989, p 120) in a case study of his team’s development of a community
social work approach:
“Individual casework remains
very important to the team and is vital to sensitive assessment of service
required by clients and to intervention in personal problems. We do not live in
isolation from the community and we have tried to capitalise on all available
resources in that community to improve upon and take over some of our
tasks. By mobilising the abilities of
others we can find some time to practise our own skills more effectively.”
In 1990 Martinez-Brawley set out a full argument for a
community-based approach to social work including theoretical bases,
documentary evidence from small towns
and a discussion of implications for practice:
“ Community-oriented social work
depends on an attitude of mind that sees community as a potentially nourishing
and important source of support and identity to its members. The notion that community nourishes its members
is not commonplace. It is probably
not an idea that is in the forefront of consciousness when social workers
help clients make decisions.” (Martinez-Brawley
1990 pp 216-7)
Martinez-Brawley’s presentation is thorough
and illuminating. It suffers only
from the unnecessary limitation of her argument to small, territorial communities
when it applies equally well to other conceptualisations of community.
Since a pervasive element in the definition of community appears to
be a sense of belonging, communities could helpfully be conceived and understood
as sets of people linked by interest or location or whatever
they feel holds them together. Wellman and his colleagues (1988, pp 130 -
184) have developed the notion of social networks as personal communities,
a view which supports this consistent but more flexible approach to community.
Wellman and Gulia (1999) have also recently extended the notion
of communities to computer mediated personal networks: virtual communities as communities.
It may appear from these arguments that a
community orientation in social work
practice depends on a benign view of communities. If this were so, such an approach would be naive and probably
ineffective. However, Martinez-Brawley
(1990) and other authors (Timms,1983, Hearn & Thomson, 1987) refer to the
negative pressures and impact of communities on their members both as
informative aspects of the life contexts of clients and as significant factors
for the potential of social work
intervention. These authors are
clearly aware of the role that local and personal networks play in
enhancing or undermining the
opportunities and constraints of their members. They also make clear reference to the research evidence
indicating the contribution that local
communities can and do offer to individual welfare as well as the power they
have to undermine unwelcome social work intervention strategies. The message is that social workers ignore
the dynamics of the community at their peril.
Collaboration
as a method for working and learning
Collaboration has been an invariable
feature of welfare practice in general and social work practice in
particular. It has also been a focus
of much criticism: the amount of our experience appears to have made little
impact on the quality of collaborative practice that can be assured. Structures and procedures have been
established, such as child protection
committees and guidelines, but, helpful though these may be, they are
likely only to deal with problems in collaboration that are structural or
procedural. Essentially collaboration
is an interpersonal process involving relationships with colleagues within and
between professions and/or agencies.
It is about people working purposefully with people, across boundaries
of various kinds and regardless of personal congruity. It is not easy. It is therefore regrettable that, whereas a great deal of
social work literature and education
concentrates on workers establishing and sustaining effective working
relationships with clients, the processes of productive worker-to-worker
relationships are given little
emphasis.
It might be argued that, like riding a
bicycle, relationship skills established in one relationship context will be
intuitively transferred into the whole
range of a worker’s interpersonal relationships. It takes only a moment of reflection to recognise the fallacy of
this. How many of us have been
confronted by pleas of our partners or children not to “social work” them when
we have made inappropriate use of our social work skills in our personal
relationships? Even recognising the
worker-client relationship as a base for collaboration, the components of that
relationship are systematically different from worker-worker relationships at
least in terms of purposes, processes, knowledge bases and power. Add to that the complexities inherent in
user involvement with its inevitable accompanying dynamic of differences in
purposes, levels of power, interpersonal perceptions and processes, and it
quickly becomes clear that there is a need for social work education to address
situationally specific relational requirements of collaboration in social work practice.
The requirements and opportunities of
collaborative learning may be connected in some way to preparation for, or review of, collaborative practice,
but if any connection exists its nature
and impact are not clear and the process of collaborative learning itself is
currently under sustained experiment and discussion.
Hartley (1999 p.4) mentions common
reference to the advantage of collaborative learning in encouraging “active
learning and more thoughtful participation from teachers and students”. Referring to evidence that students who self-question and self-explain
show greater understanding and more easily acquire new knowledge, he says,
“How much
better therefore if such questions and explanations are addressed not only to
oneself but to others, so that queries seeking clarification, challenges
requiring justification, inconsistencies needing resolution, qualifying
implications and differing views can become part of the argumentation and
discourse processes of the group.”
The questions Hartley (1999 p.8) poses at
the end of his opening statement for an on-line discussion of effective
approaches to collaborative learning indicate an early stage of
development. They refer to the
characteristics and advantages of collaborative learning; ask whether the
difficulties have been underplayed and seek discussion of the possible shifts
in teacher attitudes and skills that might be required. Most of the current discussion derives
from Continuing Education and relates to the recent burgeoning of collaborative
learning via the Internet. In attaching
importance to learning exchange between peers there is recognition of the
potential of the social processes in
learning for enhancing the development of knowledge, skill and
understanding.
Face-to-face collaborative learning has
long been a part of social work education where there has been an emphasis on
working in groups and learning from one another including, rather than relying
on, the tutor. The
Enquiry-Action-Learning method set out by Burgess, (1992) makes formal and
substantial demands on students to contribute to, as well as to learn from,
their peers. Perhaps implied in this
collaborative learning process in social work education is not only a link to
the collaborative requirements of practice but also a professional values
message about non-hierarchical attitudes to people and their potential. But is this our intention? If it is, do we have the evidence that it
works? If it does should we be
developing more and new initiatives in collaborative teaching/learning
processes?
The
Internet as an enabler of collaboration/collaborative learning
Formal education, when made compulsory was
intended for children. In Britain the
law fixed the age at which a child
could leave school, though school education has been available beyond that age
on a voluntary, but encouraged,
basis. The steady raising of the
school leaving age in Britain has stopped at 16, not simply setting the
boundary between childhood and
adulthood, but increasingly recognising the importance of continuing
education. The adult education of the
1930’s and 40’s became the continuing education of the 1970’s and the lifelong
learning of today, the change of language appropriately reflecting a genuine
shift from basic learning to read, write and count, to a sense of excitement
about learning and its potential not only for life management and job-seeking
but also for personal development.
More recently the spread of computer based
learning in the school classroom and increase of personal ownership of
computers has interacted with the development of the Internet and the World
Wide Web to open up exciting possibilities for educational development and
involvement, now potentially barrier free as long as there is a political will
to ensure access for all. The
implications for life-long and distance learning were immediately recognised
and seized, though, as with earlier distance learning, the point has been made
that the new opportunities require of
teachers new attitudes and skills. As
many have discovered from experience, the straight transfer of lessons or
lectures on to the World Wide Web, using whatever chosen learning framework, is neither adequate nor likely to be
educationally successful. The
experience described below confirms this understanding.
More exciting than the use of the Web to
overcome problems of distance in the provision and exchange of information is
the recognition of the many other barriers that computer mediated communication
can overcome: difficulties with
mobility, restrictions on timing, social exclusion, shame or fear in
interpersonal encounters, difficulties with unbalanced status or power in
relationships. The flexibility and
anonymity of the Internet can encourage and support access for everyone to
information, learning, networking and socialising on a phenomenal scale where
quantity and selection can be controlled entirely by the participant. There is huge potential for empowerment of people here. People can learn what they want when they
want and where they want: the locus of
control shifts from the teacher to the learner.
Of course the Internet challenges the
gatekeeping processes associated with previous information systems which
required (and still require) authorisation to enter and retrieve
information. On the Internet anyone
can make information generally available that they legitimately hold and can
legitimately disseminate. Information
made openly available on the Internet is available to anyone able to find
it. Even for many who are liberal
minded this devolution of control to the individual is disconcerting. It raises many questions, from vetting
standards of information put online to dealing with potentially damaging
impacts of some information on those who receive it. A natural impulse may be to seek to impose some controls on
information input and access thus inviting, if such controls are now possible,
reinstatement of power relationships in information flow. A more constructive approach is to seek to
promote the advantages of the liberation of information while preparing to put
in place appropriate actions to limit, mediate or respond to damaging impact as
and where it occurs.
Clearly computer mediated communication facilitates
collaborative practice as well as collaborative learning. Indeed our experience in Scotland has been
that colleagues in remote areas were first to take up the opportunities that
video-conferencing and online communication offered to overcome long and difficult
journeys to case conferences. Academic
centres in remote areas also seem to have been quicker to take advantage of
the new technology than those in more
central locations. But there is
still work to be done everywhere
to increase awareness of the many other barriers to learning, mentioned
above, that might be breached if Internet access were made easily and freely
available. From this it clearly follows that the flexibility
of the Internet to encourage the take up of learning opportunities by those
otherwise obstructed could usefully be extended into social opportunities
by presenting the learning as a collaborative - that is a social - process.
The many examples of online collaborative learning recently and currently
being undertaken, including Community Portraits and other SCHEMA modules,
will hopefully yield evidence of feasibility, effectiveness and best practice.
PART II
The
experience
SCHEMA and Community Portraits
The SCHEMA project, within which Community
Portraits is being developed, is funded by the European Commission as part of
the programme orchestrated by the Educational Multimedia Taskforce. The Project is co-ordinated by the
University of Stirling in Scotland, with partners in Finland (Oulu and
Lapland), Sweden (Orebro and Karlskrona-Ronneby) and Germany (Stuttgart).
The development aspect of SCHEMA involves
the use of the World Wide Web and advanced communications for teaching and
learning, hoping to make use of Network ComputersTM. The
emphasis is on the use of the web to meet the continuing professional development
needs of health and welfare workers in remote communities.
A major research interest of the Project is the extent to which the
Web can support collaborative learning. Further
details of SCHEMA are available from the Project's Web site (http://www.stir.ac.uk/schema)
In 1998, SCHEMA was seeking courses that
might appropriately be adapted for delivery within the SCHEMA remit. As a result of an institutional merger in
Edinburgh, a social work module which
used face-to-face collaborative methods for studying communities was
about to be dropped. ‘Exploring
Communities’, as it was called, was seen as an ideal vehicle for testing the
use of the Web for collaborative learning.
The opportunity was therefore taken to negotiate purchase of staff time
to develop that module within the SCHEMA framework. Face-to-face Exploring Communities for social work students was
to become Internet based Community Portraits for professional health and
welfare workers.
The
Community Portraits proposal
Community Portraits is presented entirely
via the Internet making use of a learning environment developed at the University
of Oulu. It requires participants to
work collaboratively in small groups to produce ‘portraits’ of the communities
in which they work. Ideally groups of three participants, each
of whom works in a different country,
work together, (one insider with two outsiders) to produce a comparative
portrait of their three communities.
Participants are expected to use their cultural and individual
differences of perspective to sharpen each other’s awareness of their own work
community. This collaborative process
is also expected to enhance the participants'
awareness of their own, as well as each others, perceptual frameworks
and should encourage them to recognise the advantages of collaboration for
extending ways of gathering and interpreting information, deepening
understandings and developing ideas and innovations. The extent to which these aims are achieved will be evaluated as
required by the research framework within which SCHEMA operates.
Supervision and support for participants
is supplied via the Internet. The
expertise of the SCHEMA developers and
the technical teams throughout the Project is available to the tutor and to
participants to assist their collaboration and to enable them to optimise
their use of the technology available in the course of their work and in the
production and presentation of their
portraits of the communities on the Internet.
Preparing
the programme
The enthusiasm generated by the
novelty of taking a course to which I
was seriously committed into a teaching context which seemed to open up exciting possibilities and demand new skills
proved very necessary. The practical
details that required attention in order to have the course ready and workable
for students were tedious, extremely time consuming and constantly demanded rethinking the teaching-learning
process. There needed to be a
deep-seated cushion of enthusiasm to sustain me. At each step of
construction it was necessary to
reflect on how every detail of the
material - the tasks or the timing or whatever - would be experienced by the
students. Unlike face-to-face
teaching, there would be no opportunity for on the spot modification in
response to puzzlement or worse in a student’s
reaction. I was advised that, in the
students’ interests, the tasks and activities, week by week, for the whole
course would need to be spelled out in detail with accompanying time estimates and that this information would need
to be set out in full at the beginning.
I needed to recognise that distant students with other work commitments
need to know what is expected of them so that they can plan their time. The practical difficulties of planning and
managing the presentation of detailed guidance and instruction was eventually
resolved with advice to tabulate the course information. This proved a breakthrough.
It was difficult, however, to see how I
could retrieve some of the flexibility for ongoing negotiation with students as
I normally do in the course of any experiential learning that I deliver and
that I wanted Community Portraits to offer.
Meeting
the technology
I have learned that it is a feature of
technologically driven projects that excitement about the
potential of imminent technological developments breeds creative notions amongst
the technophiles (eg SCHEMA leaders) about applications. So it was that in my introduction to the
possibility of transnational, collaborative project work on communities using
computer mediated communication, I naively accepted the practical possibility
that the course could be conducted via
desk-top video-conferences.
Students would be able to see and talk with one another so minimising
the estrangement of remote links
without speech or vision. This
opportunity to see and hear one another would be a significant support for the
major part of their work which would be in some form of electronic print. A clear aim was that technology should not
be a barrier. It must be easy to use,
even with no training. With the use of
Network ComputersTM the familiar problems of software incompatibility
and of Apple Macs not understanding, and not being understood by, anyone else,
would be overcome at a stroke.
Students would put their Smart Cards into their NC’s, and enter a system
which had on it all the software and Internet connection facilities that they would need and which
rendered all their contributions compatible.
There seemed an excellent match between the potential of the content and
methods of Community Portraits and the promise of the technology. I was being offered a vast new arena for diffusion of my commitment to
embedding welfare practice securely in the context of the communities in which
it is being conducted. This ideal is
still in the sights of SCHEMA, but I am now more realistic about my role as a
pioneer.
Unfortunately development problems meant
that NC’s are not available and prohibitive pricing has effectively ruled
out standard use of desk-top video-conferencing.
One result of this was a need to scrutinise more carefully our options
for learning environments within which Community Portraits would be set up.
Two frameworks were on offer from our partners at the University of
Oulu, both of which were designed specifically for collaborative learning.
Initially we eliminated Telsipro because of its focus on simulation
while we were emphasising that our community-focussed work was real rather
than simulated. The alternative,
Proto (Project Tools for Learning) offered a structure for plenary and small
group collaboration with various other features which seemed ideally suited
to our needs. At the last minute,
however, we recognised that without Network ComputersTM, Proto made demands on the technical expertise of students that we wished to avoid
and that had been overcome in Telsipro.
We switched to Telsipro, but are not using its simulation facilities
in Community Portraits. SCHEMA managers
are exploring various possibilities of providing the facility that would have
been provided by NC’s. This could
open up the option of Proto again.
Community
Portraits: starting the trial run
For the trial run of Community Portraits
nine participants were 'enrolled' on 24th February 1999: two in each of two sites in Finland,
(Lapland and Jyvaskyla) two in Stuttgart and one in each of three sites in Scotland. Three are postgraduate students, three are
university lecturers, one is an undergraduate student, one a youth strategy
worker and one a retired social work team leader. Three small groups were formed, each group made up of
participants from different countries where possible, or at least from
different sites. The collaborative work
of the small groups must therefore, of necessity, take place via the
Internet. One person never ‘appeared’
and, at the time of writing, (late April) one further person seems to be having
technical difficulties getting access.
One person is participating with two colleagues to support her, to help
with the community-based tasks and to stand in on the Internet link if and when
needed.
The University of Lapland Social Work
Department took an early interest in this course, found candidates and
allocated staff to monitor it. This is
consistent with the emphasis in its programme of social work education placed
on community contexts for social work practice.
Prior to the ‘enrolment’ we mailed to the
participants a hard copy of the introduction to the Telsipro learning
environment and instructions for use.
These are also available on line within Telsipro. On 24th February we e-mailed everyone their
user name and password and the web address for accessing Community Portraits
(bookmarked as copor), suggesting that when they logged in to Telsipro/copor
they should browse the course material that had been entered. We also asked them to enter an introductory
statement about themself and, if possible a photo. Those who were not equipped to send photos electronically sent them by snail mail for us to enter
them. The first photo arrived within
an hour of the ‘enrolment’ mailing.
The planned pace of Community Portraits in
the first four weeks proved unrealistic.
Clearly we had not allowed enough time for people to join in and
familiarise themselves with the system.
We had short-sightedly decided to use a course exercise as a vehicle for
people to begin their interpersonal exchanges and we soon found that the week
by week planned programme of student exchange was falling behind. Adjustments had to be made to follow the
pattern of student activity. However,
since Community Portraits is a structured programme of collaboration towards
the completion of one major task, this adjustment seems appropriate.
Community Portraits is now settling down
to one group of three (Group 1), one of two (Group 3) and one of two (with two
extras in one community) (Group 2).
The pattern of activity varies
from group to group. One pair is
making regular use of the chat facility to negotiate and complete staged tasks
and use of the documents folder to present their ideas to other participants. The other groups have made no use of Chat,
though Group 1 is trying to overcome technical problems to do so. Participants in these groups have made
individual contributions to their small group but collaborative exchanges are
slow to develop.
Erratic behaviour of the technology may explain some hesitations in the
collaborative process. In particular
unreliable Chat buttons have sometimes disappeared across all participants,
including the tutor, and sometimes disappeared on individual machines. This type of variation creates uncertainty on different levels: whether the Chat button will be there or not
might be a collective (and thus supported) trouble; whether it is just my machine or is it everyone, is experienced
individually and may generate more vulnerability, especially since checking out
requires the time for your query to be picked up, read and replied to. When queries about technical problems have
been raised a “me too” response, rather than a separate statement of the
problem, represents a collaborative approach to the engagement which, though a
small point, may have considerable significance to understanding what helps or
hinders the development of effective computer mediated collaboration. Early responses from participants indicate
that ease of use of the technology is highly significant for the development of
collaboration and that the reliability of the technology is crucial.
There is also a possibility that our
experience of a slow establishment of collaborative relationships is simply an
indication that online relationship building may reflect its face-to-face
counterpart but in slower motion.
Previous experiences in face-to-face simulation exercises on
collaborative working have persistently resulted in evidence that collaborative
relationships take time to develop and that the process benefits from being
steered. Provision for this time
would need to be built into any collaborative learning programme according to
the time factors deriving from the medium of communication. There is still much to be learned about the
processes and dynamics of collaboration in general.
Reports on computer-mediated collaborative
learning most frequently advise a face-to-face induction. While accepting the efficacy of this, we
have chosen to offer Community Portraits as exclusively online. The possibility of a different arrangement
which would permit face-to-face at one or more stages is not problematic, but
it ignores the needs of students who are remote or otherwise constrained for
whom a face-to-face requirement would pose a barrier to involvement. This issue is pursued below.
PART III
Lessons learned and questions
raised
The
teaching-learning shift
A significant lesson learned confirms the
experience of others reported frequently in online papers and discussions about
online collaborative learning:
that the learning goals and
processes must drive the technology rather than the other way round, and that
for anyone newly shifting from the real to the virtual classroom this requires
some acrobatics in perception and thinking.
All that I would add to earlier comments is that reading and noting the
advice in advance did not prepare me for the impact that this shift had on my
perception of my skills as an educator.
Furthermore, the absence of
direct contact with students deprived me of the opportunities I would normally
use to check out my effectiveness moment by moment as I proceed with my
‘reflection-in-action’ Schon (1988). I
had to rely almost entirely on self-assessment and this made stringent demands
on my professional self-confidence.
The
importance of an effective start
As all social workers know,
intervention starts with the very first
signals of communication and the messages sent and received at that point,
whether through content or process, may determine the rest of the working
relationship. But we also know that
faulty starts must be redressed.
So it has been with this trial of
Community Portraits. We launched the
course with a mass of information and too little guidance to students about how
to begin to engage with it. The weekly
tasks with their demands for preparation before, action during and review
afterwards created an unrealistic pace.
The more realistic response of the participants required us to adjust,
revise and slow down. The lesson for
the future is that we may accomplish more by asking for less. The clarity of simplicity is what I think I
will be aiming for next time.
Mixing
the media of communication
I have mentioned in Part II (above) the
advice that online learning is best started
with a face-to-face induction and that we did not plan this for Community
Portraits. We retain the option to
offer this course with a different pattern of small group formation that will
enable some face to face work, but in reviewing our practice we will need to
set the gains of easier success against possible loss of the contribution of
transnational differences to collaborative learning and learning about oneself
as well as others. This loss might be
redressed by alternative arrangements, however
the exclusion of some candidates as a result of a range of absolute
barriers to their face-to-face involvement poses a more serious problem. To plan more varied ways of delivering
Community Portraits is good practice but if we do so to the exclusion of
struggling with the educational demands
of total online delivery we will certainly fail to develop the potential of
computer-mediated-communication for social inclusion.
Collaborative
learning or collaborative working
Issues raised about the timing of
presentation of material have been mentioned above. What became clear during the planning was that learning
through collaboration is different from
collaborative learning and requires differences in approach to course
delivery. Much discussion of
collaborative learning appears to refer to studying academic material on which
students work together to promote not only their own but one another's
learning. Material is staged and group
and individual academic tasks are set
with deadlines for completion. It is
possible to set the whole programme out and for individual students to pace
themselves differently, as long as they are prepared for their collaborative
events and interchanges. Collaboration
may be required and enhance the learning but acceptable results may be possible
with minimal commitment to the collaborative process.
At the core of Community Portraits is a
collaborative task broadly outlined
with a long deadline for completion.
It is designed so that student groups themselves collaborate to decide
the form and content of their final product and how they will produce it. Collaboration is essential:
individual pursuance of the goal would be counter-productive. I have concluded that learning about
collaboration through the experience of collaboration requires a different process of course presentation from conventional collaborative
learning. We need now to consider what
the requirements of experiential collaborative learning are and to revise the
delivery of Community Portraits accordingly.
Personal
learning from the collaborative context of Community Portraits
As a contributor of a course I joined the
established work unit of SCHEMA at Stirling: a group of three staff who had
been working together in a succession of information technology projects
related to teaching and learning over the past few years. They have woven their different skills and
resources together in a way that
enables them to spin creative ideas off one another to varying levels of the
feasible, the possible or the ridiculous.
It has become clear to me that in their desire to work at the cutting
edge of technology and education they
accept that success is never guaranteed and possible failure, which has
to be contemplated, is to be enjoyed as
a challenge. I have come to value
the readiness of this team to take risks.
By comparison, though I may see myself as something of an innovator, I
am limited by my need for a safety net.
I am a less intrepid pioneer than my colleagues. Yet in our collaborative venture even this
difference may have something special to offer.
A broad conclusion midway through
Community Portraits is that the educational
potential of computer mediated
collaborative learning on the Internet is considerable, particularly in terms
of its extensive power to include. The
caution at the moment is that learning is likely to be seriously impeded by
technological obstruction, such as user
unfriendliness, and technological unreliability. It might be argued that experimental educational projects such
as SCHEMA /Community Portraits, remitted as they are to test the use of
technology at the cutting edge, may make significant contribution to future
educational opportunities but those involved have to come to terms with the
elusiveness of success in the here and now.
ADDENDUM
This paper was written in April, midway
through the trial run of Community Portraits.
When presented in June it is hoped to be able to add student comments
based on their weekly brief feedback and their response to this paper which is
being made available to them.
Community Portraits will be offered once
again in the Autumn under the auspices of SCHEMA. Funding will be available within the terms of SCHEMA’s EU
grant. Those interested in
participating should contact SCHEMA via its Web site.
References
Barclay Report (1982) Social
Workers: their role and tasks, London, Bedford Square Press
Burgess, H.,(1992) Problem-led learning for social
workers: The Enquiry and Action Approach, London, Whiting & Birch
Green, R., (1989) The
Badenoch and Strathspey Social Work Team, in Smale,G., & Bennett,W., Pictures
of Practice: Community Social Work in Scotland, London, National Institute
for Social Work
Hadley, R., & Leidy, B.,
(1996) Community social work in a markey economy: a British-American exchange of technologies
and experience, BJSW, Vol 26 pp 823-842
Hartley, R., (1999) Effective
pedagogies for managing collaborative learning in online learning environments,
IFETS Mailing List Archive, http://ifets.gmd.de/archiv/0439.html
Hearn, B., & Thomson,B.,
(1987) Developing Community Social Work in Teams:
A Manual for Practice, London,
NISW
Martinez-Brawley, E., (1990) Perspectives on the Small Community, Washington, DC, NASW Press
Schon, D., (1988) Education
the Reflective Practitioner, San Francisco, Jossey Bass
Timms, E., (1983) On
the relevance of informal social networks for social work intervention, BJSW, Vol 13, pp 405-415
Wellman, B. et al, (1988) Networks as personal communities, in Wellman,
B., & Berkowitz, S.D., Social
Structures: a network approach, Cambridge, CUP
Wellman, B., & Gulia,M.,
(1999) Virtual Communities as communities: Net surfers
don’t ride alone, in Smith, M.A.,
& Kollock,P., Communities in Cyberspace,
London, Routledge, pp 167-194