 |
 |
|
Cultivating Informal Learning Cultures and These sessions are being offered as elective workshops in the University of Calgary Continuing Education Certificate program in 2005. Informal Learning in Organizations: Fostering Learning as It
is Lived Communities of Practice: Learning Across the Lines Click here to register for these courses. Over 70% of learning is hidden -like the greater bulk of an iceberg - that is, it occurs informally rather than through traditional education such as training courses. Notwithstanding the value of formal learning methods, most people learn informally from each other because they share a common passion for a subject or goal. Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the "various conversations of which they are a part" (1999, Jeffs and Smith). Hence, it is about conversing about our experience in the world and our relationships. It requires open dialogue, sharing both explicit and implicit knowledge and it is primarily about association - belonging and identity. And it mostly occurs in Communities of Learning whether these communities are unstructured (social gatherings), semi-structured (communities of practice), shared |
 |
(distributed communities), or formally organized.
Non-profit organizations that seek to cultivate or nurture learning often
find unstructured difficult to identify and codify into a useful resource
base while formal learning learning often discourages the open and dialogic
desire of learners to share their experiences in the face of "expert"
knowledge provided by trainers or teachers. Communities of practice, a
term developed by Etienne Wenger, may well represent a more ideal structure
to "manage" knowledge than these approaches.
Communities of practice are "groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis" (Wenger, 2002, 4). They are concerned with learning through participation in the group/collective life and engagement with the daily round that has been part of the informal education tradition for years.
Consultation topics include:
· The Practice of Informal Learning and Education
· Introducing informal learning and education
· Working with informal learning processes and values
· Linking Informal Learning and Education and Communities
of Practice
· Review of Informal Learning and Education
· Linkage to Communities of Practice
· Communities of Practice
· Concept, value, structure, principles
· Working with and within communities of practice
· Building and Cultivating Informal Communities of Practice
· Strategies and Initiatives
· Building an informal learning strategy (exercise)
· Building a Community of Practice at work (exercise)
· Summary: Your Theory of Practice
Click here for information on booking your workshop.