Sarah S. List, Jane Warland, Colleen Smith

1. Undergraduate Communities of Practice: Improving the student experience, leadership skills and professional identity of Bachelor of Midwifery students Sarah S. List,Jane Warland, Colleen Smith

2. The Healthcare Reality By 2025: Australia faces a drastic shortfall in nurses and midwives Compounded issue: students choosing to exit study Why are they leaving? feelings of disconnect: university and profession make few friends

3. How can a sense of community help? Trust built with learning communities lowers sense of risk increases engagement and activity

4. Student communities On campus: ↓ likely to drop out, better levels of academic success BUT Online access & timetable flexibility = ↓ time spent on campus ↓ likely to make friends Online: lack structure, moderation, behavioural issues

5. Growth in off-campus flexible study Almost 30% of students at UniSA study at least one course online

6. This Project: Created communities Aim: to determine the theoretical and practical roles of undergraduate Communities of Practice, and the structural and practical issues of developing and implementing one

7. Research plan: Action Cycle McTaggart; Greenwood.

8. Planning: Literature review for community design • Previous use of learning communities? Types of communities? • Student initiated and run communities • Face to face: ‘hidden’ from academics • Online: ‘hidden’, tends to be short term practical information • Academic initiated communities: • Year level or small class group • Often cease after course/year/project completed

9. Communities of Practice (CoP) "...are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” The Domain: member connected via a shared domain of interest The Community: they engage in joint discussions, share information, and learn and support from each other The Practice: members are practitioners that develop a repertoire of resources, experiences, tools, and ways of addressing reoccuring problems - i.e: shared practice Needs to be ongoing (Wenger, 2006.)

10. How to build an active, engaged community? "...are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” Wenger 2006 Need an identity and to establish a sense of identity early: Bachelor of Midwifery students (cohort size: 342 Jan 2013) 1 year UniSA development grant

11. How have CoPs been used? Professionals - lots! Undergraduates.... little Lots of unanswered questions How to build an active, engaged community? Facilitation: Peer vs academic? Structure? Location?

12. Engagement is linked to facilitationStaff directed • Garrison's Community of Inquiry • less community commitment by members • post quality? • unlikely to continue to contribute after specific use • facilitation? • Link to assessment (carrot and stick) • To be a sage, guide or ghost?(Mazzolini and Maddison, 2002)

13. Engagement is linked to facilitationStudent directed? Baran and Correia (2009) Student leaders were inspirational, motivated students to participate and provided a risk-free environment. Correia and Davis (2008) When led by students, interactions were more meaningful and created a stronger sense of community Poole (2000) Student facilitation resulted in longer and a greater number of postings**

14. Partnered Community Leadership McDonald et al (2012) ‘nurtured’ CoP Review and advise Direct activities/ content/ moderate/ advocate. **time Support and review of project

15. Community location - online 20% of UNISA’s total enrolments study in the SoNM • 300 Midwifery students • Students are time poor • Midwifery Accreditation: 50% of time in placement • Following births – on campus classes may be missed

16. Creating the Community • Students did NOT want facebook for their platform • Informal groups already present, but no academic rigour and issues around behavioural guidelines. • Technical: easy to create and maintain • Login: no special account required • We: • Evaluated platforms (Weebly, Dolphin, Google communities, Wordpress, Buddypress, yammer, wikispaces, ning, meetup)

17. comim.weebly.com Website areas chosen to encourage debate but link to assessment themes

18. Encouraging activity • Amount of activity in online spaces in an ongoing issue • Link to assessment reward? • "Students learn what they care about" (Biggs 1989) • Relevance to study not enough. • ‘Distance’ to the community

19. Encouraging activity – Recreated in facebook More members and viewers But few posters/responders Content type did not influence response rates

20. Outcomes Evaluative studies: broader cohort and more activity Time commitments ongoing issue (panel and general members) - professional programs have lower engagement rates) (Alsford et al.) Timing of project - facebook student group already present (50 members) Needs of the group: student version focuses on - assessment issues - pregnant ladies - Humour Read, but may not contribute

21. Selected references • Wenger, E. (2006). Communities of practice: a brief introduction. www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm • Baran E, and Correia A. (2009). Student Led facilitation strategies in online discussions". Distance Education. 30. • Biggs, J. B. (1989). Approaches to the enhancement of tertiary teaching. Higher Education Research and Development, 8(1), 7-25. • Correia, A. P., & Davis, N. (2008). Intersecting communities of practice in distance education: the program team and the online course community. Distance Education, 29, 289-306. • Poole, D. M. (2000). Student participation in a discussion-oriented online course: A case study. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33(2), 162-77. • Garrison, D.R., Anderson, T., and Archer, W. (2001). Critical thinking, cognitive presence and computer conferencing in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education. 30, p339-361. • Mazzolini, M., and Maddison, S. (2003). Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor interventionon student participation in online discusion forums. Computers & Education. 40, pp237-253 • University of South Australia Development Grant.