How to develop and maintain an on-line community of co-learners: A social media classroom

The modular nature of courses and the fragmenting pressures of Higher Education schedules can make it difficult to create and/or maintain any semblance of a community of practice (i.e. one in which the discussion of learning and around learning is open and apparent). We ask if it is possible to engender an on-line community of practice and re-capture the all round discussion that is often lost in a “siloed” modular teaching approach. To investigate our research question we have developed a mechanism to help cohorts access interactions between staff and students. These communications can be fragmented and disconnected across various channels, both physical, verbal and digital.We believe our approach is effective in assisting in creating cohort identity and raising the discussion around a community of practice. Our system is easily adaptable to practitioners and educators in many subject areas, in a way that does not require any specialist technical understanding.