Adaptive action learning in an online community: facilitating a large cohort to deliver results

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the literature around online and blended learning. The impetus came from a cohort of 60 students being led through their dissertation by an e-learning evangelist. Initially the pedagogy closely followed Salmon’s Five Stage Model, Wenger's Community of Practice, and traditional Social Constructivism pedagogies. In hindsight, it has been realised that, in practice, these pedagogies have been eclipsed by Action Learning – a far better fit to the emergent tutor and student experiences. It is suggested that where ‘expert’ students are working at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy (criticality, creativity, evaluation, innovation), such as during the creation of a dissertation, action learning is a highly effective overarching pedagogy. Moreover, we propose a model of action learning that may work with massive participant numbers; like the MOOC, adding Massive to the existing acronym of action learning Sets: Massive Action Learning Set: MALS.

KEYWORDS:

• Action learning
• adaptive action learning
• facilitator
• online

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

David Callaghan is a Senior Education Technologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, researching effective use of learning technologies and supporting delivery to students. He has an interest in using technology to amplify the voices of participants (tutors and students) via online discussion forums and peer review. He tweets at @dbcallaghan and @LSTMTEL.

Helen Collins is a lecturer in Liverpool Business School at Liverpool John Moores University. As Programme Leader of a Master’s in International Human Resource Management, she has an interest in the pastoral care of international students.