AN ELECTRONIC COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS
Professor Christopher Turner
King Alfred College Winchester
Chris.Turner@wkac.ac.uk
Abstract
Wired Wessex is the business support network for some 500 small new-media businesses, all engaged in computing, software design, games development, web design, interactive TV and video etc in the Hampshire area. These businesses are all at the convergence of the computing, media and telecommunications industries and thus are at the cutting edge of skills needs and professional development. Wired Wessex delivers events and services to assist and support the development of individuals in this new industry with a strong use of web delivery, as befits the user group. This web delivery includes a site www.wiredwessex.com, specific focussed email delivery as well as forums for discussion. Currently, both Seeda and the European Union fund Wired Wessex.
The issue of learning amongst such professional groups is contested, with newer analysis from Becher, Eraut and Brown and Duguid making a powerful case that we have ‘tended to misrepresent learning by not taking seriously the learning inherent in being and doing’.
This piece of quantitative research piece is part of a larger project that is both quantitative and qualitative. The larger project is postulating that a successful economic cluster is also a successful ‘community of learners’ and will do so by exploring Wired Wessex as both an economic cluster and a community of learners; the hypothesis being that a ‘community of learners’ brings about knowledge exchange and thus innovation, learning and creativity.
It will also seek to identify the appropriateness of its role as a ‘cluster’ – evidence of increasing the productivity of companies; driving the direction and pace of innovation; and stimulating the formation of new businesses within the cluster.
The initial questionnaire is enabling the career taxonomy of a new profession to be mapped. The detailed case study using a sub-set of respondents will identify whether a community can develop using a web-mediated approach, whether such a community evidences any ‘apprenticeship’ structure, and whether such a community can be of value in the long-term continuous professional development of staff within a new professional grouping in the new-media industries.