H808 – Characteristics of professional learning

Here we go again, let’s see if the magic of blogging does the trick again and enables me to finish my TMA. I could really need some magic.

So far I finished the part what is meant by a professional learner and also managed the write something about how learning is recognized, but now I need to approach the part where we suppose to address characteristics of professional learning in the field of elearning that I consider as important. And we should also consider whether these are to do with outcomes, or process, or both. We also need to consider whether they distinguish between formal and informal learning, individual and collective learning, skills, competences and values.

I finished all the other parts, but still have no clue how to address these questions. Probably, I just do not understand the question, taking it too literally. However,  I have the feeling that everything kind of merges/blur  into each other. My first thought was using unit 6 with our collaborative work where we identified examples/key principles for good practice. Being asked to make use of the course material, all that is left is Unit 6, hence I assume that the characteristics part has to do something with this unit, but it is just a guess and what I would need is some clarification.

But is collaboration and participation, or communication a characteristic of professional learning. In the group forum we identified e.g. collaboration as area of development?? Sorry, I am losing it here, not sure if I am on the right track.

However, if communication or collaboration would be a characteristic (feature, trait, attribute, quality) of professional learning, how do I classify them into formal or informal? I would say that this greatly depends on the context. Surely the compulsory collaboration group work is formal but when I participate in a Skype session with other H808 colleagues, then I would consider this as informal, collective learning. Collaboration is a competence (or skill?? – is there any difference between skill and competence anyways?) that can be assessed e.g. by CMALT or LNS. I would say collaboration is a process and the outcome of e.g. our collaborative group work was the presentation.

Do you follow me? Not sure if I talk nonsense, but that is my way of finding meaning and last time it did the trick.

However, I somehow have the strong feeling that one characteristic of professional learning is to be a great pretender, at least that is my impression 😛

Oh yes I’m the great pretender
Pretending I’m doing well