Communities of Practice
Leslie Bowman (2013) created a Comunity of Practice for her online students and writes that students fulfill a role as coaches, mentors, and reviewers. Through peer mentoring students are able to share existing knowledge and instruct other students while developing new knowledge of the subject through the analysis of the content. Bowman (2013) writes, "...the COP provides a more balanced perspective of the learning process for students by addressing strengths and weaknesses simultaneously and with equal emphasis." Self-directed learning continues throughout the whole course. Another CoP that is useful to the online learning environment is the cohort model. The cohort model shows that each group of learners are expected and encouraged o to stay together as a group (Conrad, 2005). The cohort model is supposed to strengthen the online community between classmates and increases the bond. It builds the relationship that enables students to learn from eac...