Community of Practice/Personal Learning Network/Technology

Adult continuing education has a strong community of practice.  Generally, this community exists in a broad, national platform through a professional association, University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA), via a statewide group of UC continuing educators, and an organization-wide, UC San Diego Extension group of academic directors.  The strength and usefulness of each group varies greatly according to the background, experience and programs of those who attend meetings in person or email one another.  Over the past few years, and most likely in the coming years, the most innovative and vigorous community of practice is within UC San Diego Extension.  This may seem highly insular, but each academic department is a vibrant, self-supporting unit continually initiating new and fascinating partnerships and collaborations – ways of doing business both within and outside of the university.  It’s a community of practice that continually reinvents itself, because it must.  Not only is our mission to provide high quality continuing education at the right price, but our mission is also our margin.  Continuing educators (directors) within Extension are constantly learning from and supportive of one another.  Each of us attends conferences to broaden our knowledge and skills and for reconnaissance purposes – what are others doing in different subject matter areas such as clinical trials, case management, post baccalaureate premedical programs, lactation education, emergency department nursing education, etc.  In adult continuing education, mainly focused on post-baccalaureate programming, models of educational design are the defining factors and the differentiating piece in whether or not an education program is successful.  And, within UC San Diego Extension there is an immense amount of sharing, trial/error, learning from successes and failures. It is a true Community of Practice and that makes the workplace, and profession, exciting. 

This community of practice is inherent in the Extension organization not only among academic directors, but also among staff who are encouraged to go to conferences, learn from instructors, take the courses they program, become certified in the certificates they promote (e.g., lactation educator, case manager, clinical trials design and management).   Students are encouraged to join alumni groups, advisors and instructors are provided opportunities to join in high level conferences.  There is a strong learning community built and budgeted into the new UC San Diego Post Baccalaureate Premedical Program, which I direct.  This model will become more commonplace among other programs at Extension.

Recently, my own personal learning network hit a critical mark.  I am learning as I proceed through each quarter of the new Post Baccalaureate Premedical program.  Johns Hopkins University Post Baccalaureate Premedical Program sent out a query to all of us who direct such programs to ask if we wanted to join a list-serve to learn from one another, understand new program designs, and problem solve issues as a group.  This opportunity is only a month old, but already it has been an eye-opener to new ways of conducting post bac programs, and will continue to be a highly useful PLN. 

Technology:  email constantly, daily, nightly.  And, research via the internet is a daily activity.  However, blogging still concerns me.  Although I know blogs can be exceeding rich and useful, I am still allergic to the lack of privacy inherent in always putting a public face on one’s opinions.  I’m not a twitterer, nor on Facebook.  And, I highly respect my JDP8 colleagues’ thoughts, but would rather discuss these in person where nuances and emotions come together more directly with articulated words.