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Community

Learning Outcomes:

  1. Identify three subsections of your professional community

  2. Describe how social media can be a professional learning environment

  3. Select which communities you are interested in

Distance Learning

General Overview

Belonging to a community is important for personal and professional growth and development. A community allows you to share ideas, information, and experiences which gives you an opportunity to learn about the world outside of your own. 

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com·mu·ni·ty (noun) 

group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common (Google definition)​

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You belong to two major communities; you have a personal community, which may include your internal and external family members, friends, and the people you meet through your social hobbies; and you have a professional community, which may include colleagues, coworkers, mentors, and supervisors. 

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In this section, we will talk about the subsections of your professional community and explore the advantages of creating a professional learning community.

Your graduate cohort

As a graduate student in the Learning Design and Technology (LTEC) Department, you belong to at least one or more of the LTEC programs: the certificate, master's, and/or doctorate programs.

Unlike the certificate programs, the master's and doctoral programs are offered in a cohort system, where a group of students enter the program together and progress through their core courses as a group. 

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In the master's track, there are two separate cohorts depending on which delivery option you apply to: OTEC, the online cohort; and LTEC, the campus-based cohort. Both tracks offer the same core courses however, coursework are taught by separate instructors. Crossover between OTEC and LTEC master's students primarily occurs within the elective courses, which are all offered online. Typically, the master's program is completed in 2-3 years therefore, master's students might enter in one cohort and graduate with another. 

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The LTEC doctoral program included a campus-based option up until 2017 and currently, transitioned to a hybrid delivery method, where student will take a mix of campus and online courses, with at least half of the core courses on campus. The doctoral timeline to graduation varies from 5-8 years therefore, doctoral students will ultimately graduate with a different cohort group than from when they started.

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Thoughtful Questions:

  1. How do you interact with your cohort community?

  2. How do you interact with your colleagues in different cohorts?

The LTEC Department

The LTEC Department is a huge community of faculty and staff that you are a part of.  As a current graduate student or an alumni of the department, you can connect with the LTEC Department through their UH Manoa College of Education (COE) LTEC Home website, email listservs, or through various social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

 

The LTEC Department uses email listservs and the LTEC Facebook account, UHM Learning Design and Technology to update followers about upcoming events, job opportunities, conferences, recent alumni accomplishments and publications. However, both methods only allows for one-way communication from the organization to the subscribers of the email list or followers of the Facebook Page (What's the different between a profile, Page, and group on Facebook?). 

 

The LTEC Department LinkedIn account is another platform used to promote the LTEC programs but also provides an opportunity for students, faculty, staff, and other learning design community members to help establish and maintain connections in a public online network. 

 

The LTEC Department also uses a YouTube Channel, the Department of Learning Design & Technology UHM, to house the department promotional videos which are embedded on LTEC Home website.

Your current or potential career path

Whether you currently hold a full time position, looking to change careers, or just starting your career, the professional community beyond the LTEC Department is important to be aware of. Because the LTEC degrees are applicable in various fields and jobs, you are able to join different professional communities to stay involved and updated about emerging technologies, research, and instructional methods and design within your specific career focus and LTEC-related fields. Diversifying your professional communities can improve your current position, provide insight to different ideas, and open doors to future opportunities. 

Professional Learning Community (PLC)

Also known as a professional learning environment (PLE), a professional learning community (PLC) is a team that shares ideas and scaffold learning among the group (Serviss, 2020). This can be achieved in any of the subsections of your professional community and it is particularly effective to create your own PLC by using social media (Goodyear, 2019). It is possible to engage, share best practices and support professional development by using social media platforms such as Twitter.

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Below is a 6-minute video of Dr. Bert Kimura, a lecturer in the LTEC Department, talking about his own experience in creating his own PLC / PLE. 

Activity - How do you join a community?

Without targeting a specific social media platform, you can curate your PLC by following:

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  • a school, department, and/or cohort that you are a part of

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  • a company, corporation, industry and/or market you are a part of or want to be a part of

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  • an organization, association, society (i.e. Association for Educational Communications and Technology - ACET, International Society for Technology in Education - ISTE)

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  • a learning design and development method or technology that you are interested in

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  • a particular "hashtag" to get updates on particular keywords (if you don't know what a hashtag is, watch this video called "What is a Hashtag?" on YouTube)

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  • keywords of LTEC-related fields and common LTEC alumni Careers listed below (current list on LTEC website: Life After LTEC):

Computer Keyboard

LTEC-Related Fields

  • Doctoral Studies and Academic Research

  • Usability and User Experience Design Research

  • Educational Media Creation and Evaluation

  • Educational Technologies and Programs Evaluation

  • Interaction/Course Design

  • Leading Tech Integration in Formal/Informal Learning Settings

  • Teaching with New Technologies

  • Game Design with an emphasis on performance improvement

  • Performance Development

Common LTEC Alumni Careers

  • Teacher/Lecturer 

  • Educational Technology Specialist

  • Technology Coordinator

  • Instructional Designer

  • Curriculum Coordinator

  • Distance Education Coordinator

  • Online Learning Specialist

  • Program Data Specialist

  • User Experience Design and Research Consultant

  • Web Marketing Assistant

  • Supplemental Instruction Facilitator

  • Instructional Systems Specialist

  • Web Developer

  • Web Designer

  • Graphic Designer

  • Visual Merchandiser / Internet Marketing Specialist

  • Director of Curriculum and Innovative Technology

  • Instructional Technology Coordinator/Specialist

  • Information Technology Specialist

  • Educational Media Assistant

This learning module is the culminating project for the M.Ed. program in the 

Learning Design and Technology (LTEC) at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Questions or concerns? 

Please contact Elle Nakamura at elle7@hawaii.edu

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