Learning with technology is a challenge for both designers of and students in online degree programs. Due to new accreditation standards, pharmacists are returning to school. Pharmacy professionals, looking to update their skills, understandings and degree, find themselves overwhelmed with new information and are often without the capacity to incorporate it effectively into their practice. The implications for postsecondary education are profound. Information overload is the operative mode in which students and teachers now exist. Learning in this information rich environment requires different tools and pedagogical methods than are currently used in online learning environments. This dissertation is a report of how pharmacists can learn and communicate in new ways to become better practitioners and better learners.
The practical work of developing and testing usable knowledge about online learning environments requires a fundamental understanding of the learning and technology experiences students bring with them to their learning environment, conceptual change processes, information visualization tools to help students visualize what they know, and collaborative learning pedagogies to facilitate sharing of students’ understandings.
This study explores the role of concept mapping as a tool to help students visualize what they know and to communicate their understandings with other students in an online learning community. While the pharmacists did concept map their understandings and acknowledged the benefits of working together, they did not share their concept maps. This study proposes a collaborative online learning community model for nontraditional students to explain these results. The model suggests the following. First, becoming an expert with a new tool takes time, hands on experience and may be a prerequisite to using the tool to learn and communicate in a learning community. Second, for students to move past public presentation of their ideas and into collaborative peer review of others’ understandings, teachers must understand the decision making risk analysis nontraditional students employ. Third, building functional learning communities is difficult and takes time.
Further research is needed to determine if these changes in how concept mapping is implemented and prioritized affect nontraditional students’ sharing of understandings in online learning environments. GIF, QuickTime and WAV files are included.