Using Personal Learning Networks to Leverage Communities of Practice in Public Affairs Education

Public affairs education can be strengthened by use of emerging technologies to connect students to practitioners in selected communities of practice. Communications technologies including Web 2.0 tools can be used to design learning opportunities to enrich instruction with the knowledge of practitioners. Practitioners who actively maintain online blogs make available a wealth of insights relevant to the content of public affairs educational programs. Connectivism is an emerging explanation or theory of learning regarding the significance of networks (nodes and connections) as related both to individual learning and the collective generation of knowledge. This article proposes a strategy for the design of connected learning environments that incorporate Web 2.0 tools to leverage blogs provided by selected practitioners so as to help students prepare for the challenges of globalization, automation, and complexity.

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