How Do You Create An Effective Professional Learning Community
Professional learning communities (PLCs) improve instruction create a culture that encourages cooperation, encourage student learning, and drive the development of professionals.
These allow teachers to collaborate with their peers to develop innovative lesson plans, enhance the learners' experience as well as design more effective instruction.
However, PLCs don't only serve teachers. We'll share how professionals across diverse industries like nurses, vets as well as entrepreneurial mothers, participate with professional learning networks. You'll learn:
- What exactly is a PLC?
- What are they and how do they apply to any profession
- What makes people want to join
- The various forms PLCs can take
- How professional learning communities work
- Professional learning communities that will inspire you to learn more.
- How can you build and maintain a successful learning community
- Platforms you can use to create a PLC
What exactly is a learning community?
In education
Professional learning communities are a group of teachers who work together at the same place typically teaching in at the same level as well as collaborating to strategize on ways to improve student learning in particular areas.
PLCs hold regular, ongoing discussions, gather inquiries centered around specific issues they want to explore in relation to learning for students, collect data based on those inquiries, and later share results with the entire group.
The most frequent questions are:
- What would we like students to learn?
- How can we tell if that they've learned?
Based on the school, PLCs are generally formal, and their existence may be ordered by the school's administration. PLC meetings occur regularly during the school year, usually in the school day and usually in the lunchtime when students are or in exploratory classes like art, music or PE.
PLCs are important since they allow for teachers to explore questions related to student learning, allowing them to share insights and findings among themselves and receive instant feedback from back-andforth discussions.
In addition to education
The same principles behind teacher social learning can be applied to almost any occupation. Teachers and other education specialists were the first ones to create the concept of a professional learning community, learning communities have been around for a while and are flourishing in other areas as well.
Learning communities are organically created and maintained as well as designed by an expert in order to enhance their online courses or membership sites.
The majority of creators of online courses did not initially start with online learning, but were lured into creating online courses by their community members.
Why do people join groups for learning?
Learning communities are present across a variety of fields and industries beyond the realm of education, and both students and professionals choose to join these communities for a variety of reasons, including:
- to develop new abilities in their profession
- To support each other through educational programs, like Latrina Walden's research nursing group.
- For mastering a pastime, such as woodworking, scrapbooking, writing, artwork
Types of learning communities
An online learning network may generally be categorized in three main kinds:
- Professional Learning Community (PLC) : Typically composed of teachers who teach similar subjects or grades, PLCs generally adopt a school-wide focus on improving student education through various ways that incorporate interaction with others in the PLC, data collection, and inquiry.
- Communities of Practice (CoP): Communities of Practice can be found in the field of education, but they are also common in government and business settings. The term "CoP" refers to a group that has a common interest or set of problems and work together to achieve the goals of both groups and individuals. Members support and encourage the other members as they strive to meet the same objectives.
- Professional Learning Network (PLN) More expansive in its scope than the other learning community forms, PLNs can include all people that one can connect to on the internet, meaning that they can have members from all over the globe. In general, a PLN is a group made up of resources and individuals that support ongoing learning. It's not just limited to education and exist in a variety of industries and organizations.
While there are several distinct types of learning communities, in this piece, we'll focus upon professional learning groups (PLCs) and explore their characteristics and core practices, as well as some tips on how to establish and sustain an effective professional learning community.
Understanding how learning communities work
The effectiveness of professional learning communities is partly based on fundamentals of social learning theory an idea in psychology that suggests new behaviours can be learned through observation and mimicking others people learning from other people in a way, whether for good or bad. This is especially true for schools and educators that's what professional learning communities can provide an opportunity for professionals to learn from each other.
The characteristics of communities that learn
Communities for learning, regardless of the sort they're of, are characterized by access, relationships as well as vision and purpose.
To help learning communities succeed, they need:
- Proper levels of access for learning communities: They must be able meet in person or online regularly. Quantity and quality of time is important.
- Solid relationships: Members should have a strong sense of being part of the community and have faith in each other.
- Shared vision: Learning communities should have a common vision in terms of outcomes and purpose.
- Established structures that have been arranged such as, for instance when you have a PLC that is for educators, the instructors in the group need to share the same grades or work with the same groups of students. And in an PLC for other fields including nursing, or veterinary medicine, the participants within the community must have the same specialization and be working at similar levels professionally.
The most fundamental practices of learning communities
Based on studies , in order for learners communities to be efficient and effective, they must include these critical aspects:
- Community
- Diversity
- Integration
- Learning active
- Reflection and assessment
Professional learning community examples that will inspire you
Learning communities aren't limited to within the realm of education. They can be formed in just about any industry such as business, medicine and even the government. Here are a few examples of community-building initiatives created by authors of courses of .
For veterinarians: The Veterinary Cytology Coffeehouse
The HTML0 was created by Kate Baker, DVM, MS, DACVP, the Veterinary Cytology Coffeehouse is an unofficial, closed Facebook community for all sorts of veterinary professionals, including vets, vet nurses, students as well as vet techs, who want to learn more about cytology in animals and hematology.
Topics within the group are diverse and span from fascinating stories to typical findings in the field as well as unique unusual examples.
In its first year, the number of members grew to 35,000 members, with no advertisements. Then, members started seeking courses and the opportunity to dive into some of these topics in depth. That's how Kate began creating courses that touch on many of the same topics in veterinary medicine.
Nurse practitioners can use Aid with exam preparation
Latrina Walden MHA, MSN, FNP-C, FNP BC, who is the founder of Latrina Walden Exam Solutions and who has also been an instructor for more than 10 years in the field of health, created a Nurse Practitioner studying group via Facebook to assist students enrolled in nurse practitioner programs succeed in passing their tests.
The study guide is available for members and tips from fellow members, as well as review of live clinical sessions a few times a month. Following numerous inquiries for course-related materials during some of her Q&As with live clinicians, Latrina began selling courses through .
For entrepreneurial moms: Boss Mom
For mothers who want to raise their kids and still have a fulfilling work, Boss Mom offers an abundance of information as well as guidance for moms to accomplish these objectives simultaneously.
These are some of the motives Dana Malstaff created Boss Mom an online community that builds businesses specifically for mothers who are entrepreneurs.
For online course creators: community
Facebook's community Facebook is designed to function as a resource sharing and discussion forum for course creators. Members can share wins as well as discuss strategies and ideas and share information with the aim of helping other course creators build profitable companies.
for teachers: Facebook teaching community
A number of Facebook groups, such as the Teacher's Group is formed so that teachers can meet and discuss the latest curriculum and lesson ideas as well as share ideas and strategies on how to use them with their individual students, and inform others about professional development and training opportunities.
for fitness and health trainers: JJ Virgin's community
JJ Virgin, who is a Certified Nutrition Specialist, and certified Fitness and Fitness Instructor, realized at an early stage in developing her business that she would achieve better results when she collaborated with individuals to help them achieve their health and fitness goals in groups instead of working with them individually.
One of the things JJ tries to do in her programming in order to keep her audiences active is to break down information into bite-sized pieces. This could be a useful strategy for learning communities because it lets participants absorb what they need to at their own pace without feeling overwhelmed receiving too much information in one go.
Virgin describes her experience in the community by saying: "The things that I've done in the consumer world creating a community regardless of whether it's professional or consumer there is a need for communities now more than ever before. Connection is more important now more than ever. You wanna build the brand's loyalty, so build a bad-ass group of people ."
How do you create and sustain effective Professional learning community
Professional learning communities cannot succeed on their own. they require the assistance of experienced individuals who have experience with these types of groups. Here are some helpful tips on how to build and maintain professional learning communities.
1. Understand your goals
If there isn't a clear purpose professional learning communities cannot succeed. Learning communities are a means to achieve several end goals which may vary depending on the purpose behind the learning community and industries. In the realm of education, for example, the goals of a community learning may be:
- Improved retention for students
- Promoting student engagement
- Creating consistency in instruction techniques among teachers
- Promoting student learning
- The creation of a community for teachers and other professionals working in the field
2. It is important to clearly define your community's goals and set the objectives of the members
The purpose of the learning community needs to be clear and goals outlined for each member. Consistency is key.
3. Give structure and direction by establishing group rules as well as the common set of rules
In order for the learning community in order to meet the goals it has set the structure and direction are important to keep members in line and on the right track to achieve their the goals.
4. Create a culture of collaboration and empowerment
Everyone in the learning community should be incentivised to share their views and experience so that other members can relate to one another and exchange strategies.
5. Create a culture of growth
An PLC team must be motivated to continually improve and grow more efficient.
6. Be sure that it's reflective.
The process of reflection is an essential part of learning, particularly for people who work in a community. For this reason, a member of the group can choose a component to be examined regardless of whether it's a task or an issue that needs to be addressed, and then set the conditions for group discussions that is productive.
7. Focus on results for members
Ensuring a learning community is learner-centered and focused on the students as well as other members can help maximize ROI.
What's the best platform to build an online community for learning?
Groups on Facebook
This can be one of the options for developing an online learning network. The group's leaders can allow the group to control membership, so it can be private or open as well as providing an easy-to-use place to connect with others and also share useful information and resources.
The downside to this is the fact that Facebook could be distracting because it's a social networking site. The information can be lost in streams of notifications, and the site is not a true professional site and more of a social network.
LinkedIn Groups
Since LinkedIn is more business-oriented it provides a professional platform for creating online groups of learners among professionals.
However, the main goal of LinkedIn is networking and to find employment, so it may be challenging to establish an online learning community even though LinkedIn has a Groups feature.
Since LinkedIn is mostly an employment and social networking site, it's easy to become distracted by the other page elements.
On , it's easy to develop and market online courses, memberships and access to a private community everything under your brand, and free from the distraction of social networks.
A community is a space that is not part of your class content, where you can create conversations with students. Each Community comes with a specific page (on your site) that instructors and students can interact through written posts and comments. Communities are similar to Facebook Groups, with access given at either the site level, or associated with specific courses or bundles.
The advantages of forming communities on
- Create your own branded Community:Just like everything you make with your own brand, your name is the star without any external distractions. Choose colors and key imagery and create your communities on your domain that you have created, free of the distractions and noise of social platforms.
- Assign Community memberships:Assign Community access by a specific course, bundle or memberships, or create a site-wide Community for all students to access!
- Fully integrated with your site:Community members are automatically added (or deleted) based on enrollments in your content -- no more manually adding and removing users.
- Built on a platform you can trust: is trusted by more than 50,000 course creators and unlike social media platforms, you control all the content that appears within your Community. No ads, no tracking, no spam.
Similar to: 's Support Article For Communities
Final thoughts
The existence of professional learning groups is vital for the successful implementation of educational programs. Through PLCs, educators are able to learn from each other and also ensure that the students learn crucial concepts.
Do you want to be part of professional learning communities created just for those like you? Join the's community of creators of courses, or begin making your own by registering using our Pro plan today!