Learning is Social is a research report exploring how relational, dialogue-based learning can thrive online, and what it takes to make practice-based development work in a virtual setting.
Online learning has a reputation problem. It is often pictured as something done alone, clicking through slides and recorded content in your own time. For development that depends on reflection, challenge and honest conversation, many people assume you need to be in a room together. Yet for busy professionals with work and family commitments, or those living far from a campus, face-to-face study is often out of reach.
This report, written by Dr Jan Moorhouse and Dr Graham Curtis, looks at Roffey Park Institute’s MSc People and Organisational Development, which has run entirely live and online since 2020. Drawing on student portfolios, an alumni event and a reflective dialogue between the two researchers, it explores what students actually experience on the programme and why so many describe it as transformational.
The research looks at how students experience learning on the programme across several areas:
- Identity formation
- Professional expertise and personal growth
- Reflective practice
- Dialogic learning online
- Online social learning
Alongside these findings, the report examines the role of small dialogic learning groups (DLGs), where students give each other feedback and challenge each other’s thinking. It looks honestly at what happens when groups work well and when they don’t. It also considers the value of personalised tutor feedback, a flexible modular structure and assessments rooted in students’ own workplaces. The authors conclude that the programme’s success comes from how it is designed, with small cohorts, live dialogue and expert practitioner tutors, rather than from being online in itself.
The report closes with reflections on what this means for the wider debate on online, part-time and lifelong learning.
Why download this report?
- Understand how dialogue and peer learning help people develop practical judgement they can use at work
- Explore how small learning groups build reflective and reflexive practice, and what to do when group dynamics go wrong
- Gain insight into the conditions that make online social learning effective
- See how an online format has opened up postgraduate study to an international cohort who could not otherwise take part
- Hear directly from students and alumni about how the programme changed the way they work
Download the report to find out why meaningful, relational learning does not depend on being in the same room.
