Teachers’ community of practice: activities, roles & responsibilities to achieve an animated online community 

Task 4.5 (draft version, Oct 2011)

Neuza Pedro

Institute of education- University of Lisbon

 Idalina Jorge

Institute of education- University of Lisbon

 Leonard Tosi

Italian National Institute for Documentation and Innovation in Educational Research

Comments: Benedicte Clouet, Sylvia Hartinger

Roles & responsibilities to achieve animated community

Topic suggestions for CPD

Previous

Development plan (IE + INDIRE, online meeting May 30th 2011)

Dependencies WP 4 & 6

Principles & actions

Resources & Training initiatives

E-moderators

Roles & responsibilities to achieve animated community

Topic suggestions for CPD

• Netiquette
• interactive whiteboard
• netbooks
• exploiting web 2.0
• Use of multimedia in educational projects
• Computer anxiety
• moderation conflict
• Project based learning

Previous

Development plan (IE + INDIRE, online meeting May 30th 2011)

. identify a list of activities that need to be made in order to operationalize this task

. organize a calendar for the development of the teachers’ online community considering the defined cycles

. identify a list of dependencies between this task (4.5)  and other tasks in the iTEC project

. next meeting Wednesday, 8th June

iTEC Project Annex B (p.23)

Task 4.5 Professional development of teachers M6-48

Set up and animate an online community of practice for iTEC teachers providing an online environment to run both formal and informal Continuous Professional Development (CPD) using tools and services that feature in the future classroom. The Community of Practice is used to support the selection and training of teachers for each cycle of scenarios.

National coordinators provide national/regional training and support. Each partner organises national training meetings for participating schools designed to support activities in each scenario. Organise 12 national (mainly online, although some MoE may opt to run face-to-face training workshops within their specified funding under Other costs) and three international (face-to-face) workshops for selected teachers (target: 50 at each workshop). Following each workshop with teachers, an internal report is produced that provides guidance to the next iteration and follow-up and produces recommendations for the improvement of modules and resources for teacher education. They take place according to the project cycles enabling of activities and further knowledge building. The workshops focus on the development of a network of people engaged and tuned with the goals of iTEC who will take a key role in guiding and supporting communities of teachers in schools. Regular opportunities for cost-effective CPD are offered including online ‘learning labs’ based on successful eTwinning models, live forums, ongoing discussions, special events, ask-an-expert sessions in a range of languages.

If possible, courses are linked to accreditation opportunities. Depending on the nature of the scenario and

technology involved, possibilities to run some cross-border training events for teachers will be explored. These could be in a form of a summer school or other professional development opportunities. Teachers from the focus group (pre-pilot) are expected to be the core providers of online support and learning labs, funded from MoE

Other costs (as in 4.2 above).

Dependencies WP 4 & 6

. What role does the iTEC Teachers online community take in the project and how does it relate with other tasks of the project mainly with WP 4 and 6 (but also WP5)?

The online teachers CoP can be seen as a ‘territory of development’ of competence through participation of members at different levels and with different intensity and centrality; this ‘territory’ should be well defined via a clear domain of practice, criteria for membership and strategic guidelines. The role of the iTEC teachers online community is also crucial in (i) attracting teachers to innovative practices through immersion in discussion, analysis and sharing experiences, difficulties and successes, resources, etc., (ii) serving as the empirical field for monitoring the whole operation on iTEC in schools. 

The CoP should provide an area linking to some basic training materials about technologies and lesson planning.  I think we could read all the scenarios and identify which materials should be developed.  We could involve all partners to this task. Teachers that are currently involved in pre-pilots could be very helpful. We shared some ideas on that: providing 5/8 materials each focusing on a specific training need raising from the scenarios activities and from the analysis of requested teachers skills.

The CoP should also work as an observatory to record teachers’ needs and attitudes towards the scenarios and the whole pilot activity. NPC and NTC should monitor exchanges in forums to collect training needs.

Community of practices for teachers

Main goals:

•               Create a critical mass of functionality

·                Develop new opportunities for professional development

·                Facilitate teacher professional development, through deliberate and cautious design of learning environments which are dynamic and promote a learning culture.

·                Develop a community framework to nurture intimate, trustful, engaging relationships, in order to encourage learning experiences mediated through technology.

•               Assemble and provide feedback on ongoing practices, mainly related with learning scenarios implementation

•               Provide ideas for exchanging best practices on community building, structuring content and interaction design, building, stewarding and e-moderation.

•               Build up a network of overlapping communities.

These main goals call for a definition of specific purposes, roles, activities and outcomes:

Purposes

Knowledge and experience sharing related to developing and sustaining the classrooms of the future

. (new) artifacts

. (new) ideas

. (new)  practices

. (new) resources

. (new) professional wisdom

1.           Emotional sharing

·             Deal with teachers’ sense of isolation

·             Experience a sense of community and a shared vision

·             Promote teachers’ self-esteem and self-efficacy

2.           ICT related professional development in-context

·             Make use of the advantages of online environments               

·             Build praxis appropriate to new ways of teaching and learning.

·             Help novice and experienced teachers to become confident educators

·             Overcome teachers’ isolation

·             Identify and meet teacher’s individual needs

·             Familiarize teachers with the use of ICT for communication, collaboration and pedagogical purposes required for running future classrooms

·             Provide an environment and conditions for research on CoP and teacher professional development

·             Teachers will be able to map their own pedagogical skills, concepts and expectations into the online community and build the skills required of twenty-first century educators.

. different roles

•              Set up and maintain a user-friendly technological environment & support

•              Provide permanent community stewarding (based on technical and pedagogical support)

•              Stimulate continuous professional development (classroom-focused in service training)

•              provide prompt pedagogical advice

•              stimulate horizontal forms of learning (among peers)

•              Provide an e-moderating training program

                e-moderators

Several dimensions of e-moderation must be tackled to:

. guarantee the artifacts’ originality and avoid copyright issues

. assign forum’s moderators for – scientific, didactical and other professional issues, set up and animate the teachers’ café, for social interaction         

                Teachers

ITEC partners roles (WP 4 and 6):

•              Clearly establish the purpose of the community.

•              give feedback about environment design and conception

•              Define a policy of member registration

•              Guarantee a system for artifacts protection (copyright)

•              Establish a policy for personal data protection

Principles & actions

. Principles that need to be respected to bring an online community to life?

A set of principles should be adopted to bring an online community to life and to cultivate it enabling its developing in a sustained form:

(i) design for evolution - integrating different uses of technology but shaping those different uses towards an ‘iTEC mode’ through valuing relevant initiatives, using repeated patterns observed in participants’ practice to suggest ‘good examples’ of using, etc., and creating transitions that show the community its own progress and dynamic development (thus creating a sense of growing and change)

Maybe we need to share with our partners a methodology and a few criteria to assess “good example” (can we integrate some of the feedback sent by partners on Neuza’s request to partners of the 5th of may? That was the “[1st priority]” about relevant resources on teacher education.

(ii) opening dialogue between iTEC inside and outside perspectives creating references that show participants how they relate to the outside ‘mainstream’ practices

(iii) inviting different levels of participation from members of the community allowing that some become central leaders and other s remain on the borders or margins of the community and creating possibilities to participation and putting forward clues that suggest and stimulate movements within trajectories of more intense participation

(iv) developing both private and public community spaces interrelated and articulated - public events serving substantive purposes with a ritualistic dimension and private spaces to allow the full development of networking activity between members.
How do we plan to manage these two levels? Are we going to create private spaces (one for each scenario?) Who will be managing the public area?

(v) focusing on value while understanding that sources of value change over time

(vi) combining familiarity and excitement thus creating bridges and continuity between ‘old’ and ‘traditional’ practices and innovative ones

(vii) creating rhythms for the community while getting participants interacting and communicating according to initiatives that fulfill their needs and suggest new developments and new dialogues.  

(free adaptation of Wenger et al., 2002)

. Level of online participation stable and consistent?

Understanding the teachers online community as a living organism, stability and consistency should be addressed from the inside, from the point of view of the membership, thus accommodating different perspectives.

Considering a structure based on scenarios adopted in the different countries active participation should be supported before and during the piloting experimentation and structured due to the different cycle phases. i.e. we could have specific areas for the pre-pilot teachers to share feedback with other teachers during the pre-pilot and scenario-based small communities to share same scenario experimentation over different countries.

Several main reasons have been identified (Schlager, & Fusco, 2003), as sthwarts to a teachers’ community building, related to a) technology, b) teachers’ readiness and c) quality of professional development communities.

As for technology, it must be reliable, stable, flexible, scalable and durable,   in order to meet the community needs and desires, and provide service to a large group of professionals. Both technological infrastructure that fits-the-purposes and accurate stewarding are needed (Vaughan, 2004; Wenger and White, 2009).

It has also been argued that conventional Internet applications such as asynchronous discussion forums and websites are scanty in supporting the goals of an ongoing discussion within a community.

In addition, resources and supports such as interactive tutorials, videos and podcasts must be available, for members to learn how to use online tools, to prevent any sense of frustration and time loss.

Teachers’ capacitation must be forged on incentives for teachers to develop both skills and confidence using technology and begin to develop a network of coworkers, which is not a straightforward process.

Commitment, dedication and enthusiasm are essential for the community expansion and progress to a point of autonomy, interdependence and interinfluence (Hew& Hara, 2007; Ling, 2005), in a safe and trusting space, where relevant content, participation and interactions contribute to the community members engagement.

Also, according to Hew and Hara (2007), there are four main reasons for participation:

(a) Collectivism: teachers share knowledge to improve the welfare of community members,

(b) Reciprocity: teachers want to share knowledge because they have received help from others and want to give back,.

c) Personal gain: sharing knowledge helps teachers gain new knowledge, and

(d) Altruism: teachers feel empathy for other teachers’ struggles and would like to support them by sharing suggestions

To keep a consistent and stable community:  develop autonomy, sense of ownership and participation several stages in establishing a community of practice, though not necessarily as suggested by Salmon (2000; 2002) In fact, the moderator’s role, as much as the distribution of several e-moderating tasks, whenever necessary, but mostly determined by the community’s growth, must be diligent, continuous and persistent throughout the community’s stages, which means several permanent task groups  based goals and a clear schedule, to perform the different tasks described above. During each stage, the moderator  has to decide on the appropriate type and amount of e-moderation.

. initiatives to be scheduled and implemented online in order to stimulate teachers’ participation

<to be defined within the programme of development of the community>
Videoconference events could be organized by the e-moderators i.e. once every two/three weeks and a sort of piloting roadmap with some “light” intermediate outputs could be defined in order to share in the CoP some feedback related to the in-progress evolution of the pilot. That sort of ongoing sharing could be driven by some elements linked to the final MMU evaluation indicators or specific factors of interest (i.e. emerging training needs, teachers and pupils perception, changes to teaching practice, innovative elements highlighted.. ).

•                        Public seminars, social networks, invitations to join by existing members can be held as strategies to welcome and include new members.

•                        Thematic days (eg. 3D tools, virtual words, facebook in classrooms, …)

•                        Assign members to specific tasks, according to their skills, competencies and personality.

•                        Hold a permanent forum where newcomers are welcomed and have an opportunity to start interacting within the community, through social and cognitive presence.

•                        Develop a sense of bonding, by setting up a café for social interaction, a members’ birthday calendar, an events’ – both social and professional – calendar, providing opportunities for members to meet face to face, in order to build an atmosphere of respect for diversity, trust and support.

. How those initiatives relates to iTEC teachers training meetings? And how can they amplify its effects and provide follow-up to teachers?

The iTEC teachers online community could be thought of as the main space where teachers interact with each other in recontextualizing the information and knowledge brought from the training meetings. As a strategic dimension of the the community, the notion of amplifying and deepening the knowledge acquired in the training meetings should be at the kernel of the practices taking place there and in doing so providing follow-up to teachers development.

The initiatives should introduce the meetings and promote discussion after the conclusion of the meeting. During the meetings specific topics should be addressed and materials used and produced during the meetings should be made available after the meetings online in digital format. In that way specifc issues can be studied more deeply and more structured and reflected follow up material can be shared. I.e. video recordings, presentations, workshop sessions materials can be modified, further developed .

A teachers’ community must be stimulated, set up and agreed upon, in order to provide permanent support, resources and opportunities for “hands on” work, incorporated into teachers’ daily life, for continuous professional development, focused on content subject matter, scientific, technological and pedagogical issues.

. workflows of those initiatives?

<to be defined according to the programme of development of the community>

Resources & Training initiatives

. Where should ITEC resources and training modules for teacher be made available in the online teachers community space?

I need to better understand the several possibilities available. I would say that every teacher of the online community should be able to reach all the resources and materials and discuss them online with peers in a friendly and easy-to-use digital environment.

Yes, that would be useful also as a feedback from teachers using training materials for improvements of contents for the next cycles.

And what interactive functionalities could be associated to those modules and resources for teachers to use and interact?

Forum, wiki system, glossary, ? why not aggregating web 2.0 apps?

we agree with the Web 2.0 apps solution. Maybe we should also collected some valuable resources such as blog and portals to follow.

All information concerning the community, its subgroups and activities must be placed in separate spaces, where access will be controlled, to allow for privacy within the community. Each member can apply to be a member to the different subgroups. A main webpage and a central forum, and several categorical pages hosting different communication tools, both synchronous and asynchronous, such as forums, chats, video-conferencing and services, bulletin boards, automatic notification services, members’ pages, a community “knowledge base”, useful links, a self-assessment webpage,  advanced search services, security services, support to collaborative writing, must be provided.

. What roles are expected to be assumed by ITEC partners (WP4 & WP6), National pedagogical and technical coordinators, e-moderators and teachers?

ITEC partners (WP4 & WP6): defining strategic guidelines for cultivating the community; training e-moderators

National pedagogical and technical coordinators: --
I think  NPC and NTC should monitor the community using shared methods and criteria. The activity should be aimed to detect teachers training needs and problems they face during their pilots.  According  to these, they should be able to support e-moderators and to identify learning materials or resources that may be useful for all the community teachers.

E-moderators: monitoring the activity under way; putting in action all the dimensions included in the strategic guidelines; collecting evidence of the development of the community

teachers: participating and leading initiatives within the community.

E-moderators

. relevance of e-moderators in an online community of practices

Absolutely indispensable (see the metaphor for ‘football stewarding’ coming from Wenger et al (2008)
We should provide support for this activity, maybe designing workshop and online session where they can share their experience.

E-moderators are crucial for the sustainability of online communities of practice (and inquiry). They provide designing, interactional technological and scientific support to the community throughout its stages and growth.

E-moderators design activities in order to constantly involve groups and sub-groups within the community, such as starting debates on professional issues to develop critical thinking and reflection, to pursue a permanent self-assessment through specific questions and surveys, planned learning scenarios and informal exchange, assign fellow members to assist new members to become involved in the teams and threads, to provide opportunities for team work on particular activity, to extend the  groups’ range, such as creating subcommunities. At the same time, discussions concerning the whole community must be started and supported, in order to deepen the sense of community among its members.

Besides, the e-moderators philosophical roots, their beliefs and values regarding education issues in general, and adult education in particular, and the environment in which they develop their work, have a considerable influence on their moderation strategies.

The moderators’ style, how they design and develop the learning environment, the methods and strategies they use to display content, the way they lead discussions, manage interactions, encourage and nurture their groups’ curiosity, shared vision and engagement, make a great difference on the community’s sustainability and dynamism.

An e-moderator who believes in the advantages of autonomy and interaction, accepts new ideas, values differences of opinion, encourages the emergence of different points of view, seeks new ways of teaching and learning and who is able to identify what triggers reflection, inspires and motivates the community, who encourages their community members to become independent and seek for themselves the information to confirm opinions and hypotheses, answers questions, suggests pathways, diagnoses misperceptions, provides alternative explanations and pathways, has a philosophical and attitudinal framework based on autonomy, interdependence, in communication and interaction.

Chan (2002)  also found that certain personality traits are associated with the moderating style and Hamza & Farrow (2000) found relationships between the e-moderators’ personality and effectiveness and that mentoring styles influence the community’s performance.

.  profile (competences, experience, etc.) for an effective e-moderator for iTEC teachers’ online community

Several taxonomies of the moderator’s roles and tasks have been proposed and stabilized since the middle nineties, with Berge’s (1995), Paulsen’s(1995) Mason’s (1997) categorizations, later confirmed Anderson et al. (2001), all of them systematically cited by subsequent research. They include tasks such as making introductions, establishing rules for each activity, dealing with common webtools and computer-related anxiety and moderating conflict, structuring the activities and allowing enough time for proper accomplishment, helping each member with individual needs, maintaining a knowledge-community-learner-centered environment, ensure understanding, providing and asking for feedback, eliciting goals, keeping the members focused on collaborative and individual tasks, assessing goals, ensuring participation, facilitating positive and constructive feedback, reinforcing communication skills, involving the group in addressing challenges, managing time and summarizing the group activities,

The tasks have different levels of difficulty, some are easier and proper training is necessary, in order to develop all the skills and competencies involved, but some individual characteristics, such as communication and technological skills are need .

Moderators need to motivate participants, recognizing that 'hand holding' may be required for those participants lacking confidence.  (Salmon, 2000). Some members may experience significant frustration in logging on, at the beginning. The e-moderator must ensure access, and have a welcoming and encouraging attitude. An introduction to using the platform might be needed,

Building the bridges for all the participants, merging the individual and social worlds is a time consuming task, which sets up the community climate and arising difficulties should be considered as an opportunity to build on a shared world. As information exchange and collaborative tasks develop, the community members can feel anxious about the information flow, as some can overwhelmed by the number of tasks to be timely  performed and the amount of information to be dealt with. The adequate amount of postings can be agreed on and private coaching to individual members dealing with communication issues can be provided, no matter the commitment of each member  will differ in time, type and effort. As the community evolves into a shared world, group  sustainability each member’s interests and competencies must be addressed,  through new and differentiated assignments, according to each member’s skills, competencies and learning styles, in a reading-reflecting-displaying-doing spiral, to accommodate  individual needs.

The moderators need to have to have good communications skills in English. The 4 moderators need to have a shared domain of the languages represented by all the countries involved in the large-scale pilot (in each of its cycles).

. Hours per week are e-moderators expected to be investing?

A total of 5 to 8 hours a week, plus training sessions and continuous follow up and supervision are expected.

. Who will be in charge of supervising the moderators?

The moderators’ supervision should be taken up by one of the iTEC partners, who will provide for e-moderators’ training and follow up. The UNI-C, INDIRE and Institute of Education- University of Lisbon might assume this training activities and follow up, with the support of one of the other partners for technological issues. A community of inquiry must be set up, in order to enhance and support an effective moderators’ practice along the whole process.

NPC/NTC would be in the easiest position to monitor moderators from their countries and eventually support or suggest directions.

Specific tasks (proposal):·        

• Define a calendar for the CoP development based on the pre-pilot/pilot/evaluation cycles(*).

Depending on the nature of the scenario and technology involved, possibilities to run some cross-border training events for teachers will be explored. Teachers from the focus group (pre-pilot) are expected to be the core providers of online support and learning labs, funded from MoE.

• Within the CoP a range of specifc online events should be designed and planned (i.e. videoconference meetings, topics for discussion in forums, materials to be uploaded and shared..).The workshops focus on the development of a network of people engaged and tuned with the goals of iTEC who will take a key role in guiding and supporting communities of teachers in schools. Regular opportunities for cost-effective CPD are offered including online ‘learning labs’ based on successful eTwinning models, live forums, ongoing discussions, special events, ask-an-expert sessions in a range of languages.

• Define online environment structure (i.e. what tools/areas to be used for what: giving the different parts of the environment a usage mode/objective)

Set up and animate an online community of practice for iTEC teachers providing an                 online environment to run both formal and informal Continuous Professional                         Development (CPD) using tools and services that feature in the future classroom. The                 Community of Practice is used to support the selection and training of teachers for each                 cycle of scenarios.

• Suggest what activities could be done in the local environment and what should be done in the international CoP (Additionally, any pilot country can use its own local online environment to communicate with the teachers, conduct the training sessions and support participants throughout the pilot)

• Define national workshops and international workshops agenda (what could/should be done? How to involve the teachers? What role for the pre-pilot/e-moderators? Accreditation opportunities?)

Each partner organises national training meetings for participating schools designed to s                support activities in each scenario. Organise 12 national (mainly online, although some                 MoE may opt to run face-to-face training workshops within their specified funding under                 Other costs) and three international (face-to-face) workshops for selected teachers                 (target: 50 at each workshop).

• Define workshops internal report structure (what format? Do be done by when?)

Following each workshop with teachers, an internal report is produced that provides guidance to the next iteration and follow-up and produces recommendations for the improvement of modules and resources for teacher education. They take place according to the project cycles enabling of activities and further knowledge building.

• Define a CoP monitoring method to be implemented (to gather feedback, improve the model and support the action of the e-moderatos if that is the case)

• Define profiles of actors to be involved in development and mantainment of CoP (eModerators…).

• Define a matrix of the scenarios by country that are currently pre-piloted (within the 6 detailed learning stories**) and of those to be piloted by next September. Based on the matrix we could define the main activities in order to know what is really being experimented for the first cycle and define the possible structure/areas of interest of the CoP.
  
• Define guidelines for pilot teachers to use the CoP. I.e.:

• Structure of the environment
• Events (what, when, national/international)
• Tools
• Materials

(*) Prototyping, piloting end evaluation cycles agenda