Promoting Instructional Designers’ Participation in Free, Asynchronous Professional Development: A Formative Evaluation

What should learning designers learn?

“…This was required for two reasons. Firstly, there was a conscious decision to want students to feel that they were joining a profession, rather than just finishing a degree or a qualification (Fortney & Yamagata-Lynch, 2013 ; Muljana et al, 2020 ; North, 2018 ). Here, building off of Wenger’s Community of Practice ( 1998 ) through a community of practitioners where there exist varying levels of expertise across industries, there is the ability to grow the knowledge sets leveraging participation levels and interests (Lave & Wenger, 1990 ).…”

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“…As suggested by , new members may start from the peripheral participation so that they can observe how the active and core members interact and learn from their information exchange. Gradually, the comfort, confidence, and trust levels of the new members will increase, which can encourage further participation (Muljana et al, 2020;Gorrell et al, 2013;Tseng & Kuo, 2014). This suggests that the members who are perceived as passive may be strategic about their participation level .…”

“…The technology-enhanced learning environments supporting social interactions play an imperative role in this regard, wherein the Social Network Knowledge Construction (SNKC) framework can provide guidance for working professionals to interact with, communicate with, and learn from the peers within their social networks . Working professionals are willing to take advantage of technologies to enhance their knowledge and skills without limited by geographical and temporal constraints (Muljana et al, 2020). For example, IDs encountering budget, traveling, and time constraints perceive the value of joining online Community of Practice (CoP) groups enabled through social media (Muljana et al, 2020).…”

“…Working professionals are willing to take advantage of technologies to enhance their knowledge and skills without limited by geographical and temporal constraints (Muljana et al, 2020). For example, IDs encountering budget, traveling, and time constraints perceive the value of joining online Community of Practice (CoP) groups enabled through social media (Muljana et al, 2020). Online CoP allows IDs to participate flexibly; they can adjust their participation level (e.g., whether they seek information only or contribute to the collective knowledge) according to their professional learning needs and time availability (Muljana et al, 2020;Schwier et al, 2014).…”

“…For example, IDs encountering budget, traveling, and time constraints perceive the value of joining online Community of Practice (CoP) groups enabled through social media (Muljana et al, 2020). Online CoP allows IDs to participate flexibly; they can adjust their participation level (e.g., whether they seek information only or contribute to the collective knowledge) according to their professional learning needs and time availability (Muljana et al, 2020;Schwier et al, 2014). To support IDs who needed PD without being limited by such constraints, a CoP-based learning community called Professional Development for Instructional Designers (PD4IDs) was formed to offer free asynchronous PD events for IDs once or twice a year.…”