The role of a web-based community in teacher professional development

International Journal of Knowledge Management

George

Prévôt

2011

In their daily practice, practitioners belong to local communities of practice (CoPs) within their organisation. This knowledge is rarely capitalised upon because discussions are mainly verbal. Practitioners can also belong to general CoPs online. Within these general CoPs, discussions are rarely linked to the context in which they appeared, since the members are from different companies or institutions. This paper (1) connects these two levels of CoPs by contacting practitioners belonging to CoPs centred on the same general activity but who are geographically distributed and (2) capitalises on the produced knowledge by contextualising, allowing it to be accessible and reusable by all the members. The authors detail the main results of the research: (1) a model of the interconnection of CoPs (ICP) to support knowledge sharing and dissemination; and (2) a specific knowledge management tool for the ICP knowledge base. The authors apply the model and platform to university tutors by: (1) developing a use case, which links the model and the TE-Cap 2 platform and highlights the new possibilities offered by the knowledge management tool; and (2) conducting a descriptive investigation lasting for five months.

Section: Research Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Knowledge Management Tool for the Interconnection of Communities of Practice

International Journal of Knowledge Management

George

Prévôt

2011

“…Web technologies (e.g. forums, blogs, wikis) have allowed the emergence of online CoPs (Cuthell, 2008;Pashnyak & Dennen, 2007). CoPs gather tutors together in an informal way because of the fact that they have common practices, interests and purposes (i.e.…”

Section: Experience Sharing Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

KM and WEB 2.0 Methods for Project-Based Learning

Michel

Multiple Perspectives on Problem Solving and Learning in the Digital Age

2010

Our work aims to study tools offered to students and tutors involved in face-to-face or blended project-based learning activities. To better understand the needs and expectations of each actor, we are especially interested in the specific case of project management training. The results of a course observation show that the lack of monitoring and expertise transfer tools involves important dysfunctions in the course organisation and therefore dissatisfaction for tutors and students (in particular about the acquisition of knowledge and expertise). To solve this problem, we propose a personalised platform (according to the actor: project group, student or tutor), which gives information to monitor activities and supports the acquisition and transfer of expertise. This platform is based on Knowledge Management (KM) and Web 2.0 concepts to support the dynamic building of knowledge. KM is used to define the learning process (based on the experiential learning theory) and the way the individual knowledge building is monitored (based on metacognitive concepts). Web 2.0 is used to define the way the experience is shared. We make the hypothesis that this approach improves the acquisition of complex skills (e.g. management, communication and collaboration), which requires a behavioural evolution. We aim to make the students become able 'to learn to learn' and evolve according to contexts. We facilitate their ability to have a critical analysis of their actions according to the situations they encounter.

“…Web technologies (e.g., forums, blogs, wikis) have enabled the emergence of online CoPs (Daele, 2005;Cuthell, 2008;Pashnyak & Dennen, 2007) of tutors and teachers from different institutions. In these CoPs, tutors discuss general subjects such as answers to give to students, the best ways to monitor and assess them, how to adapt and design learning courses, when to intervene at the right time and in an adapted way and how to react effectively if a student is in trouble.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting the Interconnection of Communities of Practice

International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies

George

2010

In this paper, a general model for the Interconnection of Communities of Practice (ICP) is proposed. This model creates links between local Communities of Practice (CoPs) and global Communities of Practice on the Web. To hit the target platform specifications to support an ICP are first of all proposed, soon after the TE-Cap 2 (Tutoring Experience Capitalisation) platform for an ICP of tutors is made up to support people working on it. This platform allows the capitalisation of tutors’ contextualised knowledge by making it easily retrievable from all the tutors in their daily practice. At last a descriptive investigation over a four-month period and forty-two users registered on the platform is conducted. Results presented in this paper concern the usability of the platform and the relevance of the model with regard to tutors’ needs.