Using Social Media as a Platform for a Virtual Professional Learning Community

Abstract

The Professional Learning Community (PLC) has been used in higher education to provide a platform for faculty members to discuss challenges and build professional skills. While the virtual PLC (VPLC) is becoming a more acceptable delivery mechanism for faculty professional development, successful practices for designing these learning environments have received little attention in the research literature. Social media has been found to provide an environment in which professional learning can occur. It can be a platform which transcends the perceptions and structure of traditional online faculty development courses. However, social media use for professional development has primarily focused on informal learning in unstructured formats. The purpose of this interpretive qualitative study was to provide insight into online faculty members' perceptions and experiences interacting in a VPLC, within a social media environment purposefully designed for networking and learning. Twenty-two doctoral-mentoring faculty members from an online university agreed to participate in a VPLC using a social media platform, facilitated by expert colleagues. Upon completion of the 10-week experience, data was collected using a self-reflective interview strategy. This study confirmed previous research into the benefits of the PLC for professional development in academia and of using social media for professional learning. It extended the research to describe the structured VPLC using a social media platform to engage faculty, build relationships, and foster shared learning.

Reviewing the Literature on Professional Development for Higher Education Tutors in the Work-From-Home Era: Is it Time to Reconsider the Integration of Social Media?

“…In a similar vein, social media's potential to reach users worldwide means that teachers are no longer limited to the relatively small communities within their physical reach. Instead, PD-seeking teachers can now use social media to cross-pollinate their ideas (Forte et al, 2012) with a higher number of like-minded SNS users (Bedford, 2019;Bieke & Maarten, 2012) that are more geographically dispersed. This addresses the obstacles of isolation and time-pressure that the WFH directive has accelerated.…”

“…Given that a teacher's needs, objectives and motivation for PD are likely to change across their careers (Trust et al, 2017), they require a malleable platform that can support the fluidity of these shifts. Social media's role as a centralised system through which teachers can effortlessly 'un-follow' professionals whose ideas no longer align with their own changing PD goals, and just as easily establish new connections that are more closely calibrated with their evolved aims (Anders, 2018), make it an appealing platform for today's increasingly pressurized educators (Bedford, 2019;Donelan, 2016). That is to say, educators no longer need to search for a PD event that best aligns with their own needs, since social media offers PD that is already tailored to each tutor's particular situation (O'Keeffe, 2018).…”

“…Described as the unique web of personal contacts and spaces that individuals surround themselves with for PD purposes (Trust et al, 2017), PLNs place bespoke practice to meet the individual teacher's needs at the forefront. The objective for PLNs' participants is to build a series of micro-relationships with multiple users, in order to exchange ideas that help each other steadily grow and innovate professionally (Bedford, 2019;Atkins et al, 2016). In parallel with NL, PLNs are all about creating a bespoke network that meets the needs of each individual (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012;Tucker, 2018).…”

“…Secondly, the guidance and reassurance that is on offer from users who are physically far away, but close in terms of profession and mindset, is likely to raise teachers' morale. Finally, the two-way interaction supported by SNSs encourages teachers to actively engage (Bedford, 2019;Tucker, 2018) via 'comments' or 'replies.' This contrasts with the more passive trainer-led events that are associated with traditional workshop PD (Bedford, 2019) that is not supported by social media and often leaves participants voiceless (McConnell et al, 2013) as a result of its one-way communication model.…”

Blurring Boundaries: Facebook Groups as Digital Teachers’ Lounges for ELT Professionals

“…For some researchers, social networking sites (including Facebook) mean a process by which educators project their professional identity and build, maintain and stay connected with their professional network-known as "educational networking" (Peña-Ayala, 2020). For others, it means a context within which educators generate, access, share, and exchange content (textual, visual, audiovisual or multimodal) and interact (tag, comment, post, like, react) with fellow educators in different places either synchronously or asynchronously-known as "virtual professional learning community" (Bedford, 2019) or "networked professional learning community" (Prenger, Poortman & Handelzalts, 2019). Considering that age demographics on Facebook indicate that the users between 25 and 54 years of age constitute the biggest group both globally (60%, Statista, 2021a) and locally (65.5%, Statista, 2021b), this platform stands out as a viable context of interaction, connectivity and professional development for professionals, including teachers.…”