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The aim of the study was to investigate the dynamics of two online communities of practice (oCoP) for preservice teachers. The research process encompassed three main phases. Phase 1 was related to the design and development of online environment. By the help of existing literature and a pilot study, a portal which is called as &ldquo / Professional Development Circle (PDC)&rdquo / was developed. In Phase-2, 28 preservice teachers from three different universities participated to an online course as a part of an undergraduate course. During the term, they discussed on different video cases which were recorded in real classroom environments and produced new lesson plans for these lessons in the light of given suggestions. In the third phase, the same preservice teachers got involved in a different online environment without any grading motivation in the Phase 2. They discussed on some hot topics in mathematics teaching with other preservice teachers, academicians and experienced teachers. This research study was mainly a qualitative study. Two cases of the study were two oCoP which included mandatory or voluntary participation of preservice teachers to discussions. The data were collected through written reflection reports, observations and interviews. In addition, private e-mail exchange with participants and discussion list message history were rich data sources. The data were analyzed according to qualitative data analysis techniques. The design principles and findings of this research study were discussed in the frame of Activity Theory. This study revealed outcomes of two online communities of practice environments in preservice teacher education. In addition, motivators and barriers to be active in oCoP environments were discussed. Some of the motivators were getting more responsibility, self confidance, sociable personality, altruism, sincerity in the environment, and quality of materials while some of the barriers were not wanting to enter a fight, lack of time, the idea &ldquo / max benefit minimum effort&rdquo / , feeling availability of others, and Internet access and computer availability.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are having remarkable effects and promise potential solutions to many of the South Pacific islands’ geographic, economic and social challenges. Access to ICTs is also an increasingly important factor for education and training in the region. While the Pacific eLearning Observatory, supported by the University of the South Pacific, has been monitoring the development and access to ICT in education across the 12 university’s campuses, studies that specifically examine the attitudes and understanding of educators working on the islands of the South Pacific towards the use of ICT in their profession, as well as for their professional development, are rare. This study aims at addressing the gap in the literature by examining the professional development of facilitators working in blended learning environment across the remote islands of the Cook Islands. The research outcomes of this study are based on the analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and the theoretical foundation of this thesis is grounded in the social and situated theory of learning. By closely examining the facilitators’ perceptions, the project sheds new light on the still little recognised concept of online communities of practice in teaching and learning. The central finding of the study is that participation in online communities of practice offers on-going opportunities for learning, development and support, and reduces the feeling of remoteness and isolation associated with the geographical conditions of the South Pacific region.

The hashtag #phdchat is used by doctoral students all over the world to engage with their peers, share information, and commiserate over their experiences in academia. Anyone can join the conversation simply by typing the tag and publishing a tweet, but many regularly contribute to what has become a vibrant emergent social network community. Using an analysis of the discourse that was labeled with the hashtag over about a one-month period, this paper draws conclusions about who belongs to this community and what the network achieves for the users and as an entity of its own. The researcher makes conclusions about this network by drawing on the attributes of communities of practice and knowledge building communities in order to ground it as its own permutation of a learning community. / text

No description available.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are having remarkable effects and promise potential solutions to many of the South Pacific islands’ geographic, economic and social challenges. Access to ICTs is also an increasingly important factor for education and training in the region. While the Pacific eLearning Observatory, supported by the University of the South Pacific, has been monitoring the development and access to ICT in education across the 12 university’s campuses, studies that specifically examine the attitudes and understanding of educators working on the islands of the South Pacific towards the use of ICT in their profession, as well as for their professional development, are rare. This study aims at addressing the gap in the literature by examining the professional development of facilitators working in blended learning environment across the remote islands of the Cook Islands. The research outcomes of this study are based on the analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and the theoretical foundation of this thesis is grounded in the social and situated theory of learning. By closely examining the facilitators’ perceptions, the project sheds new light on the still little recognised concept of online communities of practice in teaching and learning. The central finding of the study is that participation in online communities of practice offers on-going opportunities for learning, development and support, and reduces the feeling of remoteness and isolation associated with the geographical conditions of the South Pacific region.

What happens when an online community moves to a real space? Take the case of Anonymous. For several years now, this, loosely connected, entirely internet based group has been known for online pranks and griefing, often being labeled by the media as "hackers on steroids" or "the Internet Hate Machine". However, recently a significant portion of the group has taken up the cause of protesting what it sees as criminal injustices of the Church of Scientology. This move into the real world sparked various discussions which are relevant for online communities as a whole. What negotiations, compromises, and changes took place in order to move into the real world space? In what ways has the group succeeded (or failed) in maintaining the momentum needed for long term real-world protest and what can other online communities gain from this history?

abstract: A core reform area of President Obama’s Race to the Top (RTT) framework, the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) program, offered funding to states for the development of their own data systems. As a result, Arizona received funding to build a longitudinal student data system. However the targeted audience—teachers—needed training to move from a state of ‘data rich but information poor’ to one of developing actionable knowledge. In this mixed methods action research study, six teachers from three schools participated in job-embedded data-informed decision making (DIDM) and root cause analysis (RCA) professional development to improve their abilities to employ DIDM and RCA strategies to determine root causes for student achievement gaps. This study was based on the theories of situated learning, specifically the concept of communities of practice (CoP), change theory, and the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM). Because teachers comprise most of the workforce in a district, it is important to encourage them to shift from working in isolation to effectively implement and sustain changes in practice. To address this concern, an online wiki provided an avenue for participants to interact, reflect, and share experiences across schools as they engaged in the application of new learning. The results from this ten-week study indicated an increase in participant readiness levels to: (a) use and manage data sources, (b) apply strategies, and (c) collaborate with others to solve problems of practice. Results also showed that participants engaged in collaborative conversation using the online wiki when they wanted to share concerns or gain further information to make decisions. The online collaboration results indicated higher levels of online discussion occurred when participants were attempting to solve a problem of practice during the learning process. Overall, participants (a) used collaborative strategies to seek, create, and/or utilize multiple sources of data, not just student learning data, (b) worked through implementation challenges when making changes in practice, and (c) sought further types of data collection to inform their decisions about root causes. Implications from this study warrant further investigation into the use of an online CoP as an avenue for increasing teacher collaboration across schools. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Leadership and Innovation 2016

Submitted by Irene Nascimento (irene.kessia@ufpe.br) on 2016-10-19T17:54:35Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) TESE_MICHELINE_DAYSE_GOMES_BATISTA_CD.pdf: 8737170 bytes, checksum: d594366cdf34d0e38eb575c1d0686f4a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-19T17:54:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) TESE_MICHELINE_DAYSE_GOMES_BATISTA_CD.pdf: 8737170 bytes, checksum: d594366cdf34d0e38eb575c1d0686f4a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-26 / Esta é uma tese sobre comunidades on-line abrigadas em sites de redes sociais. Seu objetivo é investigar as possibilidades e limites das trocas interacionais e comunicacionais que ocorrem nesses ambientes, considerando que são mediadas pela tecnologia. Tomamos como objeto empírico o grupo Direitos Urbanos | Recife (DU), abrigado no Facebook desde 2012, cujo propósito é discutir os problemas urbanos da cidade do Recife, estado de Pernambuco, Brasil. Contando com cerca de 30 mil participantes, a página da comunidade representa um campo institucional que dá suporte às ações off-line do movimento, que se caracterizam pela ocupação de espaços públicos no sentido de reivindicar o direito à cidade. O Facebook é utilizado pelo movimento não apenas para discussões, mas também para informar, articular e mobilizar, seguindo uma receita adotada por inúmeros outros movimentos que têm eclodido ao redor do mundo, tais como o Ocupe Wall Street. Analisando as trocas interacionais e comunicacionais no ambiente do DU, e os efeitos positivos e negativos da tecnologia sobre esse ambiente, buscamos identificar a estrutura das redes sociais e os atores mais centrais, formatos, conteúdos e fluxo das publicações, como ocorre a conversação em si e a ação dos moderadores para a manutenção da ordem e dos discursos do grupo. Constatamos, entre outras coisas, que o DU abriga redes pouco vivas e muito fragmentadas, com poucos atores bem conectados, baixa interação e poucas relações de amizade. Além disso, a comunicação nesse espaço está sujeita a ruídos e ambiguidades e, ainda assim, consegue abrir brechas para a ação comunicativa, gerando laços de apoio e solidariedade. / This is a thesis about online communities sheltered in social network sites. It aims investigate the possibilities and limits of interactional and communicational exchanges that occur in these environments considering that are mediated by technology. We took as empirical object the Direitos Urbanos | Recife group, sheltered in Facebook since 2012, whose purpose is to discuss urban problems of the city of Recife, state of Pernambuco, Brazil. Bringing together about 30,000 participants, the community page is an institutional field that supports the offline actions of the movement which is characterized by occupying public spaces in order to claim the right to the city. Facebook is used by the movement not only for discussion but also to inform, coordinate, and mobilize, following a recipe adopted by numerous other movements that have hatched around the world such Occupy Wall Street. Analyzing the interactional and communicational exchanges in DU environment we seek to identify the structure of social networks and the most central actors, formats, content, and flow of publications, as is the conversation itself and the action of moderators to maintain order and group discourses. We find among other things that DU has little living and fragmented networks, with few well-connected actors, low interaction and few friendships. In addition communication in this space is subject to noise and ambiguities and still can open loopholes for communicative actions, generating support and solidarity ties.

YouTube is a great place for attention and discussion. Individuals and companies canuse the context and the system for branding of their content. Previous research in thearea has had a larger focus on mass statistics and social patterns on YouTube asequations, rather than as a social platform with people using it. Our research focusedon the users and why they choose to involve themselves with the content of theSwedishMealTime channel on YouTube and what we could do as a producer to createa more established channel, since we run it ourselves. This gave us an opportunity toextract data from the statistics on both YouTube and the corresponding Facebookpage of SwedishMealTime. We sent out an online survey to our subscribers withquestions revolving around the channel and content, in order to gain more insight ofwhat kind of content they prefer. A netnographic study was made in combinationwith a survey to collect the data for the analysis. Our results suggest that a regularupload scheme, communication and interaction with subscribers and establishment ofthe channel increases the sense of belonging, which in turn increases the exposure ofthe channel and the number of users subscribing to it. Future research will requireinformation about more channels, to identify behaviour between them, and if thereare any patterns for a viral success.