Faculty who teach online courses at large research institutions have unique professional development and support needs. Communities of practice may provide a solution to feelings of isolation reported by faculty who teach online courses. Through a community of practice faculty may offer support to each and share online instructional best practices. Using a developmental study, research-based practices were operationalized using the ADDIE model to form guidelines for building and maintaining a virtual community of practice for online teaching faculty. An expert review validated and led the revision process for the set of guidelines. This study describes the development of the guidelines, the expert review, and the validation of the final product. / Ph. D.

Fanfiction är en omtvistad litterär genre vars författare och läsare bildar en stark gemenskap, framförallt över internet. I den här uppsatsen undersöks hur fans till tv- serien Sherlock använder sig av fanfiction för att sprida berättelser mellan varandra, hur deras passion för fandomet gör att de bildar en speciell gemenskap, samt på vilka sätt man kan se deras nätbaserade plattformar som olika narrativa världar. Genom att intervjua människor som ägnar sig åt Sherlock-fanfiction på olika sätt samt titta på hur deras kommunikation ser ut på de olika internetsidor de använder sig av, undersöks deras relation till varandra och hur man kan se fanfiction som en berättelseform nära den mer traditionella. Resultatet visar att fansen gemensamt besitter stor intertextuell kompetens och att de genom sina berättelser rör sig genom flera narrativa världar, samt att deras gemenskap kan beskrivas utifrån begreppet community of practice.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse how elite sport students who studied at the National Sport Upper Secondary Schools with specialization on table tennis, experienced the aim and content of the subject Physical Education related to the learning of the subject, learning of the Specialized Physical Education, as well as their own elite investment. The theoretical perspective used in the study is Lave and Wengers (1991) theoretical concept the Community of practice. Where the focus is based on how the students like a community fulfills the criteria who used to characterize the Community of practice and also the aspect of "learning as participate" in the Community of practice. The results showed that the students did not experience a specific aim with the subject Physical Education. The biggest difference was in how the students experienced the learning of the subject Specialized Physical Education towards Physical Education. All of the students exemplify the meaning of studying at the National Sport Upper Secondary Schools with the aim of becoming an elite athlete. Therefore the subject Physical Education was seen by the students more as a subject of amusing character than a subject with knowledge, unlike what they experienced with the subject Specialized Physical Education. In relation to their own elite investment it became obvious that the students considered that they could not use the practical skills which were supposed to be developed in the subject of Physical Education. However two of the students emphasized that the theoretical knowledge was important elements in relation to their elite investment.

Adult learners bring different experiences and perspectives to their education. It is important they get opportunities to learn at their own speed, through different situations and activities. Consequently, the teaching methods and learning environment are very important to the learner. Therefore the school and it´s teachers play a big role in making the learner feel comfortable and gain new experiences which could help them develop themselves as adult learners and find the right learning path. This thesis explores how the individuals needs and life experience is utilised through the learning process in the learning environment of the Preliminary studies program at Keilir. The focus is on student’s experiences of the learning environment at Keilir in order to see if they meet the needs of adult students. That being said, interviews with former and current participants in the program will show what the students experienced during their time in the program and how they felt their needs were met. Furthermore Lave and Wenger´s (1991) concept of a community of practice will be used to explore the education at Keilir and how learning in collaboration with other students and others that impact the learner’s journey can affect the learner’s education and their learning experience.

The purpose of this formative experiment (Reinking & Bradley, 2008) was to describe the stages of development of an online platform that cultivated the growth of an online community of practice for teaching professionals. One hundred and forty-eight elementary school professionals participated in this study. Relying primarily on qualitative data, an iterative process of data gathering, analysis, and reflection was used prior to, during, and after the implementation of the intervention, LiteracyGrows.org, to describe performance and determine progress toward the pedagogical goal. Qualitative data were coded for recurring themes derived from the following sources: interview data, user-profile information, Google Analytics, email correspondence and open-rates, webinar archives, heat map data, and a researcher reflection journal. Micro-analysis revealed that the success of the intervention was related to the usability and sociability of the platform. It was easy to navigate and appealed to teachers as a social networking tool that was only for education professionals where they could share information and attend live or archived webinars to extend learning. Reflection on a macro-level was used as a tool to further explore LiteracyGrows.org as a model of professional development. Specifically, how it was situated within the larger landscape of professional development and what it offered in terms of alignment between learning theory, epistemology, and model of professional development and communication, worldview, and knowledge. These constructs were important factors to consider in creating a platform for meaningful dialogue and professional growth to take place. LiteracyGrows.org provides the foundation for future research to further explore how online professional platforms can be utilized to make professional development an on-going and sustainable component of support and growth for education professionals. The growth of online professional platforms by educators will also shift the conversation of professional development further away from delivery and more toward meaningful engagement by educators as active participants in their own knowledge construction. Recommendations include the continuation of the discussion of professional development in terms of epistemological alignment. This study highlights disconnect between teachers and their professional development experiences when expectations, perceptions, and understanding of what they are engaging in for growth do not align. Furthermore, reconstructing the way professional development is embedded within practice to better engage the 21st Century teacher using up-to-date technology.

<p>This thesis aims to describe how students encounter proof in a community of mathematical practice at a mathematics department and how they are drawn to share mathematicians’ views and knowledge of proof. Considering the department as a <i>community of practice </i>where the joint enterprise is learning mathematics in a broad sense made it possible to perceive the newcomers as active participants in the practice. The combination of a socio-cultural perspective, Lave and Wenger’s and Wenger’s social practice theories and theories about proof offers a fresh framework in understanding and describing the diversity of the culture involving such a complex notion as proof. Proof is examined from historical, philosophical and didactical points of view and considered as <i>reification </i>and as an <i>artefact </i>from a socio-cultural perspective. The metaphor of <i>transparency</i> of artefacts that refers to the intricate dilemma about how much to focus on different aspects of proof at a meta-level and how much to work with proof without focusing on it, both from teacher and student perspectives, is a fundamental aspect in the data analysis. The data consists of transcripts of interviews with mathematicians and students as well as survey responses of university entrants, protocols of observations of lectures, textbooks and other instructional material. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied in the data analysis. A theoretical model with three different teaching styles with respect to proof could be constructed from the data. The students related positively to proof when they entered the practice. Though the mathematicians had no explicit intention of dealing so much with proof in the basic course, students felt that they were confronted with proof from the very beginning of their studies. Proof was there as a mysterious artefact and a lot of aspects of proof remained invisible as experienced by students when they struggled to find out what proof is and to understand its role and meaning in the practice. The first oral examination in proof seems to be significant in drawing students to the practice of proof.</p>

Adult learners bring different experiences and perspectives to their education. It is important they get opportunities to learn at their own speed, through different situations and activities. Consequently, the teaching methods and learning environment are very important to the learner. Therefore the school and it´s teachers play a big role in making the learner feel comfortable and gain new experiences which could help them develop themselves as adult learners and find the right learning path. This thesis explores how the individuals needs and life experience is utilised through the learning process in the learning environment of the Preliminary studies program at Keilir. The focus is on student’s experiences of the learning environment at Keilir in order to see if they meet the needs of adult students. That being said, interviews with former and current participants in the program will show what the students experienced during their time in the program and how they felt their needs were met. Furthermore Lave and Wenger´s (1991) concept of a community of practice will be used to explore the education at Keilir and how learning in collaboration with other students and others that impact the learner’s journey can affect the learner’s education and their learning experience.

<div> <div> <div> <p>In the last two decades, higher education researchers have reported numerous benefits of integrating technology tools in course instruction and their subsequent impact on the students’ learning process. In spite of the accumulation of the large amount of evidence and multiple calls to adopt technology tools in instruction, traditional lecturing is observed to dominate and continue being the preferred mode of instruction in STEM courses. One of the major reasons for the shortage of large-scale adoption of technology-based instruction is attributed to the lack of knowledge and skills of STEM instructors on how to effectively integrate technology tools into their courses. Most faculty development programs that are organized to help instructors build the necessary knowledge and skills end up introducing different technology tools to the instructors without truly helping them understand how to contextualize the tools based on the course requirements and learning needs of the study. This study aimed to understand the experiences of how engineering faculty in India learn to integrate technology tools as part of a 6-week faculty development program. </p> <p>Seven engineering faculty from a single institution attended the 6-week program to redesign a course of their choice by integrating educational technology tools. A conceptual framework called Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) was used to understand how the instructors learned to integrate technology tools into their respective courses. TPACK is a widely used framework that depicts an instructor’s knowledge of educational technology as a multifaceted construct that is combined with their knowledge of the course content and pedagogy. A qualitative case study approach was used in this study to understand how the engineering faculty developed TPACK and highlight the challenges that they encountered while integrating technology tools into their courses. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data that was collected through semi- structured interviews, reflection journals, and final reflections. </p> </div> </div> <div> <div> <p>11 </p> </div> </div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <p>The findings from the study indicate that the faculty developed TPACK in three stages. In the first stage, they developed basic knowledge of content, pedagogy, and technology (also called basic sub-domains of TPACK). The faculty in the next stage formed mental models to intersect and understand the interrelations between the three basic sub-domains. In the last stage, the faculty developed TPACK by building a meta-conceptual awareness of how to utilize the knowledge gained in stage two to address the limitations in their current mode of instruction and the learning needs of the students. It was observed that the faculty after developing TPACK started to emphasize on a more student-centric mode of instruction. The faculty reported to encounter challenges while constructing mental models as they were unable to critically reflect on their courses. They faced difficulty while identifying and integrating technology tools as a result of low- technology self-efficacy. Faculty reported to overcome these challenges and receive support from the other participants as a result of a community of practice that was established prior to the start of the faculty development program. The study at the end provides recommendations to faculty developers on how to design and facilitate effective workshops that are aimed to help instructors integrate technology tools. A model which was developed from the findings of the study is provided to promote large scale integration of technology-based instruction in universities. </p> </div> </div> </div>

Den här kvalitativa studien fokuserar på translanguaging strategier i matematikundervisningen. Syftet med studien är att undersöka på vilket sätt translanguaging kan användas som en meningsskapande metod inom matematiken i grundskolans tidigare år. En observation genomfördes för att undersöka vilka strategier som används inom translanguaging och hur dessa kan utveckla elevernas förståelse och meningsskapande för det matematiska innehållet. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten är den sociokulturella teorin och community of practice som fokuserar på att lärande, mening och förståelse sker i social gemenskap. Under observationerna återkom följande translanguaging strategier: kollaborativ lärgrupp, stimulering av inre språk och översättning. Resultatet visar att användningen av de observerade translanguaging strategierna bidrar till att skapa mening och förståelse för det matematiska innehållet, öka elevernas engagemang samt skapa en tillhörighetskänsla. Det här framkom i de matematiska samtalen som pågick mellan eleverna men också genom det stöd som pedagogerna gav.

The purpose of this project is to understand how humor works in expert-novice identity construction in podcasts. I employ a Community of Practice (Lave and Wenger, 1989) framework to examine the social hierarchy among the participants of a regular podcast. I am particularly concerned with uncovering how novice members construct themselves and are constructed by expert members through humor, as well as how expert members socialize novice members to participate in the kinds of humor practices that index membership in the Community of Practice (CoP). Rooster Teeth is an internet-based entertainment production company. They produce a weekly podcast which they make available for free on the internet. The podcast participants represent a small CoP with expert/novice differentiation. Combining a corpus linguistic approach with an ethnographic approach, I collected, transcribed, and studied several podcasts that were recorded over a two-year period, beginning with the first few podcasts where founding members established the practices and their roles as experts. Then, I examine the performances of three novices over time. Two of them follow a periphery to core trajectory and become regular members of the podcast while one remained on the periphery. I discovered that teasing and modeling are the primary tools that the experts use to socialize novices and that within Rooster Teeth, novices have the power to negotiate practice from the periphery of the community. This study demonstrates the power that novices may wield within CoPs, and reveals how powerful a socializing tool humor can be.