Online Communities: It Takes a Village

K-12 teachers have such busy professional lives that it's hard to squeeze lunch—or even a trip to the restroom—into a busy day. With little time in their hectic schedules to share ideas with other teachers, they often experience professional isolation.

Many teachers come to the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development for the opportunity to reflect and learn from colleagues. In Assistant Professor Joan Hughes' class they collaboratively explore ways to integrate technology into their classrooms. Hughes says, "We need to create opportunities for collaborative learning at the U for teachers who choose to come here and invest their time" in professional development. Moreover, an advantage of collaboration is that teachers are able to learn from peers, a characteristic shown to lead to innovation and adoption (see E. M. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations, 4th edition, New York: The Free Press, 1995). Hughes is interested in fostering sustainable communities that help teachers identify problems of practice and find solutions; she refers to these communities as inquiry groups because participants systematically "inquire into issues in their teaching" to effect change in the classroom.

But these face-to-face classroom communities have their own limitations. For one thing, they include teachers of different disciplines. While sharing experiences and solutions with this diverse group is valuable, teachers seldom have the chance to talk with disciplinary peers about challenges related to content, or to explore discipline-specific software. As a result, they're not likely to get beyond the familiar—PowerPoint, Excel, Word—when considering how they can use technology to improve learning. Another limitation is that these working groups don't persist for the duration of the program. "You can create community with a face-to-face classroom and within online classes but that limits you to people in your class during that one semester."

Goals

Hughes thinks that online communities that offer broad access to teachers are a solution to these problems. In both her research and classroom practice she's investigating how technology can support learning communities that enable teachers to find peers within their disciplines, whether they are enrolled at the University of Minnesota or not.

Technology Strategies

What would such an online community look like? That's what Hughes will determine over the course of this year as a fellow in the Digital Media Center Faculty Fellowship Program (which, she points out, is itself an inquiry group for faculty members inquiring into teaching practices). Currently, she is reviewing the literature on collaborative environments and looking at models to determine which design elements will best support teachers in their life-long learning efforts. She anticipates that the learning environment she eventually designs will have

robust communication features;
a section featuring exemplars such as video cases that would give teachers a chance to actually see how others are using technology in their classrooms;
curriculum development materials;
inquiry tools; and
teacher narratives.

Her students will help her to determine the final features. Eventually, she hopes it will serve as a research database that students at the University as well as teachers in the wider K-12 community can consult whether they want input from others about specific software or approaches to teaching particular concepts in their fields. While these online communities initially would be tied to programmatic goals and rewards, she hopes that eventually the practical and theoretical support they provide will be intrinsically motivating, and the community will continue to grow beyond these boundaries.

Related Resources

Hughes received a 2005-06 DMC faculty fellowship. Read her fellowship profile.
To learn more about online learning communities issues, read our Using Technology to Shape and Support Learning Communities Spotlight Issues page.