ROLE: An Infrastructure for Research on Online Teacher Communities of Practice

角色：在线教师实践社区研究的基础设施

• 批准号: 0106926
• 负责人: Mark Schlager
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: SRI International
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-08-15 至 2003-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0106926&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ROLE; Infrastructure; Research; Online; Teacher

Researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers are converging on the view that onlinecommunities of practice (CoPs) in the teaching profession can be powerful catalysts forimproving teaching and facilitating systemic reform. Although the promise of online CoPs is compelling and theoretically sound, the reality of online teacher communities has been less promising. The reason, we believe, is that research into the marriage of TPD pedagogy and online technology is missing a necessary third component-the infrastructure for online CoP (as distinct from particular online TPD strategies). Research cannot continue to treat community as a side effect of a TPD intervention or the inevitable outcome of a Web portal or electronic network. We must study online CoP as a valid component of the education system in its own right or risk continuing the same pattern of a few irreproducible successes and many redundant failures as practitioners and providers struggle to keep pace with emerging technologies and the rapidly changing Web landscape. To move beyond the CoP promise toward measurable benefits for SMET teacher professional development on a national scale, we must conduct the researchneeded to better understand the social and organizational structures of online CoPs as an integral component of the teaching profession. To embark on this research agenda, we must also break out of the constraints that popular "distance learning" technologies place on the research by designing and building technological infrastructures that reflect and augment the social and organizational structures of a CoP.We will apply what we and others are learning about online education CoPs and theirapplications to design and prototype a new technical infrastructure for supporting and studying online CoPs. We will adopt a participatory, scenario-based design approach to develop our prototype infrastructure. Our project brings together a design team representing researchers (SRI and Virginia Tech), teacher educators (Pepperdine University), technology developers (WebCT, PBS), regional education support providers (New England Aquarium, AEL, Inc.), national TPD organizations (PBS TeacherLine), and our core constituency, TAPPED IN members. The team will also include experts in Web-based systems development and graphical user interface design. The basic design will be modular to enable us to plug in new capabilities as they emerge. The prototype infrastructure will serve as a platform for online CoP research and further development by many different organizations over the next several years. We will also document the design process, artifacts, and commentary on a public Web site and solicit input from the research and practitioner communities to widely disseminate knowledge of online CoP design issues and generate design guidelines that will inform technology research and development aimed at supporting online education communities.

研究人员、实践者和政策制定者一致认为，教师职业的在线实践社区(COPS)可以成为改善教学和促进系统性改革的强大催化剂。尽管在线警察的前景令人信服，理论上也是合理的，但在线教师社区的现实却没有那么光明。我们认为，其原因是，对TPD教学法和在线技术结合的研究缺少必要的第三个组成部分--在线COP的基础设施(有别于特定的在线TPD战略)。研究不能继续将社区视为TPD干预的副作用或Web门户或电子网络的必然结果。我们必须将在线COP本身作为教育系统的一个有效组成部分来研究，否则就会冒着继续少数不可复制的成功和许多多余的失败的相同模式的风险，因为从业者和提供者努力跟上新兴技术和快速变化的网络格局。为了超越COP的承诺，在全国范围内为SMET教师专业发展带来可衡量的好处，我们必须进行必要的研究，以更好地理解在线COPS作为教师职业不可分割的组成部分的社会和组织结构。为了开始这项研究议程，我们还必须通过设计和建立反映和增强CoP的社会和组织结构的技术基础设施来打破流行的“远程教育”技术对研究施加的限制。我们将应用我们和其他人所学到的关于在线教育COPS及其应用的知识来设计和原型支持和研究在线COPS的新的技术基础设施。我们将采用参与式、基于场景的设计方法来开发我们的原型基础设施。我们的项目汇集了一个设计团队，代表了研究人员(SRI和弗吉尼亚理工大学)、教师教育工作者(佩珀丁大学)、技术开发商(WebCT，PBS)、地区教育支持提供商(新英格兰水族馆，AEL，Inc.)、全国性TPD组织(PBS TeacherLine)，以及我们的核心支持者Tap IN成员。该团队还将包括基于网络的系统开发和图形用户界面设计方面的专家。基本设计将是模块化的，使我们能够在新功能出现时插入它们。原型基础设施将作为许多不同组织在未来几年进行在线缔约方会议研究和进一步开发的平台。我们还将在公共网站上记录设计过程、文物和评论，并征求研究和从业者社区的意见，以广泛传播在线COP设计问题的知识，并生成设计指南，为旨在支持在线教育社区的技术研究和开发提供信息。