Creating a Community of Practice

在这个NSDL用法开发研讨会项目中，美国生理学会正在将其现有的资源库转变为一个支持生物教育工作者社区的动态平台(“档案馆”)。参与的教师正在使用新的档案工具来促进对教学资源和策略的讨论、共享和建议，重点是如何使用资源及其在课堂上的有效性，并着眼于形成一个反思的实践社区。为了组织参与者，该项目正在创建和支持在类似机构教授类似课程的“志同道合”的教员用户群体。此外，该项目正在提供在线教师发展讲习班--档案学者在线讲习班--以教授寻找和使用高质量在线材料以及为这些资源添加注释并与同事分享的扩展技能。通过使用准实验设计对这些工具和专业发展活动对教师技能和行为的影响的项目评估，这种方法的强大的智力价值得到了加强。通过将完成这些专业发展活动的教师指定为档案学者，从而确定了教师领导干部，该项目的更广泛的影响被感受到。此外，该项目还特别注意为用户群体和档案馆学者活动从历史上属于少数群体的机构招聘和支持少数群体教职员工。

In this NSDL Usage Development Workshops project the American Physiological Society is transforming its existing resource repository to a dynamic platform (the "Archive") supporting a community of biology educators. Participating faculty are using new Archive tools to promote discussion, sharing, and recommendations of teaching resources and strategies focusing on both how to use resources and their effectiveness in the classroom, with an eye towards forming a reflective community of practice. To organize participants, the project is creating and supporting "like-minded" User Groups of faculty who teach similar courses at similar institutions. Furthermore, the project is providing online faculty development workshops - Archive Scholar Online Workshops - to teach expanded skills for finding and using high quality online materials and for annotating and sharing these resources with colleagues. The strong intellectual merit of this approach is enhanced by the project's evaluation of these tools and professional development activities for their impacts on faculty skills and behaviors using a quasi-experimental design. The project's broader impacts are felt through its designation of faculty who complete these professional development activities as Archive Scholars, thus identifying a cadre of faculty leaders. In addition, the project is devoting special attention to recruiting and supporting minority faculty and faculty from historically minority institutions for both the User Groups and Archive Scholars activities.