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Introduction:
Communities Online: Building a
Space for Professional Learning
 In 1992, Brendan Kehoe wrote a groundbreaking essay called "Zen
and the Art of the Internet," which introduced the Internet
to a non-technical audience. Kehoe concluded his preface with this
admonition: "One warning is perhaps in order—this territory
we are entering can become a fantastic time-sink. Hours can slip
by, people can come and go, and you'll be locked into Cyberspace.
Remember to do your work! With that, I welcome you, the new user,
to the Net."
That same year, EDC welcomed a group of educators to our own fledgling
net: NCIPNet, an electronic bulletin board service created by the
National Center to Improve Practice (NCIP) to support the use of
technology for students with disabilities. While Kehoe saw the
Internet as a distraction from work, NCIP's director, Judith Zorfass,
believed that the new medium could help special education teachers
do their work better. "From the outset, we surmised that our
online forums would give members of the NCIP community a venue
for expressing opinions, sharing information, and collaborating
to solve problems," Zorfass wrote in a 1997 essay. "This
is exactly what happened."
Nearly a decade later, both Kehoe's and Zorfass's views of the
Internet remain equally valid: It is both a tremendous time-sink
and a useful and flexible tool for online learning and professional
development. The characteristics distinguishing valuable online
experiences from frustrating ones can be both subtle and difficult
to achieve. Building on the experience of NCIPNet and other innovative
online learning environments, researchers at EDC have discovered
what works and what doesn't in this new medium.
First and foremost, good online professional development must
exemplify the characteristics of good professional development,
which include creating a sustained experience rather than a one-time
event; engaging practitioners as active learners rather than passive
recipients; and offering relevant, job-related content. We've discovered
that one of the best online formats for achieving these goals is
a course consisting of readings, assignments, and facilitated discussions.
Here are the key lessons we've learned through our experiments
with such seminars:
- While it is easier to build and maintain an online community
of practitioners if the participants have first met in person,
it
is possible to build a community of practitioners who have
never met if you have trained facilitators who are prepared to
put some
effort into seeding, guiding, and synthesizing the discussion.
- Seminars that run six to eight weeks provide sufficient time
for participants to become comfortable with the format and their
classmates.
- The upper limit for seminar participation appears to be 30,
with the ideal being about 20. These courses need enough people
to
generate an active discussion,
but not so many that participants can't get to know one another or that the
number of postings is overwhelming.
- Maintaining participant interest is a
major challenge for online courses. Some people register for
them out of curiosity, rather
than committed interest.
Others find it difficult to structure their time to participate in an "anytime,
anyplace" situation that may lack a personal connection to the other
participants and workshop leaders.
- Courses should be tightly focused, and
instructors should make sure that participants know ahead of time what
the course will
and will not offer and what the expectations
are. For example, many EDC online courses require participants to log on
for at least two to four hours per week.
- Online courses are
best used as one component of a complete professional development
program that also includes local
study groups, coaching
and mentoring, hands-on
training, and opportunities for face-to-face courses, workshops, and conferences—as
well as other Web-based resources.
In this issue of Mosaic, we elaborate
on these principles and profile several of our current online
professional development projects. We begin with a roundtable
discussion featuring Judith Zorfass, associate director of the Center
for Family, School, and Community; Glenn Kleiman, EDC vice president,
and director of the Center for Online Professional Education;
and Robert Spielvogel, EDC's director of technology.
For questions or comments, contact mosaic@edc.org.
Copyright 2000-2003
Education Development Center, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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