Multi-Institutional Teaching Communities in Computer Education (original) (raw)
Up Close and Pedagogical: Computing Academics Talk About Teaching
This paper describes and enacts a process for bootstrapping a more systematic discussion of computing education within a school of computing at a researchintensive Australasian university. Thus far, the project has gone through three stages. In the first stage, some academics were interviewed about their approach to teaching. In the second stage, selected anonymous quotes from the interviews were presented and discussed by other interested members of the school at workshops. In the final stage, selected anonymous quotes from the interviews and workshops were placed on a web-based survey, to which interested members of the school responded. These forms of data will be used to drive further stages of debate within the school. The theoretical underpinnings of this project are Wenger's concept of a community of practice, phenomenography, and socially constructivism. The aim is not to instruct the academics in any "right way" to teach. Instead, the aim is to facilitate debate, where the teachers identify the problems, and in finding the solutions they construct their own "pedagogic reality". As facilitators of this process, the authors of this paper highlighted dialectically opposed views in quotes from the teachers, and then allow the teachers to synthesise those views into a more sophisticated view. Our ultimate project aim is to grow a teaching community that balances reified theories of teaching and learning with participation in a community of practice.
ICERI2011 Proceedings, 2011
Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as modern pedagogical perspectives have created new possibilities to facilitate and support learning in higher education (HE). Emerging technologies bring opportunities to reconsider teaching and learning (Coto, 2008). New ideas and concepts about the educational use of new technologies transform the roles of teachers. In this context the key question of this study is: whether learning as part of a (virtual) community of practice supports teachers’ technology professional development. Different learning alternatives such as distance learning, workplace learning as well as blended forms of learning will enhance lifelong learning which forces a rethinking of traditional forms of education. However, most institutions for education foster just-in-case learning while new technologies foster just-in-time learning (Schrum, 1999; Collins & Halverson, 2009). As a result of new learning perspectives and the potential pedagogical benefits of ICTs in educational contexts, teachers have to learn how to integrate new technologies in teaching and learning. Putnam and Borko (2000) recommend that teacher professional development should be situated in multiple learning settings in which learning is teacher-centred. Next to classroom settings and cross-institutional learning communities, virtual learning communities (VCoPs) are a significant source for learning. There is an overlap between the educational values of interned-based learning and social theories of learning such as Lave & Wenger’s (1991) situated learning theory and Wenger’s (1998) theory of communities of practice. Drawing upon these theories, offers a perspective on social learning that emphasizes social processes within (V)CoPs where community participants engage in collective learning and knowledge creation. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach. The paper concludes that VCoPs are learning environments since these network-based learning communities push learners to take more control of their learning and provide tasks which are more contextualised and meaningful.
From Informal to Formal: Creating the Australasian Computing Education Community
ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, 2004
The advent of Web technology has enabled new ways in which groups of people may interact, leading to the development of online communities. In an academic environment these virtual communities can facilitate collaboration and provide new ways for educators to communicate and disseminate their ideas and practices. A website designed to support a community of educators interested in scholarship and
Emerging Technologies, Established Communities, & Evolving Universities
wikieducator.org
Post-secondary institutions in Canada and around the world are in a constant state of flux due to changing population demographics and newer technologies. With multifarious demands for corollary revenues and bottom lines, universities are being stretched beyond their limits. Increasingly, the ivory towers have lost their gleam and are under constant pressure to respond to a Net generation demanding employable credentials . Many of these issues are not recent as we see scholars having raised the alarm bells even in the sixties . The emerging technologies have begun to challenge our notion of relevant education in relation to pursuit of knowledge. The influence of technology in the way we learn and interact is undeniable. In the meantime, universities have become isolated islands distanced from their immediate communities. With the seeming disconnect that has plagued higher institutions of learning, traditional universities have begun to revisit the notion of production of knowledge for its own sake. This is especially true in Canada.
Supporting Academic Continuity by Building Community
Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning, 2020
In the initial rush to remote instruction during COVID-19, educators focused on technologies to ensure academic continuity and relied on instructional technology teams to teach them how to use them. Soon after, instructors turned to educational development professionals for more comprehensive help to rethink face-to-face pedagogy to fit the affordances and constraints of online teaching. Historically, our Faculty Development Center (FDC) had focused primarily on pedagogical support for face-toface classes. During the crisis, we needed both to re-envision our work to support remote instruction and distinguish our work from that of our instructional technology colleagues. We also needed to re-evaluate our work in two other areas of our mission: pedagogical research and assessment of student learning outcomes. We recognized that a key goal of our FDC's work provided a guiding principle in the new situation: to build faculty community around teaching and learning. Although faculty needed instruction and solutions for teaching online, they also needed a venue to think through the existential change in their teaching practice and the multiple challenges and choices they faced. In this paper, we discuss our three-pronged approach to build a vibrant, virtual faculty community: provide a sense of continuity through our offerings and services; prioritize program content to meet immediate needs; and promote complementarity between our support and that of instructional technology. Our efforts resulted in significantly expanding our reach, renewing the culture of inquiry around teaching among our faculty, and refining and reinforcing our role as complementary to, but distinct from, instructional technology.
Supporting Computing Educators to Create a Cycle of Teaching and Computing Education Research
United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research conference., 2021
Despite a rich history of computing education in the United Kingdom and Ireland, computing educators often rely on the same procedures and teaching practices rather than embrace innovations. Similarly, while a growing collection of literature exists on educational theory and practice in computing education, much of this focuses on the same concepts and concerns. An aspiration is that both these problems can be simultaneously addressed by computing educators adopting a cycle of embracing existing literature when devising teaching practice and then feeding their experience and findings back to the community in a rigorous fashion. Consequently, this panel supports computing educators by acting as advisers on a one-on-one basis to support audience members in discovering or devising their own cycle of teaching practice and computing education research.
Editorial: Academic Communities and the Nature of Academic Discourse
questia.com
A decade later as the new millennium began, Jerry Willis was instrumental in helping conceive Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE Journal), an electronic counterpart to JTATE. An electronic journal was a natural step for an educational technology ...
Creating collaborative community in multidisciplinary settings
Innovative Higher …, 2002
This study examines part-time students' perceptions of collaborative community in a graduate, multidisciplinary, education department where courses are offered on multiple campuses. Perceptions of community are synonymous with friendship, involvement, cohesion, communication, and trust. These feelings are affected more by campus location, program area, and credits earned than by age, race or sex. The knowledge students gain fuels the trust, communication, and cohesiveness that in turn, facilitate the collaborative process. Students value this as part of their professionalization process, desire opportunities to build relationships with one another outside the classroom, and suggest ways to facilitate community.