Pass the porto to the right

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Building a community of practice for Portuguese
professors to profess
Pass the port(o) to the right
Isabel Huet huet_at_ua.pt Diogo Casanova
diogo_at_ua.pt Laboratory for the Evaluation of
Educational Quality in HE University of Aveiro
Portugal
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what is your big concern on teaching and learning
today?
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time to research?
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time to learn?
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time to share?
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time to develop effective teaching strategies?
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what is expected from you?
research
coordinate
fill paperwork
lecturing
write
create
supervise
go away
teach
develop
decide administrative tasks
manage
give feedback
prepare classes
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Do you have time to share
your teaching strategies? your learning? your
research?
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what is collaborative work?
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to gather different ideas and put them in a paper?
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to work with each other?
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question
do you work collaboratively?
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do you tweet?
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do you post on your blog new ideas and
information?
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do you discuss in social platforms with your
peers or students?
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question
if we dont work collaboratively how can we
support students to work with each other?
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The Module Collaborative Learning in HE
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• Module 5th edition
• University of Aveiro December 2008 to January
  2009
• 20 participants (14 HE institutions)
• B-learning approach
• Three f2f sessions (21 h)
• Distance learning (29 h)

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Learning outcomes i
(i) to identify new forms of learning and their
implications for the future of teaching, learning
and supervision of research in HE (ii) to point
out the advantages and/or disadvantages of
promoting collaborative/cooperative learning in
f2f or distance environments (iii) to get
familiar with open source tools available on the
internet aiming to optimise the teaching,
learning and supervision of research in HE
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Learning outcomes ii
(iv) to be able to use communication strategies
in virtual teaching and learning environments,
being able to understand the benefits of using
on-line learning communities as a support for f2f
teaching (v) to define a strategy for the
development of an e-learning community using
on-line tools available at the WEB (e.g.
collaborative writing, social bookmarking, blogs,
microblogs, social software and aggregating
tools), (vi) To evaluate the participation of
students in learning communities.
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Our Virtual Learning Environment
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Initial and follow-up study i

• 2 questionnaires were delivered
• The initial questionnaire
• to evaluate the participants knowledge and
  knowhow of topics addressed in the module
• to evaluate the initial expectations.
• The follow-up questionnaire
• to monitor the acquisition of knowledge and the
  final expectations
• to understand (i) the impact of the Module in
  their professional life, (ii) the design and use
  of learning Communities with their students or
  colleagues, and (iii) the positive and more
  negative aspects related to the organization of
  the Module.

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Initial and follow-up study ii
Achieved competences

• to acquire practical knowledge that helped to
  improve their teaching practice
• to have more knowhow in the use of ICT in
  education
• to be able to create and mediate a learning
  community
• to contribute to the improvement of teaching
  quality in their institution
• to be able to help colleagues in developing of
  learning communities in their institutions.

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Initial and follow-up study ii

• Less developed competences
• to exchange ideas with colleagues regarding the
  topics addressed at the Module
• to be able to prepare teaching strategies aiming
  to promote more autonomous learners
• to be able to evaluate students participation
  in learning communities
• Needs
• More f2f sessions
• to evaluate the participation of students in
  learning communities

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Initial and follow-up study iv

• the satisfaction for the module was very
  satisfactory.
• 7 participants developed on-line learning
  communities with their students
• the social platform is still alive.

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Final considerations

• Building a community of practice is possible if
  teachers are willing to work collaboratively with
  their peers or students
• Information and communication technologies are
  paving their way in HE, but, often, their
  adoption is based on very amateur approaches
• More training on methodologies and on the
  effective and efficient exploitation of the
  technologies is mandatory for institutions to
  have the chance to influence the quality of
  approaches adopted.