Schedule: 2009-09-12 (15:00 - 15:45)
Parallel Session 1 (Room A-30)

Title: Creating and maintaining e-communities in Malaysian smart schools – Sharing experiences
Authors: Siew Ming Thang, Hazita Azman, Puvaneswary Muragaiah
Abstract: The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs and shared sociocultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals (Ragoff, 1985 and Lave, 1991). Lave & Wenger (1991) further used the term in relation to situated learning as part of an attempt to "rethink learning" at the Institute for Research on Learning. The construct has since been used in various fields including education, sociolinguistics, material anthropology, and second language acquisition. More recently, a community of practice has been associated with knowledge management as people have begun to see it as a way of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation, or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization. It is now an accepted part of organizational development. This concept has also been extended to the virtual world. Bourhis et al (2005), Allen et al (2003), Archdivili et al (2003), Hinton (2003) and others in their research studies shared the challenges and problems faced in creating and maintaining such communities. The focus of this paper is on the creation and maintainance of e-communities of teachers in achieving teaching and learning goals. A teaching community of practice has been defined by Wenger, (2003) as a group of teachers who share a passion, a concern, a set of problems about any issue and knowledge and skills related to teaching and learning, by interacting continuously with each other. Such peer collaboration; that is, collegial sharing and reflection about practice, has been widely suggested to be effective for teacher professional development. The paper will further draw upon a research project (e-CPDelt Vision 2020 model) to illustrate how this concept has been used to aid online collaboration among twenty teachers from five Malaysian Smart schools. The teachers were divided into three communities according to subjects i.e. Science, Mathematics and English. Preliminary findings revealed that the teachers were willing to put their trust in this project and they expected their involvement to be beneficial for them and their students, and therefore were ready to play an active part in it. However, they seemed to be dependent on the research team - expecting a lot of support from them. This could be problematic as the model sets out to provide the platform for teachers to develop communities of practices and not to provide continual support in the form of online modules or tasks. This paper will describe this “misconception”, the steps taken to correct it and how successful these initiatives were. The data for this paper were collected from online forums on the blogs posted by the teachers and also from interviews conducted with them.
Keywords: e-communities of practice, Continuing Professional Development, smart schools, teacher improvement, virtual learning

Main topic: Curriculum development for CALL.

Biodata: Thang Siew Ming is an Associate Professor at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She obtained her PhD from the School of Education, University of Nottingham in 2001. Her areas of professional interest are CALL, Learner Autonomy, Distance Education and Learning Styles, Approaches and Learning Strategies. Hazita Azman is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities and Associate Professor at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from University of Western Australia. Her areas of professional interest are Multiliteracies and Education and CALL Puvaneswary Murugaiah is a lecturer at the School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Her areas of professional interest are TESOL, Distance Education and Strategic Learning.
Type of presentation Paper presentation

Paper category Research

Target educational sector Secondary education

Language of delivery English

EU-funded project No

Schedule:	2009-09-12 (15:00 - 15:45) Parallel Session 1 (Room A-30)
Title:	Creating and maintaining e-communities in Malaysian smart schools – Sharing experiences
Authors:	Siew Ming Thang, Hazita Azman, Puvaneswary Muragaiah
Abstract:	The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs and shared sociocultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals (Ragoff, 1985 and Lave, 1991). Lave & Wenger (1991) further used the term in relation to situated learning as part of an attempt to "rethink learning" at the Institute for Research on Learning. The construct has since been used in various fields including education, sociolinguistics, material anthropology, and second language acquisition. More recently, a community of practice has been associated with knowledge management as people have begun to see it as a way of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation, or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization. It is now an accepted part of organizational development. This concept has also been extended to the virtual world. Bourhis et al (2005), Allen et al (2003), Archdivili et al (2003), Hinton (2003) and others in their research studies shared the challenges and problems faced in creating and maintaining such communities. The focus of this paper is on the creation and maintainance of e-communities of teachers in achieving teaching and learning goals. A teaching community of practice has been defined by Wenger, (2003) as a group of teachers who share a passion, a concern, a set of problems about any issue and knowledge and skills related to teaching and learning, by interacting continuously with each other. Such peer collaboration; that is, collegial sharing and reflection about practice, has been widely suggested to be effective for teacher professional development. The paper will further draw upon a research project (e-CPDelt Vision 2020 model) to illustrate how this concept has been used to aid online collaboration among twenty teachers from five Malaysian Smart schools. The teachers were divided into three communities according to subjects i.e. Science, Mathematics and English. Preliminary findings revealed that the teachers were willing to put their trust in this project and they expected their involvement to be beneficial for them and their students, and therefore were ready to play an active part in it. However, they seemed to be dependent on the research team - expecting a lot of support from them. This could be problematic as the model sets out to provide the platform for teachers to develop communities of practices and not to provide continual support in the form of online modules or tasks. This paper will describe this “misconception”, the steps taken to correct it and how successful these initiatives were. The data for this paper were collected from online forums on the blogs posted by the teachers and also from interviews conducted with them.
Keywords:	e-communities of practice, Continuing Professional Development, smart schools, teacher improvement, virtual learning
Main topic:	Curriculum development for CALL.
Biodata:	Thang Siew Ming is an Associate Professor at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She obtained her PhD from the School of Education, University of Nottingham in 2001. Her areas of professional interest are CALL, Learner Autonomy, Distance Education and Learning Styles, Approaches and Learning Strategies. Hazita Azman is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities and Associate Professor at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from University of Western Australia. Her areas of professional interest are Multiliteracies and Education and CALL Puvaneswary Murugaiah is a lecturer at the School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Her areas of professional interest are TESOL, Distance Education and Strategic Learning.
Type of presentation	Paper presentation
Paper category	Research
Target educational sector	Secondary education
Language of delivery	English
EU-funded project	No