17,000 islands and one goal: Creating online communities of practice (Journal of Staff Development)

JSD | www.nsdc.org February 2010 | Vol. 31 No. 118

By Mary Burns

Community has taken on a newmeaning for several school-basedcoaches spread across Indonesia.For far too long in developingcountries, educators have beenforced to rely on one-shot cen-tralized professional development

for teachers and those who work with them. A short-age of money, locally trained staff, and access to learn-ing materials has made any kind of ongoing, site-based

professional development impossible.To overcome such professional development con-

straints in Indonesia, last year Education DevelopmentCenter (EDC) launched a pilot online coaching courseto help Indonesian educators learn to become school-based coaches so they can then provide school-basedcoaching and follow-up to teachers — both firsts in In-donesia.

Twenty-five participants across six Indonesianprovinces were recruited by EDC to serve as school-based coaches. To help them in this endeavor, EDC pro-vided three weeks of face-to-face instruction over the

theme Technology

17,000islands,1 GOAL

INDoNESIA TURNS To oNLINE RESoURCES To CREATE

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course of a year in such areas as using technology to pro-mote learner-centered instruction, facilitation tech-niques, and school-based classroom observations andfeedback. Coaching candidates then continued withtheir development as coaches in an online course.

The online course used a gradual release coachingapproach. Online learners (the coaches) first modeledthree one-computer, learner-centered activities for teach-ers. From there, in several two-week sessions, the coursefacilitators scaffolded the coaching trajectory — help-ing coaches work with the teacher to adapt this modellesson to the teacher’s classroom, co-teach a lesson with

teachers, and observe and provide feedback to teachersin their solo teaching of this activity. As coaches learnedabout a particular technique, they then applied this tech-nique with teachers. Coaches accessed all materials, in-cluding readings and video examples of coachingtechniques online. They also communicated with oneanother — the whole group, their learning team, whichwas a cohort of four people, as well as their online fa-cilitator — through the free and open-source e-learn-ing system, Moodle. Since EDC’s program developershoped that this type of school-based professional de-velopment and coaching would continue beyond the

theme Technology

A NETwoRK oF SCHooL-BASED CoACHES

indonesia is a vast archipelago of 250 million people livingacross 17,000 islands. With one of the lowest rates of

internet penetration in the world, the coaches hadnever before experienced an online course. Yet every

participant completed the course and fulfilled allthe requirements. They enjoyed having access to

content and materials that they couldn’taccess otherwise.

Six strategies providea foundation foronline communitybuilding no matter thecontext or whether itis indonesia or theUnited States.

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life of the online course, designers focused on buildingan online community of practice.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of 250 million peo-ple living across 17,000 islands. With one of the low-est rates of Internet penetration in the world, the coacheshad never before experienced an online course. Yet everyparticipant completed the course and fulfilled all the re-quirements. They enjoyed having access to content andmaterials that they couldn’t access otherwise. Teachersappreciated their school-based coach, and all imple-mented their learner-centered, one-computer activities.Most exciting was evaluation evidence that the coachesfelt they were part of an online community of practiceand attributed their coaching success to their partici-pation in this online community.

Indonesia and the U.S. are very different places, butas we evaluate the online course, we have learned thatthe following strategies provide a foundation for onlinecommunity building no matter the country or context.

1. Know what type of community you want and de-sign for it. There are many types of communities. Many on-

line experiences are informal communities of interestthat come together around a particular topic and then

dissipate once mastery or boredom sets in. Communi-ties of learning focus more on teacher learning (content,for example) and less on practice, though there may bean assumption that teachers will indeed put into prac-tice what’s been learned. In contrast, we wanted a com-munity of practice, where the focus was on sharedlearning and application of that learning in classrooms.(See box on p. 21 for characteristics of various com-munities.) Consequently, we designed the course as afour-month experience, long by online learning stan-dards, where all coaches worked together on the samegoals and activities. The course was highly structuredso that each session focused on a necessary coachingskill, such as building trust with teachers, understand-ing the change process, or models of co-teaching, anda particular coaching activity, such as individual goalsetting with teachers, planning an effective teacher meet-ing, or co-teaching. Coaches learned a particular tech-nique, implemented that technique with teachers, andshared evidence of their work with their online col-leagues and facilitator who in turn provided feedbackand guidance. Evidence of their work might includeself-assessments of their meeting facilitation skills ornotes from post-classroom observation meetings withteachers.

2. Organize learners into teams.Online learning can be a lonely experience. This

sense of isolation often leads to high rates of attritionin online courses. To prevent such attrition, we organ-ized coaches into provincial learning teams within whichthey planned and conducted activities. Such activitiesmight include sharing professional development ideasand reviewing and providing feedback on artifacts ofone another’s work, such as video episodes of coachesco-teaching. In addition to online teammates, everycoach had a face-to-face coaching partner with whomhe or she worked on all course requirements and school-

Moodlehttp://moodle.org/Free, open-source coursemanagement software.

Skypewww.skype.comMake voice calls over the Internet.

Diigowww.diigo.comAnnotate, store, and share webbookmarks with others.

Dimdimwww.dimdim.comweb conferencing services.

Flickrwww.flickr.comPost, organize, and share photos.

Ningwww.ning.comDo-it-yourself, interest-based socialnetworks.

Teacher Tubewww.teachertube.comVideos of teachers and clips to beused in teaching as well as shareddocuments, photos, and communityforums.

VoiceThreadwww.voicethread.comCollaborative slideshows thatincorporate images, video, audio,written word, and other media.

TOOLS WE USED

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Borobudur Temple in Yogyakarta, Java.

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based coaching activities. Learners always had someonethey could turn to.

3. Train facilitators in the medium in which they’ll facilitate.In an online learning environment, the facilitator

plays a critical and varied role. He or she is the face ofwhat can be, for novices, a disembodied and potentiallydisorienting experience. Facilitators must work to es-tablish a welcoming presence, set a tone that encour-ages reflection and inquiry, broaden and deepen onlinecommunication, and encourage those who fall behind.Most critically, to make the online environment feel likea conversation and cultivate a sense of belonging, facil-itators must provide verbal immediacy and just-in-timeassistance (Rodriguez, Plax, & Kearney, 1996). Becausea high-quality facilitator is so critical to success in on-

line learning, the course’s online instructor prepared forher role as a facilitator by participating in EDC’s EdTechLeaders Online (ETLO) program. Through ETLO, thefacilitator learned how to navigate Moodle, the coursemanagement system, use techniques for online com-munity building, and facilitate meaningful online dis-cussions.

4. Establish frequent opportunities for interactionand collaboration.Online discussions and shared practice bind a col-

lection of individuals into a collaborative community.Without this interaction and collaboration, learning be-comes a solo endeavor.

The course established frequent opportunities forcommunication and collaboration among coaches.Coaching partners worked together on their weekly

Community of interest Community of learning Community of practice

• initial stage of communityformation.

• learners connect with one anothervia a shared professional interest.

• May not be goal-oriented.

• characterized by communication.

• Focus is on the interest orinnovation itself.

• loosely formed; little coherence.

• investigation and exploration ofskill, concept, or tool.

• May be little or no sharing ofresources or experiences.

• some degree of mutuality andreciprocity.

• More developed stage ofcommunity formation.

• learners come together around ajoint enterprise — to learn about aparticular concept, skill, or tool.

• goal-oriented.

• characterized by cooperation andcollegiality.

• Focus is on teachers’ learning.

• well-formed; may meet on regularbasis for purposes of mutuallearning.

• Deeper investigation of skill,concept, or tool with theunderstood goal of application.

• sharing resources, experiences, andindividual practice.

• higher degree of mutuality andreciprocity.

• Most developed stage ofcommunity formation.

• learners come together toimplement a particular concept,skill, or tool.

• goal-oriented.

• characterized by ongoingcollaboration.

• Focus is on practice and applicationof learning.

• highly formed; meets regularly forpurposes of collaboration.

• May involve parallel teaching, co-teaching, or peer observation andfeedback.

• explicit emphasis on movinglearning into practice, on doing,and shared action. sharingresources, experiences, and sharedpractice.

• highest degree of mutuality andreciprocity.

Types of communities and their characteristics (Burns & Dimock, 2007)

17,000 islands, 1 goal

This course and EDC’swork in Indonesia arefunded by the UnitedStates Agency forInternationalDevelopment (USAID).

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school-based assignments with the same group of teach-ers. We required that coaches participate in at least twodiscussions a week. Teams used social bookmarking sitessuch as Diigo to collect and annotate a common set ofcoaching resources and constructed an ongoing e-port-folio of their work. This e-portfolio served almost as acoaching handbook, and included, among other re-quirements, coaches’ reflections on particular coachingstrategies, video examples of a meeting with teachers

early and later in the coaching process, annotated pho-tos of their work with teachers, and examples of teach-ers’ work and how coaches assisted with this work.

Every other week, the asynchronous online discus-sion was replaced by a live synchronous discussion viaweb 2.0 real-time meeting applications. For instance,coaches shared and assessed one another’s co-teachingvideos via VoiceThread, which facilitates real-time au-dio or chat discussions around an image or video. Withthe exception of individual reflections in Moodle’s dis-cussion forum, coaches never worked alone.

5. Where possible, build in face-to-face interactions.Online or web-based professional development is

not one model but rather a continuum of practices thatvary in the amount of learning that occurs online. Asmuch as possible, this online coaching course integratedopportunities for face-to-face interaction in order to en-hance the online community aspect. Face-to-face in-teraction was place-based. Coaches spent a total of threeweeks in face-to-face sessions where together they learnedprocess skills — for example, questioning techniques— and where they got to know one another. Addition-ally, they participated in a two-day face-to-face orien-tation for the online course where they learned aboutMoodle as well as the Web 2.0 tools — Flickr, Ning,Teacher Tube — to be used as part of the online course.

Live, face-to-face interactions also had a virtual com-ponent. Coaches used a number of Internet applica-tions — Skype, the free Internet telephony application,

and Dimdim, a free web meeting tool — for ongoingsmall- and large-group discussions and reflections wherethey could see one another and talk in real time. Bothversions of face-to-face interaction further strengthenedcommunity-based aspects of the online learning expe-rience.

6. Focus on written communication.The real value of online learning comes from shar-

ing ideas and experiences in rich and robust discussions.This sort of communication creates the kinds of con-nections and interactions that are the cornerstone of anonline community. The duality of asynchronous onlinewriting — the fact that it is both a means of introspec-tion and of communication — deepens participants’own reflection of their existing practices while allowingfor the exchange of ideas, data, resources, and strategies.But because online communication is still largely text-based, the quality of these exchanges is largely depend-ent upon strong writing skills.

The importance of writing is often overlooked inonline courses. Novice learners may lack familiarity withconventions of online communication. They may notknow how to respond to a colleague’s posts, especiallyif they disagree with the content, or how to composethe thoughtful responses that provoke and sustain dis-cussion. They may not have knowledge of netiquette— using appropriate subject lines, addressing the indi-vidual or group, or using techniques to extend the on-line discussion — seemingly minor points thatcumulatively can derail online communication andlearning. Even experienced online learners may lack thecomposition and rhetorical skills needed to condensecomplex thoughts or provocative ideas into coherentand nonpolemical language.

Most of the two-day orientation with coaches fo-cused on honing their online communication skills.Coaches discussed standards for good online writing,

theme Technology

Above,nighttime in

the capitalcity of

Jakarta.At right, rice

terraces inBali.

February 2010 | Vol. 31 No. 1 www.nsdc.org | JSD 23

17,000 islands, 1 goal

practiced composing different types of online postings,examined rubrics with criteria and techniques for higher-order postings, and developed anchors — models ofgood discussion posts to which they could refer through-out the semester. And because many adults, like theirstudents, may be poor writers or dislike writing, coachescould also use Moodle’s audio tool to record their re-flections. This way, poor grammatical or mechanicalskills would not serve as a barrier to online communi-cation.

WHY COMMUNiTiES THRiVEThe heart of any online community consists of par-

ticipants who engage with the goals of the course, withmeaningful and relevant content, and with one anotherin the pursuit of professional improvement. Thoughonline community types may vary, all demand a sharedsystem of values, interaction, discussion, reflection, anda focus on practice.

Whether in Indonesia or the U.S., online commu-nities must be carefully and deliberately crafted and cul-tivated both externally through course design and strong

facilitation and internally by community members them-selves who value being part of a community, who un-derstand their individual responsibility in helping thecommunity thrive, and who practice shared norms ofcommunication and collaboration.

REFERENCESBurns, M. & Dimock, K.V. (2007). Technology

as a catalyst for school communities: Beyond boxes andbandwidth. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Rodriguez, J.I., Plax, T.G., & Kearney, P.(1996, October). Clarifying the relationship betweenteacher nonverbal immediacy and student cognitivelearning. In Communication Education, 45(4), 293-305.

•Mary Burns ([email protected]) is senior

technology specialist at Education DevelopmentCenter (EDC). Burns leads EDC’s instructionaltechnology efforts in Indonesia and has createdand led professional development around theworld. �