In the mid-term evaluation of the Technology Enabled Learning (TEL) initiative of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), one of the suggestions from the evaluator was to develop a Community of Practice (CoP) amongst the practitioners in the institutions where TEL implementation is in progress and share good practices, innovations, and research amongst each other. Considering the suggestions, COL organised a stakeholder meeting on December 3-4, 2018 at New Delhi, India to discuss the feasibility and design of a CoP for TEL. The participants in the meeting supported the idea of a CoP overwhelmingly and expected that such a platform would help empower teachers to engage deeply in scholarly approach to TEL implementation.
Audience
The target group of the CoP is primarily teachers from the COL’s TEL implementing institutions in the Commonwealth, preferably involved in actual development and offer of courses using technology for teaching and learning. However, anyone with an interest in technology-enabled learning may like to join the platform and benefit from the CoP.
Purpose, Goals, Outcomes
The goal of the CoP is to empower the teachers to effectively use technology-enabled learning for delivering courses and programmes in their institutions. The purpose is to assist teachers in participating institutions to share, collaborate to solve problems, and undertake action research to improve the quality of learning for their students. The CoP will also help develop a network of trusted experts in integrating technology in teaching and learning, who can be tapped by members of the CoP whenever needed. As such the CoP will stimulate new thinking, facilitate discourse and debate on topics of significant importance to the Community and generate knowledge through social co-construction.
Overall, the CoP will strengthen the implementation of TEL in participating institution by contributing to the corporate outcomes “More organisations implement quality ODL and technology enabled learning systems and practices.” The CoP activities will be measured using the following indicators:
- Number of teachers registered in the CoP
- Number of teachers actively participating in the activities of the community
- Participating institutions leverage the use of CoP to strengthen their TEL implementation
Benefits to members
- Participate in regular online discussion forums
- Participate in monthly webinar on topics related to TEL
- Offer talks on monthly webinar based on their experiences and research
- Collaboration to solve problems identified by members
- Contribute blog posts
- Share success stories and case studies
- Opportunity to be featured as “Profile of the Month” or for monthly interview based on his/her work
- Sharing resources related to TEL
- Listing on the directory of members.