CENTRE FOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

How can we use blended learning

communities to support the

professional learning of ISTE?

Heather Bell

• Research questions

• Approach

• Significant findings

• Facilitation strategies

• So what?

Outline

Our research questions

1. What can we do to strengthen

teacher learning through using

online learning communities?

2. How can we use blended learning

communities to support the

professional learning of ISTE?

Instep structure

How we worked

Research process

Trial new

strategiesDevelop and

refine strategies

Gather

evidence Identify

emerging

themes

Teacher wikis Research wiki

Face to face

meetings

Wiki content data

May July

Content type Facilitator Teacher Facilitator Teacher

Information 2 0 4 8

Scaffolding 1 0 7 2

Responding 0 0 5 14

Contributing 1 0 3 6

Conversation 1 0 3 8

Reflection 0 0 2 5

Questioning 0 0 2 2

Resources 10 0 14 2

Wiki statistics dataMay June

Using wiki statisticsMay June

Aha moment!

Just bought a new pup. Isn't she cute? Now the latest wiki competition is to come up with a name for her. She's a chocolate lab, but don't even think about names like Milo or Cocoa. Chocolate fish for the best one?

What we found

Research question two

How can we use blended learning communities to support the professional learning of ISTE?

What we found

Three progressive themes emerged

from our blended learning

communities:

•Knowledge development

•Social development

•Pedagogical development

Online ‘talk’ comparisons

FTF

• Building personal knowledge rather than

collective knowledge

• Social really important and needed to be

strongly facilitated

• Pedagogical talk took time but was really

rich when it was there. Sharing needed to

be actively facilitated

• Personal reflection space

• Much stronger facilitator presence

required

Online discussion

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

March April May June July August September

Perc

en

tag

e o

f en

trie

s

% of Researcher talk

% of Isteam talk

Knowledge conversations online

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

March April May June July August September

Perc

en

tag

e o

f en

trie

s

% of Researcher talk

% of Isteam talk

Social conversations online

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

March April May June July August September

Perc

en

tag

e o

f en

trie

s

% of Researcher talk

% of Isteam talk

Pedagogical conversations online

Face to face ‘talk’ comparisons

OLC

• Building collective knowledge rather than

personal knowledge

• Social relationships were not a focus in the

meetings

• Pedagogical discussions involved sharing

and unpacking outcomes and challenging

each others’ thinking

• Data heavily used to inform critical thinking

Face to face meeting discussion

• Contextualise the learning

• Build knowledge

• Create shared artefacts

• Build community relationships

• Use the communities own data and evidence

• Challenge through questioning

• Provide collaborative and personal opportunities

to learn

• Vary the pedagogical approaches

• Give feedback

Facilitation strategies

• Provided a range of online and face to face opportunities

for in-service teacher educators to build their

professional knowledge and gain confidence and

competency in using online collaborative

technologies, particularly in the early phases of the

community’s development.

• Engaged in-service teacher educators in a range of

online opportunities, including non task-related

activities, to develop social relationships and get

participants ‘talking’ comfortably online.

• Challenged in-service teacher educators to use their

growing knowledge and social relationships as platforms

for critically reflecting on their professional learning and

practice issues.

Findings

Thanks

Heather, Janine, Paddy, Glynis

and Robyn ...

& Chilli