Design and Structure of Online Community: Inquiry Learning Forum
Barab, S. A., MaKinster James G, Moore, J. A., & Cunningham, D. J. (2001). Designing and building an on-line community: The struggle to support sociability in the Inquiry Learning Forum. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 49(4), 71.
Teachers need to have ownership in a community in order for it to be successful. Wenger (1998) describes communities of practice as self-generating. This bottom-up approach to network development is mirrored in the development of online communities This article describes the sociotechnical structures of the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), which is a web based professional development tool designed to support math and science teachers and reflects on the components of successful networks and communities of practice in hopes to better understand the structures within the community that allow for it’s development.
We need to focus on a new model for teacher learning; one that is community based. The problem is that this model cannot be imposed in a top-down approach. Community centered learning must be facilitated and have a great deal of user-driven formation. Unfortunately teachers do not have the opportunity to discuss, interaction and participate in their communities of practice in the ways that will afford them the opportunity to impact school reform.
(Note: article written in 2001; despite the years that have passed, many of the same problems exist. New technologies have afforded teachers with greater opportunity to engage in informal types of social learning for professional development, yet large scale, systemic models don’t exist in most schools.)
Inquiry Learning Forum is designed to assist teachers to come together in a virtual space to visit each other’s classrooms to observe and discuss best practices. The vison of the creators of the website is to create a space that helps teachers make their teaching explicit so that it can be shared with others.
Article describes the design, analysis and development, but I am most interested in the process of supporting sociability.
Communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) activity binds individuals to community; shared practices and experience over time result in learning that is continually evolving through each interaction. Barab & Duffy, 2000, state that when learning occurs as part of a community of practice, members interacting with this community have access to this history of previous negotiations as well as responsiveness from the current members on the functional value of a particular practice, solution or finding.
Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) state that in order for the community to be sustained, there must be a continual contribution of new members, new ideas, etc. One of the ways this occurs is for members on the outer edges of the community to participate in small ways, slowly moving towards the center regions of the community.
