Creating and nurturing a Community of Practice for langauge teachers in Higher

Education.

Teresa MacKinnonPrincipal Teaching Fellow

University of Warwick Language Centre.

What is a Community of Practice?Etienne Wenger, cognitive anthropology. (1998)Describes the long standing phenomenon oflearning in communities, concept expanded.

The formation and transmission of knowledge by those sharing:

• domain • community• practice

Our context:

• Language Centre, 3500 students a year, 8 languages for academic credit.

• 50 staff, many part-time.• Interest in ICT for teaching and learning.• Assessment review and alignment with CEFR.• Increasing importance of oral/aural skills.• Need to provide tailored resources.

Requirements:

• Sustainable platform for blended delivery.• Re-engagement in discussions of theory and

practice of language teaching.• Importance of student experience.• Need to support innovation.• Principled deployment of ICT to support staff

skill development.

Key points emerging from the data collected:

• Student satisfaction with online course use highest when interaction included in design.

• Staff reported skill development within CoP model:

“ I showed colleagues how to upload documents to Forum and to each week, how to create activities, e.g. assignment… I remember better in showing them how to do those tasks.”

“colleagues demonstrated how to make quizzes and how to upload videos. I remembered them because I could use them straight away in my design of online courses, and they are very practical and quite easy to implement. The sharing has been useful and did prompt me to try a new technology in my teaching.”

Researcher reflections:

• Cannot assume perceptions of shared domain, community and practice.

• Important to celebrate all achievements.• Emphasis on empowering not compliance.• Important to disseminate clear messages and

have management support.• Lifelong learning as a central premise.

Thank you for listening.

t.mackinnon@warwick.ac.ukwarwicklanguage on twitter and youtubeTeresamac in SL, slideshare and ning.

Please keep in touch!