Foundations of Support: What Creates Success in Online Educational Communities

The internet is changing the way key issues, such as support for new teachers, are being addressed. 

A guest post by Sara Postic

“The hardest part of my first year, was feeling alone. I was one of 8 kindergarten teachers and yet none were focused on child development. They had stacks of hand-outs that they were giving to these wonderful kindergarten kids, with little concern for their cognitive development. It was a sad and difficult time for me. But I stuck it out!” Lisa Dabbs, moderator of an online community for new teachers, wrote this as a description of the hardest aspect of being a new teacher. Isolation permeates the experiences of many new teachers during their first year of work. Often, teachers find themselves at polar ends of the spectrum as far as support. In her article, Deborah Bieler describes teachers as either “emphasizing the rich benefits of community-centered faculty life [or] bemoaning the difficulties of an isolative faculty culture” (Bieler, 46). The internet may be a way to help combat this issue. New teachers use online communities to battle common feelings of isolation by starting conversations just like this one. While there are many resources on the internet, not all of them equal. For an online educational community to be successful, it must contain the right combination of social elements. Scholars researching online communities each have their own perspective of what precise combination of components are important in creating a successful educational Community of Practice (CoP) online. Overall, the underlying factor among the ideas of these scholars is the concept of support. I would argue for an online community to be successful, it must have a strong supportive element among all social factors.
Online Community Website: Edutopia and TeachAde

Picture link of Edutopia's community page.

Organizationally, the structure of the website contributes significantly to overall community success. For example, the level of community present in a website can change depending on whether it has many small groups or a few large groups. In general, I have found that the supportive sense of community tends to dissolve when groups of people are too divided. TeachAde.com and Edutopia.com illustrate this concept very well. TeachAde contains approximately 600 groups on its website whereas Edutopia has only 20. Yet, all of the groups on Edutopia have active discussions with comments and TeachAde contains mostly ghost town groups. These groups have only one or two discussions and often have no comments. Yeping Li and Chunxia Qi expand on the importance of organization in online communities. They state in their article that the community they researched “relied on its well-structured process and organization” to improve the effectiveness of teachers (Li and Qi 843).
Structurally, the separation of the blog section from the community section on Edutopia assists with organization because it allows users to understand the purpose of each section. There are important distinctions between the blogs on Edutopia and the community section. In the community section, there is a moderator, but anyone who is part of the group is able to post discussion questions. The moderator ensures that discussion continues in a constructive way. Nevertheless, the moderator is not the only person who can post a topic for discussion on the community page. Anyone can post and anyone can comment which allows more people to have prevalence in the community and increases how interactive the community is. This concept builds on Silverman’s findings that “participants’ learning was correlated with the centrality of a teacher (the number of posts generated by that teacher), provided the posts functioned dialogically through Doing Mathematics or Questioning/Challenging” by providing more community members the opportunity to generate more posts and thus gain prominence (64). Since centrality has a direct relationship with participant learning, having more prominent members greatly assists a community in positively influencing teachers.
Twitter contains an active educational community as well. For example, #ntchat created by Lisa Dabbs provides a method of communication. Interestingly, the types of communication change for the same group of people based on the difference in social media. The first major cause manifests itself in the structure of the different media with Titter limiting each Tweet to only 140 characters and Edutopia imposing no such limits. In addition, the hash tag discussion format reaches a wider audience than the community page or blog because more people utilize Twitter. Also, on Twitter user confinements of only one discussion per post do not exist. The Twitter user can communicate with multiple communities the same message by including multiple hash tags in one tweet.  Even though the hash tag is named with the thought of conversation, many of the tweets are links to other blogs or advice such as a link to “12 Things Kids Want From Their Teachers” (We Are Teachers). Instead of creating a method of discussing issues, #ntchat contains teacher tweeted tidbits such as “Great teachers…teach the student, not the lesson” (Blankenship). This community provides a method for live collaboration and allows many people to join the group. These distinctions illustrate the vast impact of material presentation.

Support must be present.

Indicators of sense of community also show the level of support. Moreover, sense of community directly impacts teacher effectiveness. By examining the interrelated social factors which impact teacher effectiveness, the connections between “Sense of Community” and “Satisfaction with NETwork experience” to “Effectiveness of Teachers” prove to be crucial. I-Chun Tsai examines this relationship in depth in his article. Since the goal of the specific community analyzed in the article involved creating a collaborative environment to “overcome the current disconnection between pre-service teacher education and in-service teaching practice,” Tsai’s findings become especially applicable in examining online communities for new teachers (Tsai 274).He defines sense of community as “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (qtd .in Tsai 272). This definition of sense of community illustrates the inherent need for support in creating a strong sense of community by emphasizing the commitment and acceptance factors of community. The direct connection to satisfaction with NETwork experience highlights the importance of sense of community further (Tsai 282). Overall, each of these social factors play a key role in influencing teacher effectiveness.
When examining a CoP for any of the above factors, one must consider how each of the elements mold together to create support. In an emailed interview, Sandra Petersen, an author of an article on a new teacher community she participated in, summarized the impact of support in a community in this way: “I could relate to their frustrations and problems as new professors, and we could celebrate our successes together, as well… I trusted the advice of my on-line community and found it very helpful to post particular problems or situations that were puzzling to me. They were wonderful in offering advice and encouragement.” (Petersen). This is her description of the major reason why she stayed in the online community. It does not focus on lesson plans; rather, it focuses on the support she found. In addition, it highlights the trust among the group members. This illustrates Tsai’s connection between satisfaction and sense of community since Petersen states that the major reason her experience was successful was the supportive aspect of community. By being able to attach value through the support received, satisfaction is increased which in turn positively impacts teacher effectiveness. The common denominator among all of these factors is support.  When a CoP can create a true environment of support, it is an invaluable resource for teachers.

References

Bieler, Deborah. "What New Teachers Want From Colleagues." Educational Leadership 69.8 (2012): 46-49. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

Blankenship, Shawn. Blankenship_S. “Great teachers teach at the speed of learning. They teach the student, not the lesson. #edchat #ntchat.” 3 Nov. 2012, 6:50 p.m. Tweet.

Li, Yeping, and Chunxia Qi. “Online Study Collaboration To Improve Teachers’ Expertise In Instructional Design In Mathematics.” Zdm 43.6/7 (2011): 833-845. Education Research Complete. Web. 19 Sept. 2012.

“New Teacher Connections.” N.p. Edutopia. 13 Oct. 2009. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.
"#ntchat." Twitter. Edutopia, 28 Oct. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.

Petersen, Sandra. Personal Interview. 29 Oct. 2012.

Silverman, Jason. "Exploring The Relationship Between Teachers Prominence In Online Collaboration And The Development Of Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching." Journal Of Technology & Teacher Education 20.1 (2012): 47-69. Education Research Complete. Web. 19 Sept. 2012

TeachAde – Free Educational Resources for Teachers.Ed Tech Ventures, 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.

Tsai, I-Chun. “Understanding Social Nature Of An Online Community Of Practice For Learning To Teach.” Journal Of Educational Technology & Society 15.2 (2012): 271-285. Education Research Complete. Web. 20 Sept. 2012.

We Are Teachers. “RT @eyeoneducation: 12 Things Kids Want From Their Teachers http://ow.ly/eWxSI  @angelamaiers #edchat