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Webheads in Action

Events leading up to and at the TESOL 2003 Convention March 25-29, 2003 Baltimore, Maryland, USA

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Oct. 21 - Nov. 29, 2002 - Pretraining for EVOnline moderators

Jan 20-March 7, 2003 - EVOnline workshop: Communities of practice online: Reflection through experience and experiment with the Webheads community of language learners and practitioners

March 26, 2003 - Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice" at the TESOL 2003 Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice"
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
9:30 am to 11:15 am, (14:30-16:15 GMT)
Baltimore Convention Center Room 306
event number #4101 at the TESOL 2003 Convention, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
http://www.tesol.org/conv/t2003/pp/program/iss/call_1.html

We are hoping to webcast this event. All are invited to join us. Where? Meet us ...

• for text chat at http://www.tappedin.org - When you login as a guest, you will see the reception where a helpdesk person might welcome you. To join the Webheads session, look at the room map, find the After School Online room - and click on that. Or type /join vances
  Please read this file for further instructions: http://www.tappedin.sri.com/info/newui.html
• for video webcast via Yahoo Messenger; ask to view vance_stevens
• for voice feed: http://helium.wimba.com/beta1/jsp/manager/voicedirect/index.jsp?room=1040
• for further explanation: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm

Presenters:

Remote and on-site participants in this event have been testing equipment a lot lately. We have decided to show video at the beginning of the session from on-site but not take video from remote presenters until toward the end of the sessions because it degrades quality of Wimba Voice Direct chat. During a q & a period we can try to take live video from all presenters. We will also try and alternate live onsite and distance presentations.

9:30	Vance Stevens		Introducing WiA: who we are and how we came together, a little of the history of webheads, and how the group came to do an introspective study of itself as an example of a community of practice; brief overview of theoretical underpinnings of CoPs and their relationship to pedagogy and language instruction http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/tesol/baltimore2003/vance15min.html
9:42	Chris Jones		What is a Community of Practice? How does it operate? What kinds of people constitute the membership? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/files/2003/colloquium/CoP.ppt
9:54	Teresa Almeida d'Eça		Online communication tools that facilitate interaction of participants in a virtual community and their role in language learning http://www.digibridge.net/teresadeca/papers/tesol2003/baltimore2003.htm http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/files/2003/colloquium/tesol2003.ppt
10:06	Arlyn Freed		Overview of technology explored by Webheads re: the database discussed during Wk. 5 chat, using still images of webhead pages created during the past year, plus excerpts from the compiled data http://www.eslhome.com/cop2003/db.htm Netscape users: http://www.eslhome.com/cop2003/TESOLppt/FREED.htm IE users: http://www.eslhome.com/cop2003/TESOLppt/FREED_IE.htm
10:18	Buthaina Al Othman		Introduction to how participation in a CoP informs and influences personal teaching http://www.geocities.com/esl_efl_ku/
10:30	Aiden Yeh		Aiden will share and showcase the projects for classes that were implemented in collaboration with the webheads (evonline webheads and efiwebheads), how she moved on to make better projects based on the lessons learnt from previous ones, and how the group also impacts her social life http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh/tesol/CMCandWebheads.htm
10:42	Dafne Gonzalez Chavez		What elements provide quality to e-instruction? We will tell you what Webheads think about this issue, using the results from a survey completed during week 6 of our EVonline session. How is WIA regarded in terms of e-quality? This question will also be answered. http://dafnegon.tripod.com/wiaattesol2003/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/files/2003/colloquium/equality_tesl2003.ppt
11:54	Michael Coghlan		Michael will provide appropriate wrap-up in his inimitable fashion.
11:06-11:15	Questions	and answers	To access attempted live video feed during this Q&A period please use Yahoo Messenger, contact one of the following: dygonza, vance_stevens, mikecogh, esl_efl_ku

A community of practice forms when participants in an online community evolve a working relationship that leads them to focus spontaneously on shared tasks and problems deriving from their participation in the original community. In such communities it is important that a zone of proximal development be established and that conditions for scaffolding be enhanced through developing interpersonal relationship of the participants. In the experience of members of such a community, how has this been achieved? What conditions are necessary to catalyze an online community into functioning beyond the scope of its initial mandate?

The panelists in this colloquium were recently teacher, teacher-trainer, and materials developer participants in an online computer-mediated communications course with a set syllabus and fixed duration. One of the outcomes of this course was emergence of a community of practice which continues to interact online although the course has long since ‘officially’ finished.

The panelists have already engaged in some degree of reflection on their participation in the community as a component of the fixed course. At this colloquium they will develop their positions in more formal papers and discuss with those present:

• how communities form online
• what conditions lead to emergence of communities of practice
• how communities of practice operate
• what online software tools facilitate the interaction of participants in a community of practice
• the role of such communities in language instruction
• theoretical underpinnings of such communities and their relationship to pedagogy
• how participation in this community has informed and influenced the participants' personal teaching practices
• aspects of the quality of instruction utilizing computer mediated communication

Participants in this colloquium will hear first-hand how participants in a community of practice have benefited from each other's participation in ways that have positively affected their teaching practices. Participants will come away with an understanding of how communities of practice can form and help practitioners to develop professionally in a zone of proximal development forged through interaction with peers online.

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Oct. 21 - Nov. 29, 2002 - Pretraining for EVOnline moderators

Jan 20-March 7, 2003 - EVOnline workshop: Reflection through experience and experiment with a communities of practice online

March 25-29, 2003 - Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice" at the TESOL 2003 Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Electronic Village (EV) Online 2003 session, Monday, Jan. 20 - Friday, March 7, 2003

Weekly perspectives on this event: Overview | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7

• The 2003 EVOnline portal page: http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/TESOL/EVOL/evol2003.htm
• The YahooGroup portal for this session: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads; click here to join
• Christopher Johnson's interactive illustration of CoP theory: http://sites.inka.de/manzanita/cop
• Teresa's Full Index of Webheads sites
• Elizabeth Hanson-Smith's (subsequent, 2005) extensive list of resources for Communities of Practice at http://webpages.csus.edu/~hansonsm/CoP_Resources.html

Webheads in Action have proposed an EVOnline session entitled: Communities of practice online: Reflection through experience and experiment with the Webheads community of language learners and practitioners

Brief description of the content: A community of practice forms when participants in an online community evolve a working relationship that leads them to focus spontaneously on shared tasks and problems deriving from their participation in the original community. In such communities it is important that a zone of proximal development be established and that conditions for scaffolding be enhanced through developing interpersonal relationship of the participants. In the experience of members of such a community, how has this been achieved? What conditions are necessary to catalyze an online community into functioning beyond the scope of its initial mandate? What benefits accrue to the members of such a community. What lessons can be learned through participation in such a community that can be applied to common goal of its members: optimal facilitation of language learning? This session will invite participants to join such an ongoing community and reflect on its benefits through their own experience with the commun.

Target audience: Anyone interested in becoming a part of a community of practice for the purpose of sharing with and learning from other members of the community

Brief outline of the proposed activities during the 7-week period : The seven panelists in the TESOL/Baltimore colloquium, whose names appear below in red, will coordinate exploration of the following topics so as to prepare their presentations at the colloquium. .

"Week"	Dates	Facilitators		Topic
1	Mon Jan. 20 to Sun Jan 26	Vance Stevens		Welcome to the Webheads communities of practice Who are the Webheads? What have we done so far? Let's get organized: how you can participate in this session Dafne prepared a web page to sort out the different issues discussed in the first week: http://www.geocities.com/dygonza/wia1/wia-w1-intro.html
2	Mon Jan. 27 to Sun Feb 2	Chris Jones John Steele Christine Bauer-Ramazani		What are communities of practice? How do communities form online? What conditions lead to emergence of communities of practice? How do communities of practice operate?
3	Mon Feb 3 to Sun Feb 9	Teresa Almeida d'Eça Susanne Nyrop Rita Zeinstejer		Online communication tools that facilitate interaction of participants in a virtual community and their role in language learning later moved to http://www.digibridge.net/teresadeca/webheads/evonline2003/week3.htm
4	Mon Feb 10 to Sun Feb 16	Vance Stevens Arif Altun Christopher Johnson Susanne Nyrop		Theoretical underpinnings of communities of practice and their relationship to pedagogy The role of communities of practice in language instruction
5	Mon Feb 17 to Sun Feb 23	Aiden Yeh Arlyn Freed Dafne Gonzalez Buthaina Al Othman Rita Zeinstejer		How participation in a community of practice informs and influences the participants' personal teaching practices
6	Mon Feb 24 to Sun March 2	Dafne Gonzalez Arif Altun		Aspects of the quality of instruction utilizing computer mediated communication
7	Mon March 3 to Fri March 7,	Michael Coghlan All participants		What we've learned Wrap-up and consolidation In case you're not leaving us, where to from here?
etc.	Sat March 8 to end of time			None of us have figured out yet how to end this community of practice

The communication media expected to be used: discussion postings via email, chat, web site, links; with audio and video enhancements

Some of Nigel's post-workshop reflections on how the session went:

The Webheads group was curious because it was trying to do three things: continue ongoing discussions about new technologies and WiA events, introduce the community and some of the CMC tools to new members, and undertake a "meta" analysis of the structure of the community itself (CoP). As has been noted, very few new members actually posted messages - the discussion was mostly between the existing members (actually, the numerous weekly moderators). One gently wonders whether this group was trying to do a little too much - occasional messages suggested that newbies were getting lost, and repeated appeals from some of us to the "boundary members" went unanswered. Of course, the point has been made that people could benefit from the workshop without participating actively, and there was certainly enough traffic on the list to facilitate this. Still, it's something to reflect on as we think ahead.

Vance's reflections on Nigel's observations

I thought Nigel's was a useful critique. My own feeling is that what happened with this group, unlike the one that went before, is that I was on holiday (had to take it or lose it) right before the sessions started. Therefore a group formed but didn't get rolling until the starting gun sounded, and then those who knew how to run took off, while others stood milling in confusion in the dust. The year before, I had a good month to interact with participants and get things set up (web pages with pictures for example) and get the people involved interacting informally BEFORE the start of the sessions. This I think was the reason that the three things we were ambitiously trying to do wasn't well understood. There is nothing wrong with having multiple agendas as long as people understand what the choices are and how to follow whichever ones they think will benefit them personally. Others have commented on the pace of the sessions being intense, and such comments were typically from experienced Webheads (we kept handing off to fresh new energetic moderators each week). Of course those with no experience with the group were in a sink or swim position. I feel however that this can be attenuated in the future by attending more carefully to that crucially important pre-session runup, when there is a chance to interact informally with group members as they come on board and introduce them to each other and to the culture of the group.

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Oct. 21 - Nov. 29, 2002 - Pretraining for EVOnline moderators

Jan 20-March 7, 2003 - EVOnline workshop: Reflection through experience and experiment with a communities of practice online

March 25-29, 2003 - Colloquium: "Case study of a community of practice" at the TESOL 2003 Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

TESOL EVOnline 2003: Pretraining for moderators, Monday, Oct. 21 - Friday, Nov. 29, 2002

I served on the team providing technical training for moderators during the 2003 EVOnline sessions, entailing providing pointers in running online courses based in YahooGroups as well as introduction and training in use of numerous synchronous online computer-mediated communications tools. Trainers are on "stand-by" during the actual online sessions (Monday, Jan. 20 - Friday, March 7, 2003) to answer questions and do some trouble-shooting for the session leaders they have been assigned to (probably 2 per trainer)