Προκλήσεις του σχεδιασμού και της λειτουργίας εκπαιδευτικών διαδικτυακών κοινοτήτων πρακτικής: Η περίπτωση της κοινότητας των Σχολικών Κηπουρών

Abstract

Modern internet technology enables phenomenal applications which reform the concept of distance learning. New pedagogical models, such as online communities of practice (OCoP), emerge with corresponding instructional/learning strategies and technological environments. Despite the easy deployment of software services for OCoP they often turn out to be hard to develop and survive. The paper concerns the case study of the Greek School Gardeners’ Community. The learning design and the operation management of this OCoP are based on the combination of the pedagogical design framework of Dabbagh (2005) with the integrated Life Cycle Model (LCM) for online communities' facilitation of Irribery & Leroy (2009). The study of the combination of the theoretically founded learning design framework and the online communities Life Cycle Model as an operations management model constitutes the interest and the main contribution of this work. In the paper, the practical application of the proposed theoretical framework, for the specific case of the school gardeners' OCoP is presented, from the conception stage to the current crucial stage of its development. Finally the main findings so far and the future actions are discussed. The study interest researchers/teachers and OCoP developers and facilitators in general.