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Joni Falk, Jack Lochhead, Gloria Jacobs and Bridget Mooney
TERC
2067 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-547-0430
joni_falk@terc.edu
Paper presented at SITE 97, Orlando, Florida, on April 3.
TEECH (Teacher Enhancement Electronic Communications Hall) is a three year project, funded by the National Science Foundation. It aims to advance the work of Teacher Enhancement projects by fostering increased collaboration among leaders in teacher development. TEECH endeavors to draw on the strengths of over one thousand principal investigators (PIs) and senior staff of teacher enhancement grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S., State, and local Departments of Education. Its purpose is to encourage communication, collaboration, joint exploration, and pooling of this communityıs collective resources.
TEECH's first major task was to determine whether its constituents could in fact be considered a community. We needed to understand if they had common backgrounds, common interests, and an agreed upon need to communicate more with each other. We needed to ascertain what would tempt PIs to participate in an electronic community and what would deter them from doing so.
Initial Needs Survey
An initial needs survey (Falk, J. 1996) was sent out to 465 Principal Investigators and we received 255 responses, a 57% response rate . Their responses to our survey revealed that PIs of teacher enhancement grants could not be considered as one cohesive community. The only factor that all PIs had in common was that they had obtained funding in order to conduct a teacher enhancement grant. The backgrounds of these PIs spanned a broad spectrum of expertise that included fields as diverse as psychology, geology, discrete math, genetics, neurology, engineering, teachers, principals, administrators, physicists and chemists. What they shared was that in some capacity they were working with teachers in grades K-12 to improve math or science education.
While these Principal Investigators did not share a common background, a common professional vocabulary, or a common theory of teacher change, we hoped that they would use the diversity of their backgrounds to enrich each other. We were encouraged that they identified themselves as being most interested in discussing shared topics of concern such as Teacher Change, Professional Development, Assessment and Educational reform. In fact they rated these topics higher than their specific interest in either math or science or a specific grade level range to which their project was aimed.
In order to effectively begin to facilitate an electronic community it was important to understand how participants were using the Internet. We found that 91% of respondents had access to the Internet. 84% replied that they had used e-mail, 56% had used gopher, 46% had used mailing lists, and 41% had used the World Wide Web.
Respondents were asked to rank the purposes for which they use the Internet. Communication was by far the most frequently cited purpose (79%). This was followed by browsing and exploring (53%), retrieving information (53%) and posting or publishing was the least frequently cited among PIs at (35%). These results suggested that these PIs were more comfortable retrieving information than they were posting information.
PIs were asked what would tempt them to connect to an electronic community. Their responses revealed that they were interested in three main categories: connecting to other PIs, sharing between projects, and gaining access to information. Some of the reasons expressed for wanting to connect with other PIs included joint proposal writing, seeking individuals with expertise for collaboration, and gaining advice from others on running a project. PIs expressed that projects would benefit by sharing with each other solutions to common problems, tentative findings, and successes and failures. Information that PIs wanted access to included proposal information, material development, resources, and funding information.
PIs also described many factors that would dissuade them from connecting to an electronic community. These included (in order of frequency) time, quality, volume, access, cost, format, technical expertise, organization of the community, equipment, and abuse of communication. Time was stated as the most common stumbling block. Issues of quality that were expressed concerned fear of "long windy conversations" and "exchanges of jargon and phrases." Many were concerned about "receiving excessive e-mail" and "difficulty accessing a network."
Multiple Strategies to Facilitate Communication
During its first two years TEECH has developed multiple strategies to meet the needs of this heterogeneous community. These have included listservs moderated by leaders in the field, electronic seminars, on-line lectures given by leaders in the field made available on our Web site through Real Audio and text copies, and a database of PIs and their teacher enhancement projects. While listservs were intended to encourage active communication between PIs, the posting of lectures, in both text and audio formats, was intended to meet the needs of those PIs who wanted to use the site as a resource rather than as a vehicle for communication. We also have made attempts to combine these formats, having a Real Audio discussion with a listserv connected to it.
Evaluating Participation
Although our Web site is set up to collect Web site statistics these statistics are often difficult to interpret. While they tell how many "hits" a particular page receives it is not clear how many people this count reflects. What is clear is that more people tend to connect to the TEECH web site in order to hear or read lectures than they do to engage in a listserv conversation.
The listservs that TEECH has run have varied in their rates of participation. On average listservs tend to run 8 -12 weeks before participation begins to drop markedly. Our most successful listserv to date was a discussion entitled "After the Workshop Ends; Difficulties Reflections and Strategies." This listserv had 119 subscribers, and over 250 postings. Slightly more than half of the PIs (64) posted messages to the list while the rest received messages but did not post.
A follow-up survey was sent to the 119 participants of this list and 38 PIs responded. The results indicated that of the respondents 89% found the discussion to be useful, 68% shared parts of the conversation with other colleagues, 24% connected or corresponded with PIs that had posted to the list as a result of their participation, and 84% responded that the discussion was informative or relevant to their project's work. 55% of the respondents reported that they had posted to the list; 45% reported not having done so. It is interesting to note that on most questions there was no significant difference between those who had posted to the list and those "silent participants" who had only read the messages. In particular both groups overwhelmingly thought that the discussion was useful (95% of contributors, 82% of non contributors) and relevant to their project's work (86% of contributors, 82% of non contributors). While 67% of those who had posted shared the conversation with their colleagues, a similar 65% of silent participants had done so as well. The only area in which we saw a significant difference between contributors and silent participants was whether they corresponded or collaborated with a PI who had posted to the list. On this question 43% of active participants reported having had such a follow-up communication where as none of the silent participants reported doing so. (P=.002 by Fisher's Exact Test)
Listserv Dialogue
Many respondents have written that it has been meaningful to them, both personally and professionally, to participate in a dialogue with other Principal Investigators. Two examples are:
It is always good to hear that other people are struggling with the same problems. It was interesting to hear the range of solutions to the problems proposed.While the tenor of the listserv dialogues has generally been respectful and friendly there was often a competitive edge to the conversation. It sometimes appeared that there was a greater desire to express what a project had done than to learn from, or to collaborate with, others. While the majority of those who participated felt the tenor was positive some expressed a concern that this was not always the case. Two comments that express some reservations follow:A chance to have informal discussions with peers around the nation in the comfort of my own office! Since having young children, the time I can spend traveling has been radically decreased. I have felt cut out of some of the discussion with national colleagues.
Was not at first sure whether the tone was coming from the heavy academic orientation of some or whether the lack of sitting face-to-face in a room with other discussants caused some to feel they could be disrespectful of ideas--disembodied ideas.The pace of the dialogue was often quick. Although e-mail dialogue is asynchronous, so that participants do not have to participate at the same time, the conversation is a moving target. It is often difficult to jump in in the middle, especially when the conversation seems to shift its direction. Some of the difficulty in joining such a conversation is expressed particularly well by a subscriber to one of the TEECH lists who writes why she has not posted.Often, PIs talked about their own project without talking about its particular strengths, challenges or weaknesses. There was also some "grandstanding" that wasn't particularly substantive or reflective.
Why have I not actively participated thus far? I would say that lack of time has been the main reason. I have saved various messages, including your message of 2 weeks ago, with the intent to respond, but framing a brief thoughtful, response takes some time- and as time passes it seems that the heat of the opportunity has passed. Perhaps with time I will feel that I can just dash off a quick response or thought, but given the spunky nature of some of the discussion, I'd rather make sure that my words are appropriately chosen.In this particular case the subscriber says the main reason that she has not participated is "time." It is not that she has not had the time to read, but that she would like to be careful in composing a response, and by the time she could do that, the conversation would have moved on.
Lessons Learned
In reflecting on the listserv dialogue we have decided to make several changes in the future format of TEECH listservs. In developing true communities of practice it is important to nurture a sense of trust, a sense of a common vocabulary, a common goal, and common interests (Gal, 1993). The audience of PIs is very diverse. This group changes each year, when new grants are awarded. The PIs have professional affiliations that are usually much stronger than their affiliation with other PIs of teacher enhancement. Our question at this stage in the project is no longer "are they a community?" but "how can we better facilitate a collaborative community of practice?" In our last year of TEECH we are determined to focus on smaller sub-communities where there is a clearer sense of a shared background and perspective. The aim will be for people to build on these shared experiences and apply them together to the field of teacher enhancement.
In addition we hope to raise the level of trust of those within the listserv and decrease defensiveness and a desire to grandstand, by increasing familiarity of participants with the other participants on the list. We will do this by having listservs that follow face to face workshops. Photographs of participants, abstracts of their projects and biographical information will be shared to decrease the sense that one is speaking to a group of unknown people. Several listservs will be designed explicitly to sustain communication between people who have already begun working with each other, or have experienced a workshop together.
We have come to appreciate that silent participants in a listserv also gain a great deal from listening to the conversation. We will continue to not only appeal to those who like to post but to find forums for those who prefer to retrieve information and to listen to the dialogue of others.
Last, we have come to realize that "teacher development" is eclectic, ununified, and perhaps just emerging as a field. Professional conferences specifically targeted towards professional development have just begun to emerge within the past two years. While communication between PIs is important, it is equally important to build a core of expertise by gathering lectures and debates of leaders in the field and making them available to a wider audience of those in teacher enhancement. Hence, we will expand our efforts to make TEECH a vehicle for dissemination of key lectures and resources in the field while continuing to encourage communication and collaboration between Principal Investigators.
References Falk, Joni. (1996) TEECH: Building an Electronic Community of Leaders in Teacher Development. Paper presented at the Tel*Ed 1995 Conference.
Gal, S. (1993) Support and Leadership in a Community of Practice. In Labnet: Toward A Community of Practice Eds. Ruopp, R., Gal, S., Drayton, B., Pfister M., Lawrence Erlbaum: New York About the authors
Joni Falk is a Senior Research Associate at TERC, 2067 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140. Voice: 617-547-0430, fax: 617-349-3535 Email: Joni_Falk@terc.edu
Jack Lochhead is Science Center Director at TERC, 2067 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140. Voice: 617-547-0430, fax: 617-349-3535 Email: Jack_Lochhead@terc.edu
Gloria Jacobs is a Senior Research Associate at TERC, 2067 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140. Voice: 617-547-0430, fax: 617-349-3535 Email: Gloria_Jacobs@terc.edu
Bridget Mooney is a Cybrarian at TERC, 2067 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140. Voice: 617-547-0430, fax: 617-349-3535 Email: Bridget_Mooney@terc.edu