Click to edit Master title stylePLCs in the 21st Century:

Partnerships for Powerful Learning

Sheryl Nussbaum-BeachDoctoral Candidate at William & Mary

CEO, Powerful Learning Practice

Dr. Sofia PardoLead Researcher, ideasLAB

Click to edit Master title stylePurpose of Study

The purpose of our study is to identify the:

nature

evident outcomes

of professional conversations among educators in an asynchronous, team-based, online community of practice.

The conversations took place in a white list application for social network creation called NING

Click to edit Master title styleResearch Questions

• Flow: What is the flow (i.e., direction) and frequency of the posts among differing roles within the learning community?

• Function: What is the function (i.e., purpose) and frequency of the posts among posts differing roles within the learning community?

• Content: What is the content (i.e., topics) and frequency of the posts among posts differing roles within the learning community?

Click to edit Master title styleContent Analysis Methodology

• Created function categories*

• Identified content categories**

• Developed codebook in Google Docs

• Created Analysis Tool- Pulse

• Piloted coding while training coders in Skype (we started with 5, then 4, then 3)

• Calculated inter-rater reliability(http://dfreelon.org/utils/recalfront/recal3/)

* Adapted from Bonk & Kim's (2008) 12 forms of mentoring & Gunawardena, Lowe & Anderson (1997) online knowledge construction analysis model** Adapted from Australian e-potentials survey (2008)

Click to edit Master title styleContent Analysis: Interrater Reliability

File size: 112 bytes N coders: 3 N cases: 16

N decisions: 48

Average Pairwise Percent Agreement

Average % Agreement

AverageCohen's Kappa

Flow 95.8 % 0.941

Content 95.8 % 0.921

Function 81.25 % 0.606

AVERAGE 90.97 % .82

Flow: file:///C:/Users/snbeach/Desktop/FLOW.php.htm Function: file:///C:/Users/snbeach/Desktop/FUNCTION.php.htmContent: file:///C:/Users/snbeach/Desktop/CONTENT.php.htm

Click to edit Master title styleContent Analysis Methodology

• Unit of Data Collection Discussion thread within an online connected learning community

• Unit of Data Analysis Individual posting to discussion thread within a forum, blog post, or group

room in an online connected learning community.

Flow was analyzed from context of thread

• Type of Evidence: Manifest vs. Latent Manifest or explicit meaning that can be objectively derived from the words

used and the thoughts expressed in the postings.

Click to edit Master title styleMean, Median, Mode, SD, Range

Mean Median Mode SD Range

Member 6.2 3 2 6.18 36

Team Leader 12.8 11

19 & 2 (Bimodal) 11.18 45

Fellow 28.6 27 14 21.3 69

Comm Leader 43.3 19.5No mode 47.1 129

Exp Voice 10 1 1 12.4 25

Click to edit Master title styleFrequency and Direction of Posts

Member

Fellow

Community Leader

Team Leader

ExperiencedVoice

Broadcast

Team LeaderFlow

Click to edit Master title styleFLOW Who is talking to whom?

1215 is 76% of entire posts (1636)

Percentage of comments posted by role N=1215

4%

21%

21%

19%

35%

Experienced voices

Community Leaders

Fellows

Team leaders

Members

Click to edit Master title styleFLOW (cont.)

Where are these conversations taking place?

644

203

57

123135 117115

179232

Experiencedvoices

CommunityLeaders

Fellows Teamleaders

Members

Public vs Group Postings by RolePublic Spaces Group Spaces

Click to edit Master title styleFlow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

Click to edit Master title styleFlow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

Click to edit Master title styleFlow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

Click to edit Master title styleFlow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

Click to edit Master title styleFlow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

Click to edit Master title styleFLOW (cont.)

Member; 16

Community Leader; 45

Total ; 55

Directional Reciprocity

Team Leader; 10

Fellow; 31

Total; 41

Community Leader; 18

Exp Voice; 2

Total; 20

Click to edit Master title styleFLOW (findings) • Majority of comments were broadcasted with slightly

higher numbers in public (384) than group spaces (358).

• Members posted mostly in group spaces yet they were addressed more often in public spaces.

• Fellows addressed team leaders three times more than team leaders did to fellows. (Directional Reciprocity)

• Out of 130 community members, 20% chose not to post and just observe (lurk).

• While the community was designed with loose governance, the higher the perceived leadership role the comments took on a more specific direction.

Click to edit Master title styleContent of Discussions by Role

Click to edit Master title styleContent of Discussions by Role

Learning and Teaching

Click to edit Master title styleContent of Discussions by Role

Professional Learning

Click to edit Master title styleContent of Discussions by Role

Resources

Click to edit Master title styleCONTENT• While it was expected to have a high concentration of

comments in T&L and Professional Dev areas, we were surprised at the number of comments around resources.

• While members posted mostly in group spaces, the topic of L&T was discussed more in public areas of the community.

• However, the opposite happened with professional learning as it occurred more often in the smaller, intimate setting of the groups-with the exception of the CL role.

• Members talked about resources everywhere (both public and private) however, Fellows discussed resources more in groups. CL continued to be public in their leadership role.

Click to edit Master title styleFunction of Discussions by Role

Click to edit Master title styleFUNCTION • The three most utilized levels of knowledge building

were sharing info, sharing/contrasting exp, and sharing point of view.

• The content they were sharing, contrasting, or giving a point of view on aligned nicely with the top content areas as well.

• Least used knowledge functions were the highest order skills- negotiation of meaning and professional growth, with negotiation of meaning only occurring at the CL level.

• Most mentoring took place in the CL role. The content being mentored was PL, Leadership, and L&T

Click to edit Master title style• International perspectives deepened the professional conversation that took place by those involved in the coding. However, because of the under utilization of the EV (international visitors) further study needs to occur as to make the most of the opportunity for diverse conversations at the community level.

• Tools were mastered within the context of knowledge building for the most part, with the exception of resource sharing.

• More focus to the development of a shared vision for community outcomes needs to happen at the start of the project.

• Job-embedded PD that results in significant shift doesn’t occur in 4 months.

• Pulse holds tremendous potential for unlocking emprical truths in CMC because of the ease of use and authenticity of data placement

Click to edit Master title styleReferences Bonk, C. J., & Kim, K. A. (1998). Extending sociocultural theory to adult

learning. In M. C. Smith, & T.Pourchot (Eds.) Adult learning & development: Perspectives from educational psychology. Mahwah,

NJ, USA: Erlbaum Associates.

Freelon, D.G. (2010) ReCal: Intercoder Reliability Calculation as a web service. International Journal of Internet Science 5 (1), 20-33.

Gunawardena, C. Lowe, C & Anderson, T. (1997). Analysis of global online detabe and the development of an interaction analysis model for examining social construction of knowledge in computer conferencing. Journal of Educational Computing Research 17(4), 37-431.

DEECD (2008). ePotential Teacher ICT Capabilities Survey; Powerfuil Learning Enabled by ICT.