Slide deck from the CIT 2010 conference at UMass Boston. The topic is Academic Communities of Practice: Extending Learning Outside the Classroom

1. Academic Communities of Practice Koutropoulos, Apostolos (“A.K.”) Cobb, Elizabeth

2. Agenda Presentation Background Information What we did How it’s working out Show and Tell Q & A

3. Introduction Who are we? What was happening? There was a gap to be filled

4. The GOALS (there are five of them)

5. Extend f2f behaviors Lots of sharing going on in-class… We share: News Articles Websites Our POV (editorialize) Once the course is over someone turns the sharing faucet off!

6. Bring people together to learn

7. Bridge the Online-f2f divide

8. Bridge the Cohort divide

9. Discover people locally As of 1/5/2010 Applied Linguistics

10. What we did (we built a community) Major community elements: Blogs Forums Job Postings Knowledge Base Calendar of Events Links to other communities

11. What worked! People Joined! Some even participate! Sharing of resources Sharing of job opportunities Sharing of class experiences People discovered others near them Interest in taking it offline

12. What sort-of worked (Challenges) Social Media Fatigue Not a lot of contributions: Chicken…or egg? Shyness? Broadcast email stumbles “If I have time” rather than “my first stop”

13. Lessons Learned Need a Community Manager Need a Mission & a Plan Need some Volunteers Transparency is key Technology won’t always work Need to build a buzz If at first you don’t succeed, try again!

14. Demonstration (Questions & Answers afterwards)