Social Networking for Tutors Vorsprung durch Technik! Ali Smithies – Tim Cappelli –

Prologue “Returning to Brunner's notion of learning-to-be, learning-to-be might be best thought about as enculturating into a community of practice, a community of physicians, lawyers, writers, readers, etc. Enculturation lies at the heart of learning. It also lies at the heart of knowing. Knowing has as much to do with picking up the genres of that particular sub-profession as it does with its conceptual framework. For example, how do you recognize whether a problem is an important problem, or a solution an elegant solution, or even what constitutes a solution in the first place?” –Seely Brown, J. (1999)

Introduction Background Challenge Developing and Using Web 2.0 tools to support the development of a Community of Practice The educational theory that underpins how we are addressing the challenges Where we are now, what next?

Background HeLMET is an 18-month JISC funded project, lead by Dr. Caroline Boggis, with the aim of developing a Community of Practice to engage the distributed network of Educator Practitioners, involved in the delivery of Manchester’s undergraduate medical programme, in the Curriculum Review process.

Context The Greater Manchester Strategic Health Authority has agreed a revision of Children’s and Obstetric Service provision across the health economy servicing Manchester Medical School. It has been agreed that in the Y4 modules including the Families and Chidrens' Module will be delivered in 3 parallel rotations. The Curriculum Committee has agreed to revise the Families and Children Module to meet the needs of students working in modern NHS Services. The aims and objectives of the module, the ILOs and ICs require to be considered in this review.

Challenge Build cohesion amongst a geographically distributed community of the many practitioners involved in delivery of the undergraduate curriculum to students on placement in hospitals. Revise curriculum, not only to reflect advances in educational good practice but to reflect advances in the medical work place.

Approach Modelling the task and its authentic context Co-design with real users – JISC UIDM approach Creating opportunities to research an evolving Community of Practice

Modelling the task “Any community of practice produces abstractions, tools, symbols, stories, terms and concepts that reify something of that practice in a congealed form” (Wenger, 1998)

Developing the tools The annual consultation exercise is normally conducted via … This is replaced with a a suite of social networking tools, linked with a collaborative document editing tool, Zoho. Provides users with a range of communication channels, both synchronous (live chat) and asynchronous (blogs, discussion forums, comments), to enable them to review, discuss, comment and edit documents online.

The formal process:

Source: Wenger, E. 1998:p63 Participation Practices involved in the use of a new environment Forming a Community of Practice, practice of negotiating role within a community, establishing individual and social identity. Reification The practices associated with curriculum review

Cultivating the Community Wenger et al, (2002) identify seven principles to promote “organic growth and aliveness” (pp. 50 – 51) –Design for evolution –Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives – “imagining how a more developed community could improve upon their current personal networks or help them leverage dormant capabilities” (p54) –Invite different levels of participation –Develop both public and private spaces –Focus on value –Combine familiarity and excitement –Create a rhythm for the community

Change Management An outcome from a previous cross- university project by Distributed Learning, eChange, identified that practice development is intrinsically linked to effective support networks and training. Initial training activities taking place in the hospitals, aimed at developing competencies required to use the e- llaborate suite.

Demonstration Tim Cappelli

E-llaborate

Personal Profile

Groups

Groups - membership

Personal Profile

Groups - Tasks

Task – Document Collaboration

Next Steps Further refinement of the tool Roll-out to the wider community –Getting people talking, events and communication –Training and ongoing liaison, Initial training activities taking place in the hospitals, users develop competence required to use social Web-based tools The task itself - Curriculum Development, Families and Children module And beyond…? Other applications for which the tool is appropriate… –E.g. Collaborating on research documents, bid writing.

Questions and Discussion What are the performance indicators and measures of success for a Community of Practice? What approaches are appropriate to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of our own (the Project Team’s) practice?

Thank You Contacts Dr. Caroline Boggis – Project Lead, Manchester Medical School Tim Cappelli - Project Manager Dr. Hilary Dexter – Systems Analyst Dr. Gillian Armitt – User Liaison, Change Management Lead Alisdair Smithies – User Liaison, Research and Development Roland Ukor – Technical Developer Website: