AECT Prorposal (Final version)

Title: Use of cyber technologies in an off-line based educational technology lab environment: The community of practice experiences of graduate assistants

Short description:
The educational technology lab is a community where graduate assistants in instructional design and technology program provide technical supports to the faculty and students in the school of education. Although they are working at the different schedules, they learn and research for the shared goals by using various asynchronous cyber technologies within the wide range from e-mail, to e-learning tools, to e-portfolio, and to e-journaling. This presentation will provide successful stories and live reflections from the lab assistants.

Abstract:
Introduction
The Educational Technology Lab (ETLab) is a place where students and faculty in the school of education of a land grant university, come to use technology tool, attend class, and complete individual and group assignments, and produce multimedia works. Graduate Assistants (GAs) in the lab play an important role to fulfill the technical needs of instructors and students, develop instructions and manuals, and solve the practical problems that occur in the lab. In short, the ETLab is an off-line based working environment.

However, we argue that this lab is not only a physical space, like other “labs” or “centers” in a university, but also a community where people who have common research interests and goals learn and research together and build their design and development skills. As a result, lab GAs are not only working as an employee but also learning, discovering and researching for the specific topics to meet the various needs addressed by current and potential lab users including other graduate students, instructors, and pre-service teachers. In addition, although the lab is off-line based, GAs use cyber technologies because their working time is asynchronous across time and their job require effective communication and collaboration.

Therefore, we regard what lab GAs have experienced in the lab as a community of practice and perceive the ETlab as a learning, teaching, and discovering space using various cyber technologies. In this presentation, we will discuss two points: (1) how ETLab GAs changed the daily routine of their work to dynamic and exiting learning experiences by applying diverse strategies to facilitate the engagement process in the community of practice; and (2) how ETLab GAs use cyber technologies to enhance the practical and hands-on working environment. We will provide successful practices that GAs have experienced and share their reflections about the lab experiences of each GA and the use of communication technologies by using qualitative research methods.

ETLab GAs’ experiences of community of practice
According to the Lave and Wenger (1991), community of practice is everywhere; everyone experiences it although the practices vary; learning involves gradual engagement and participation in the community of practice. The critical concept of community of practice is based on the historical and traditional apprenticeship. As Walker (2008) mentioned, a graduate program is fundamentally based on the apprenticeship with close interaction between novice researchers and a professional researcher (e.g., professor, supervisor, instructor, senior students etc.). The mastery of knowledge and skill in the specific discipline is formed through an engagement process in which new comers are involved in legitimate peripheral participation and then move toward full participation in the specific community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991).

In applying such a perspective of anthropology, GAs in the ETlab have demonstrated an exemplar case. That is, they performed the common and daily jobs and at the same time they gained the knowledge and skills (e.g., instructional design, communication and collaboration skills, etc.) through the specific tasks which are related to real world problems. Finally, throughout the whole semester, novice assistants perceived and experienced significant improvement in their technological skills and became experts in specific areas. Interestingly, regardless of whether or not they recognized the concept of community of practice, the strategies that were utilized in order to facilitate each GA’s engagement process and working performance were very effective. Examples included the use of instructional scaffolding from easy/simple to challenging/complex tasks, solving real problems in the lab, using a variety of existing resources including manuals, instructions, and equipment, getting the assistance of more experienced peers, and diverse communication ways.

The use of cyber technologies: an evolutionary process from e-mail to e-learning tools, to e-portfolio, and to e-journaling
Working in the ETLab includes a variety of tasks ranging from visible to invisible tasks, from simple and well structured to complex and ill-structured tasks, and from individual to collaborative tasks. Above all, each GA has a different work schedule that is arranged from morning to night in order to assist students and instructors who are in the classrooms and production labs. This makes it very difficult for face to face collaboration between co-workers. Consequently, asynchronous communication tools are pivotal for effective communication. A variety of asynchronous cyber technologies have been utilized for several different purposes. However, interestingly, the use of technologies in the lab shows an evolution by adopting the advanced technologies.

Conventional asynchronous tools such as e-mail and a web calendar were the initial and still essential technologies. These tools supported effective communication and coordination among many tasks. However, the limitation of these technologies in terms of social networking and knowledge sharing required the movement to the next steps. For example, the use of Scholar (an e-learning system) was introduced to help GAs share their learning and discovering through the discussion boards and wikis, etc. The GAs have also developed, in Scholar, their own e-portfolio as a way to present their lab working outputs such as instructions or lab manuals. However, the e-learning tool and e-portfolio mainly supported GAs’ individual tasks and jobs.

The most current attempt, in the use of cyber technologies, is e-journaling with the use of blogs. These technologies will give lab GAs the opportunity to use cyber technologies to collaborate and self reflect on weekly projects. Each GA is responsible for creating weekly blog entry. The blog technology allows students to create video, text, and pictures within their blogs. This versatility in presentation allows for student creativity in dissemination of their weekly information. Once the weekly blog post has been created, each co-worker is responsible for evaluating the quality of the weekly work. All lab GA’s are responsible for providing a critique of the material that includes: weakness, strengths and suggestions for improvement.

Closing: Achievement, contributions and future directions
As an achievement of lab GAs’ practices in the ETlab, GAs prepared an Educational Technology Lab EXPO to demonstrate their design and development outputs. The topics covered effective applications of SmartBoard, Camatasia, GPS, Video tools and ePortfolio for engaging intentional learning and assessment. The EXPO became a platform to share the thoughts where audiences benefit from new ideas and examples from the use of technology mentioned above, as well as GAs get feedbacks to refine their products.

This presentation will be useful for those who are in the same or similar situations like working in a lab based and/or offline based environment but require frequent online communication and effective management of human resources. Specifically many IDT students and practitioners who work in the educational technology lab can benefit by reviewing the successful cases (e.g., ETLab EXPO, e-portfolio, blog, etc.) and the live reflections from the graduate assistant’s experiences. This presentation will close with the discussion of the effectiveness of the instructional approaches and cyber communication technologies that were utilized in this case and the promises for future application.

Keyword: Community of Practice, Performance Support