7:30am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am - 9:45am Welcome, Introductions and Student Initiated Communities of Practice
Speaker: Apostolos Koutropoulos, Online Program Coordinator, Applied Linguistics, University of Massachusetts – Boston

Communities of Practice cannot be dictated, but rather they can be fostered. This presentation will provide a brief background to the student initiated community of practice available at umassid.com. This is a student organized and student run community with members including students and alumni of the instructional design MEd program. In this presentation I will present the reasons for creating such a community, the initial hurdles faced, and current state of the community.

9:45am – 10:00am Coffee break

10:00am - 10:40am CoPs: How iPads, eBooks and Social Media are Bringing the WPI Community Together
Speakers:
Jessica (Jes) Caron, Instructional Technology Specialist, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Erin DeSilva, Instructional Technology Specialist, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Communities of Practice (CoP) can take several forms from organized to loosely gathered, from in person to online. In this presentation we will talk about the evolution of several different CoPs on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute campus, some initiated by us and some in which we have participated. We will present the ways in which these communities have developed over the past two years, the tools of engagement, successful strategies that have been employed and lessons learned.

10:45am - 11:25am Technological Frames, Online Communities, and Community Design
Speaker: Wei Zhang, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts - Boston, College of Management

In this talk, we will explore how the concept of technological frames (TF) can help us understand the difficulties we encounter when designing and using software to support online learning communities. We discuss the TF people may use when interacting with online learning communities and explore how TF may help us improve online learning communities.

11:30am - 12:10pm Journal Writing and Creating Videos to Enhance the Learning Community
Speaker: Dr. Douglas Mann, Associate Professor Department of Health and Exercise Science, Rowan University

This presentation deals with the implementation of a community of learning based on journal writing, development of videos, and critical thinking. The presenter will discuss how having students write a journal based on their clinical experiences encouraged critical thinking. In addition participants will see an example of videos written by students that will help future learning communities within the same major.

12:10pm - 1:10pm Lunch

1:10pm - 1:50pm Establishing Community and Collaboration Among Online Adjunct Faculty
Speaker: Jeremy Szteiter, Assistant Director, Critical and Creative Thinking Graduate Program, University of Massachusetts Boston

How might collaboration be supported among adjunct faculty who teach online courses, are part-time, and are geographically distributed? In this presentation, we'll discuss ideas about how to facilitate the growth of a community of adjunct faculty who are connected through their teaching within a single academic program, but such that the teaching occurs online, the faculty rarely have a chance to meet in person, and for whom teaching usually amounts to additional work beyond their "day jobs". We'll explore possibilities around how these faculty may come to know each other as a community, share ideas about teaching, develop their courses to have cohesion across the program, and step out of the silos that can separate online faculty.

1:50pm - 2:30pm To Be Announced

2:30pm - 3:00pm Wrap-up, Participant Brainstorming and Sharing of their Own Communities of Practice.

3:00pm End