How an Online Teacher Community Supports Teachers' Professional Development: eTRAIN Online Teacher Community

Virtual Brief Paper ID: 39109
  1. aaa
    I-Chun Tsai
    University of Akron
  2. Shelley Waltonen-Moore
    University of Akron

Abstract: This paper is aimed to understand how online learning community of practice supports teachers’ professional development, especially how pre-service teachers benefit from the interaction with other teaching professionals in the online learning community. An online teacher community, eTRAIN (electronic Teacher Resource and Information Network) community, has been established in a Desire2Learn online management system to facilitate pre-service teachers’ professional development of how to. Content analysis techniques were used to examine the interview transcripts. Findings indicate that eTRAIN community provides a great opportunity for members to stay connected with other teachers and faculty as well as gain practical knowledge and skills of teaching K-12. The level of social interaction was found to be no difference from being able to interact physically and even better than face-to-face interaction.

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