Online Knowledge Construction for Teachers on Social Media: A Community Perspective for Practice

This study used the Communities of Practice (CoP) framework to analyze how social media helped build an online community in a collaborative process by carrying out exploratory research design. For eight weeks, data was collected from ten teachers enrolled in an educational technology graduate program. The data was collected by Facebook through likes and posts. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with all participants. While content analysis was performed on all qualitative data, descriptive and social network analysis were performed in the analysis of quantitative data obtained from Facebook. The participants were asked to develop an authentic video for young students to increase their awareness on using the internet safely. Social media was offered to participants to share their knowledge and designs during the collaborative construction of the artifact exercises. The results showed that the features of social media helped build a community of practice in terms of engagement, fostering a sense of responsibility and mutual assistance. The most popular features such as like buttons, comments, posts, shares and reactions for students were used in a variety of ways to build an online community of practice for adult learners. They made it easier to create a common product, take responsibility, spread the effort for the product video, eliminate of the shortcomings, achieve a common result, help each other, expertise, high engagement and collective understanding. Some practical implications for a better learning experience within an online practice community via social media have also been included.