Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2014 | Page 87

Developing a Community of Practice
levels in designing, creating, and teaching
in blended and online environments.
To deal with these challenges, our
University’s Center for Online Learning adopted
a community of practice (CoP) model
(Wenger, 1998). According to Wenger
(1998), within a CoP framework, more experienced
faculty (or those with more expertise
in a subject area) can mentor and
assist in the development of faculty who are
newer to the discipline, thus alleviating the
strain of understaffed instructional design
departments. The purpose of West Virginia
State University’s (WVSU’s) CoP was
threefold: (1) to gather a cohort of interested
faculty from a variety of disciplines to
discuss and learn about different approaches
to blended and online course design, (2)
to develop skills and knowledge that could
then be shared with the group, and (3) to
work together on projects of interest.
Participants in this CoP go through
a semester-long training program focusing
on online teaching and course design
called the Online Teaching Institute (OTI).
Upon graduating from OTI, faculty continue
meeting monthly to discuss and receive
feedback on issues they are experiencing in
their blended and online courses.
During these meetings, several faculty
members from science fields shared
their struggle to find a mode of instruction
that would utilize blended and online
approaches to teach science but also
preserve the integrity of their classrooms.
The flipped model of instruction seemed
to be especially attractive to science faculty
because (1) the transition to this mode
of teaching would be relatively easy as they
could utilize already-existing lecture materials
and (2) they would not have to give up
any class time as they familiarized themselves
with the format.
However, discussions in the larger,
interdisciplinary CoP indicated some skepticism
as to whether a literal translation of
flipped classroom (i.e., taking already-existing
presentation materials and recording
them and using slightly modified homework
assignments as in-class activities) would be
effective without implementing additional
course design modifications such as inquiry-
or problem-based approaches.
The result of these discussions was
the creation of an interdisciplinary research
team which included a biologist, an
educational psychologist, and an instructional
designer/technologist to study the
efficacy of a literal translation of the flipped
classroom design on student learning in a
general education biology course.
Literature Review
Blended or hybrid learning experiences
have been a common part of higher
education for the past decade. A
three-year study of over 1,000 U.S. colleges
and universities found that roughly 46% of
four-year undergraduate institutions offered
blended courses (Allen, Seaman, &
Barrett, 2007). However, the popularity of
the flipped classroom, as brought to national
attention by Bergman and Sams (2012),
has seen a marked growth over the past
year. While there are some slight variations
of the model (e.g., Musallam, 2013), most
of the available literature suggests that the
basic flipped instructional model consists
of recorded lecture materials which are
watched by students at home and application-type
questions and problems (i.e., the
traditional homework) which are worked
on in class (Mangan, 2013; Bergman &
Sams, 2012; Topo, 2011) (see Movie 1).
On a surface level, this model appears
to be relatively simple to adopt and
institute. An instructor needs a computer,
screen capture software (such as Camtasia,
Screencast-o-matic, etc.), a headset, and a
86