Jensen, K., & Martin, J., & Egwuonwu, C., & Miller, I. (2022, August), Virtual Communities of Practice: Social Capital’s Influence on Faculty Development  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41925

\bibitem{asee_peer_41925}
  Jensen, K., \& Martin, J., \& Egwuonwu, C., \& Miller, I. (2022, August), \emph{Virtual Communities of Practice: Social Capital’s Influence on Faculty Development}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--41925

Karin Jensen, Julie Martin, Chiebuka Egwuonwu, and Isabel Miller.  "Virtual Communities of Practice: Social Capital’s Influence on Faculty Development".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/41925 Internet.  23 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_41925}
  Karin Jensen, Julie Martin, Chiebuka Egwuonwu, and Isabel Miller.
  "Virtual Communities of Practice: Social Capital’s Influence on Faculty Development".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/41925 Internet.  23 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_41925
author = "Karin Jensen, Julie Martin, Chiebuka Egwuonwu, and Isabel Miller"
title = "Virtual Communities of Practice: Social Capital’s Influence on Faculty Development"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/41925}
number = {10.18260/1-2--41925}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The purpose of this project is to develop a series of virtual workshops within a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) to support engineering faculty who are developing skills in engineering education research (EER). Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of people who interact on a regular basis and focus on a particular topic, creating an informal learning group. For engineering and engineering education faculty, CoPs have been specifically developed to share instructional practices [1] or to support early career EER faculty [2]. A virtual community of practice (VCoP) allows support and sharing of resources by bringing members together without a limitation to geography or institution; therefore, the VCoP can be highly inclusive. This paper describes the benefits of VCoPs on EER faculty development specifically for the National Science Foundation Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (RIEF) program participants. With support from the NSF, this project is building a VCoP for RIEF participants and developing online resources for emerging EER scholars. RIEF awardees (mentors and mentees, as well as graduate students contributing to the projects), identified through the NSF Award Search, were invited to join the VCoP. The goal of the VCoP is to build a community for engineering education researchers through virtual meetings and by providing online resources. Meetings were held over Zoom once every one to two months. A welcome session was the first session held for the participants. The VCoP was introduced and participants went into breakout rooms to introduce themselves and their projects. The subsequent sessions focused on topics such as mentoring and research methods with Q&A panels, guest presentations, and open office hours for participants to ask questions about their projects. The final meeting for the first year was a networking session. After an icebreaker, participants moved into rotating breakout rooms to meet and network with other participants. Participants were asked to complete feedback surveys about their experience after each session. All respondents reported the sessions to be beneficial for their RIEF projects. Participants indicated that the networking session was their favorite session. This project has provided insight on how a VCoP can be successfully replicated in other fields and contexts. As this VCoP grows, it is expected that mentors will have a positive impact on the social capital of engineering faculty learning to conduct EER. In the future, a Social Network Analysis will be conducted to assess the growth of social networks for both mentors and mentees.



References:

[1] J. Herman et al., “Investigating the dynamics of formative assessment: Relationships between teacher knowledge, assessment practice and learning,” Assessment in Education Principles Policy and Practice, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 344-367, 2015.



[2] A.L. Pawley, et al., “The PEER collaborative: Supporting engineering education research faculty with near-peer mentoring unconference workshops,” presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, 2014.
AU  - Karin Jensen
AU  - Julie Martin
AU  - Chiebuka Egwuonwu
AU  - Isabel Miller
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Virtual Communities of Practice: Social Capital’s Influence on Faculty Development
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41925
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41925
ER  -