A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICES FOR ACCELERATING THE ADOPTION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Abstract

There are serious problems in the adoption ofinformation technology (IT) for teaching in engineering.Professors hesitate to use IT for teaching: they are notfamiliar with the technologies, and know little about thetheories and practices around their use. The research is partof an initiative undertaken by a group of early IT adopters tobuild and share new knowledge related with the use oftechnology for teaching. The paper presents an innovativeapproach to accelerate the adoption of IT for teaching andimprove its value for transferring knowledge. Three types oftechnologies are analyzed: intelligent boards, audienceresponse systems and community-based tools for learning.Practices from superusers are captured using ethnographicmethods. Members of the community validate these practicesthrough experimentation in a learning laboratory. Then aframework of practices is developed and shared within thecommunity’s knowledge base.Index Terms ⎯ IT in teaching, community of practice, bestpractices, knowledge portal.