Abstract

Online Communities of Practice (OCoP) is a pedagogical model that is consistent to the situated learning theory and enables the systematic utilization of internet services and tools for the implementation of new kinds of educational applications. Teachers’ and students’ roles in OCoP are very different from those in traditional classes. Teachers’ professional development (PD) proved to be a necessary precondition for the successful cultivation of an educational OCoP. In this paper, a specially designed teacher professional development program concerning the educational OCoP utilization was presented. For the design of the program the authors took into consideration modern research about e-learning design for OCoP, OCoP management, ICT integration in education, and teacher professional development success factors. The proposed program was designed according to the TPACK framework and it was described in terms of learning goals, lesson plans, and activity schedules. The evaluation of the PD program’s first implementation by the participant teachers showed that it was quite well received and it was assessed as effective by the trainees. In addition, specific improvements are proposed to formulate the future versions of the program. The proposed PD program is fairly independent from specific knowledge domain and software platform, so it could be adapted for use in other cases of educational OCoP.