We're in TITLE to Dream: Envisioning a Community of Practice,The Intraplanetary Teacher Learning Exchange

Abstract

There is a pressing need to reduce the isolation and disconnectedness of preservice teacher early field experiences. Three related but separate projects, Conferencing on the Web (COW), the Caseweb, and INSITE were designed to enhance the learning of preservice teachers in introductory educational psychology classes while promoting notions of a community of practice. In the fall of 1996, the COW project started with approximately 30 preservice teachers at Indiana University discussing their early field experiences. During the following five semesters, the project evolved to include students from other universities and countries and, eventually, became known as "The Intraplanetary Teacher Learning Exchange" (TITLE). Adding students and instructors from other countries enhanced the discussion and dialogue in COW. The role of instructors and practicing teachers as electronic mentors was also vital. At the same time, interesting cases that students generated in COW/TITLE were repurposed in a website called the Caseweb that is open to anyone in the world to use. More recently, ideas from the COW and Caseweb projects fostered the development of INSITE—a sophisticated text support tool on the Web for instructors and students of educational psychology. INSITE contains useful course resources, experiences, and activities, as well as various opportunities to globally share knowledge. With the INSITE tool, ideas related to creating a community of practice can be extended to thousands of students and hundreds of instructors each semester all using a textbook called Psychology Applied to Teaching. While describing these projects, we point to several potential advances in case-based learning and community building tools.