TEL-CoPs'07

TEL-CoPs'07: 2nd International Workshop on
Building Technology Enhanced Learning solutions for Communities of Practice

held in conjunction with the
2nd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning
Crete, Greece, September 17, 2007

Draft proceedings

DESCRIPTION

For more than ten years, Communities of Practice (CoPs) have been recognized as effective environments to support learning among professionals, organisations and educational institutions. Collaborative learning is inherent in such communities, in that their members learn from each other by making their knowledge and practices explicit, sharing them with their peers, and reflecting on them. CoPs have several characteristics that distinguish them from formal organizations and learning situations. In fact, such communities are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic (the domain of the community), deepen their practical knowledge and expertise in the area under consideration (the practice of the community), and interact on an ongoing basis (the community itself). CoPs often emerge in the context of existing organisations or professional networks, in which people are already involved in common professional practices. Throughout their life, CoPs elaborate current (or develop new) practices, though debates and exploration of internal and external knowledge. The evolution of CoPs leads to either their expansion (regarding their domain, their practice and, their community members) or to their disappearance.

It is broadly admitted that the learning value of a CoP is of high importance. The underlying processes of social participation, community building, development of identity, learning and knowing are deeply interconnected, while they are articulated around negotiation of meaning, which is at the base of any individual and collective learning. Moreover, the interacting processes of participation and reification are considered as fundamental to learning. Participation means being active participant of a social community and constructing an individual and a community identity. On the other hand, the reification process gives form to our experience by producing objects that congeal this experience into think-ness.

It has been recognized that web-based technologies could support the development of virtual CoPs. Consequently, more and more CoPs use virtual environments to support their activities. However, despite the rapidly increasing potential offered by technologies (including web-based platforms, wireless communications, mobile devices and extensive use of multimedia contents), recent research underline the lack of adequate scaffolding in the form of both technical supports and usage of the technology to express, represent and share practices, debate and reflect about the practices and about the life of the CoP, develop, reify and exploit knowledge inside and outside of the CoP, and facilitate engagement, participation and learning.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The workshop focuses on current research trends in technology enhanced learning solutions that aim at addressing the multiplicity and complexity of needs of Communities of Practice all along their lifecycle. The workshop seeks for quality research papers that propose solutions to the issues identified above. It advocates for approaches that build on the synergy of concepts such as multimedia information authoring and reuse, knowledge management, as well as argumentation, negotiation and collaboration support. It aims to bring together scientists and engineers who work on designing and/or developing the abovementioned solutions, as well as practitioners who evaluate them in diverse real environments. Particular interest will be given to approaches built according to well-established pedagogical principles.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Software Engineering issues in tools supporting CoPs
• Multimedia authoring and reuse in CoPs
• Knowledge management services for CoPs
• Mediation services for CoPs
• Computer-supported collaborative argumentation
• Learning issues and CoPs
• Evaluation issues and case studies
• User profiling and awareness issues in tools supporting CoPs
• Adaptability issues in tools supporting CoPs
• Visualization issues in tools supporting CoPs
• Web-based interactive applications

Two categories of submissions are solicited: full papers (up to 10 pages) or position papers (up to 5 pages). All submissions should be original and not published elsewhere or intended to be published during the review period. They must correspond to the EC-TEL conference format requirements, as they are described at the conference web site (http://www.ectel07.org/author-guidelines). All accepted papers must be presented by one of the authors. Workshop attendees need to register for the main EC-TEL conference.

All EC-TEL workshop proceedings will be published on-line, as part of the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN publication series, ISSN 1613-0073.

Authors of the workshop's best papers will be requested to further elaborate their work and prepare an extended version for potential publication in a special issue of the International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies, and an edited book in the context of the Advances in Web-based Learning (AWBL) Book Series.

All submissions should be sent by e-mail to the workshop chair (karacap@cti.gr).

WORKSHOP STRUCTURE

The workshop will be highly interactive and engage participants in fruitful discussions on its topics. Towards this aim, accepted papers will be first clustered according to the topics addressed (3-4 such clusters are foreseen for a 1-day workshop). Each such cluster (workshop session) will contain no more than 5 papers, each of them to be shortly presented by one of its authors (workshop participants will have the full versions of the papers). The duration of the presentation of each paper will be 10-15 minutes. Authors will be asked to follow a structured template for their presentation, focusing on the problem addressed in their approach, the methodology followed, and the results of their work. Each workshop session will be coordinated by a facilitator (session chair), who will be an expert on the topics discussed in the particular session. After the short paper presentations, the facilitator will initiate and coordinate a discussion between the presenters and the audience (on issues raised during the presentations � it is also foreseen that the facilitator will have previously elaborate a set of open issues to be discussed), thus forming an �open� panel (round table) on each session�s topics. It is expected that the duration of each workshop�s session will be between 90 and 120 minutes. A closing session, summarizing the outcome of the workshop and determining future activities is also planned.

IMPORTANT DATES

• June 20, 2007: workshop paper submission deadline
• July 15, 2007: notification of workshop paper acceptance
• July 30, 2007: workshop paper camera-ready submission

ORGANISATION

Workshop Chair

Nikos Karacapilidis, University of Patras & RA Computer Technology Institute, Greece, karacap@cti.gr

Program Committee

• Claus Atzenbeck, Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark
• Nikolaos Avouris, University of Patras, Greece
• Daniel Burgos, Open University of the Netherlands
• Bernadette Charlier, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
• Vassilis Christophides, University of Crete & FORTH-ICS, Greece
• Vania Dimitrova, University of Leeds, UK
• Christina Evangelou, Informatics and Telematics Institute, Greece
• Rose Dieng-Kuntz, INRIA � Sophia Antipolis, France
• Liliane Esnault, E.M. Lyon, France
• Denis Gillet, EPFL, Switzerland
• Thanasis Hadzilacos, Hellenic Open University, Greece
• Dimitris Kalles, Hellenic Open University, Greece
• Nikos Karacapilidis, University of Patras & RA Computer Technology Institute, Greece
• Miltiadis Lytras, University of Patras & RA Computer Technology Institute, Greece
• Constantinos Mourlas, University of Athens, Greece
• Ambjörn Naeve, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Dora Nousia, RA Computer Technology Institute, Greece
• Vincent Quint, INRIA - Rhone Alpes, France
• Yassine Rekik, HES-SO and EPFL, Switzerland
• Constantine Spyropoulos, NCSR Demokritos, Greece
• Manolis Tzagarakis, RA Computer Technology Institute, Greece
• Christine Vanoirbeek, EPFL, Switzerland