Redesigning of an Open Online Community of Practice for sharing Course Information for Educators

Abstract. While there are various tools available for Open Online Community of Practice (OOCoP) to use for information sharing and knowledge creation, the features may not be user friendly and as such affect the acceptance of the tool by the users. Such was the experience of the Computer Studies teachers in Namibia with Google Groups. By employing a participatory design with the Computer Studies teachers, the limitations of the Google Groups were identified and user requirements to customize a Learning Management System (LMS) were gathered through focus group interviews and questionnaires. This resulted in the custom-ized tool to support OOCoP, NamSchoolTalk. NamSchoolTalk was evaluated using the Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to explain user intentions to use the customised tool and subse-quent usage behavior. While the findings showed that NamSchoolTalk could im-prove collaboration, enhance the learning process and active participation of an OOCoP of Computer Studies teachers, further study is needed to determine the effectiveness of NamSchoolTalk for the information sharing and professional de-velopment of teachers in other subject areas and varying levels of computer lit-eracy.

Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Southern African Computer Lecturers’ Association (SACLA 2018)

June 18-20, 2018, Krystal Beach Hotel,

Harbour Island, Gordon’s Bay, South Africa

sacla.org.za