Building on-line community for professional development

This paper describes the early phases of an examination of the role played by Internet based teacher professional development for K-12 teachers in the implementation of an innovation. The cases developed describe the effect of this professional development intervention on the teacher implementation of the knowledge construction tools in the Stage Struck CD-ROM .The current phase of the research has established the most appropriate web site design for on-line professional development to be the online community of practice. The hall marks of an effective on-line community were determined from literature and available cases. These hallmarks have guided the web site network's technical development and continue to inform the study as it seeks to gauge the critical factors in building and sustaining the social interaction for on-line community.A web site portal or hub (http://www.stagestruck.uow.edu.au) has been designed specifically to build and support a community of practice. The web site development continues to be an iterative process informed by review of the literature, practice in the field and the contributions and ongoing evaluation of the community members.