Usability Test of eHealth Promotion @HKIEd—A Community of Practice Platform to Promote Healthy Lifestyles

Community of Practice (CoP) has been proved as an effective means for co-creation of knowledge. It is not yet widely used in health promotion, not to mention to utilize technological environment such as Web 2.0 to add value to the CoP. Under this study, an eHealth promotion @HKIEd, a CoP platform to promote healthy lifestyles was designed and constructed. It helped facilitate the CoP to share useful health information, locate expertise, promote health related events, communicate health updates effectively, co-construct shared repertoire of knowledge and build shared best practice on effective health promotion which was not limited to time, space and distance. Usability test was conducted to evaluate user acceptance of the eHealth promotion CoP platform using the Computer System Usability Questionnaire. A random sample of eighty-three active participants was recruited. Fifty females and thirty-three males with mean (S.D.) aged 21.1 were asked to evaluate the e-platform. The average scores of each domain were calculated with the corresponding means of the average scores of System Use, Information Quality and Interface Quality being 2.69, 2.83 and 2.74 respectively. The overall usability was 2.48 and the eHealth promotion @HKIEd demonstrated a high usability. It will provide a promising way to disseminate information for the public in health awareness promotion.

Community of Practice as an Epistemological Concept

Community of practice as a social learning theory is not easy to understand.Existing literature concerning the application of this theory into the educational field mostly interprets it as a methodological rather than an epistemological one,or even misread it.Enhance,the production of this paper,aiming at an explication of community of practice as an epistemological concept.By explicating its definition,three dimensions,three belongings and the four features of it,the paper endeavors to enable readers to better understand this elusive concept.

SDI planning using the system dynamics technique within a community of practice:lessons learnt from Tanzania

There exist major challenges in accelerating the spatial data infrastructure(SDI)planning process in the developing countries as well as advocating for politicians to support the development of SDI,due to the high complexity of SDI,lack of knowledge and experience,and limited insight in the benefits.To address these challenges,a methodology for SDI planning in Tanzania,based on the system dynamics technique and the communities of practice concept,was adopted and applied within a community consisting of experts from stakeholder organizations.The groups gathered to develop an SDI plan,while they shared their knowledge and discussed their ideas that helped their understanding of SDI.By running the system dynamics model,the development of SDI over time could be simulated that gave the planning community an insight about the future effects of today’s plans and decisions.Finally,an optimum model could be developed by refinements and improvements done with the consensus of the SDI stakeholders.This model included the components and policies that are essential for a successful SDI implementation in Tanzania and can be used as a basis for SDI planning and help to gain political support.Lessons learnt from this research were promising regarding the usability of the methodology for SDI planning in comparable countries.

FROM TEACHER GROUP TO LEARNING COMMUNITY:TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING COLLEGE ENGLISH TEACHERS' PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Among the research of language teachers' professional development in the course of reform,most studies take a psychological or cognitive approach and largely neglect the social element in a teacher's professional growth.This paper,therefore,is intended to build up a theoretical and analytical framework for a large-scale on-going study that looks at college English teachers' professional development from a sociological and anthropological perspective.The notion of learning community constitutes the core of the theoretical framework that orients the author's understanding of the tensions and conflictions in teachers' socialization into the teacher community within the context of radical change.In particular,the literature on three dimensions of the learning process is critically reviewed,i.e.personal dimension,interpersonal dimension and organizational dimension.

Social Language Learning Spaces： Affordances in a Community of Learners

This paper reports on an ethnographic inquiry into the linguistic and sociocultural affordances available to English and Japanese foreign language learners through their engagement in a social learning space at a Japanese university. By social learning space we refer to a facility in which students come together in order to learn with and from each other in a non- formal setting. To explore the social learning dynamic in this environment, we carried out a longitudinal ethnographic inquiry. Data came primarily from interviews with learners and administrators, supported by participant-observations. A thematic analysis of the data, informed by ecological and community of practice perspectives, pointed to the emergence of a community of learners and revealed how closely the affordances were connected with the emergent community. In this paper we report on the findings related to the affordances which gave rise to language learning opportunities, the relationship of these affordances to the conditions which supported the development of a community of learners, and the role of learner autonomy in regard to these two interrelated phenomena.

The Promise and Dilemma of the Mediated Parent-Teacher Relationship in the Age of Social Networking Sites

Based on an ethnographic study on two cohorts of teachers and parents in China,this article reveals that social networking sites(SNS)have widened the channel for parents and teachers to establish and maintain a relationship,and has formed an online“community of practice”to promote such collaborations.Yet,this could be accomplished only at the expense of teachers’professional and personal boundaries becoming increasingly blurred,which has emerged as a potential risk for their professionalism.Moreover,such a“community of practice”has also opened up a new space for winning or losing at the educational game for parents from different background,which has inadvertently led to widening the arena for the operation of old mechanisms of social inequality.This study suggests that further investigation should be conducted to examine the potential of SNS in the parent−teacher relationship.

“I Cannot Dance Upon My Toes”: A Case Study Into Teacher Learning Through Participating in an English Teaching Contest in China

The professional development of College English （CE） teachers in China has received considerable attention due to their responsibility in preparing university graduates for adequate English proficiency. Many continuous professional development （CPD） activities have been conducted （e.g., national teaching contest） to improve CE teachers＇ teaching effectiveness, an essential component of teacher learning. However, it has remained unknown concerning how teacher learning takes place in these well-intended CPD activities, and what mediating factors play an important role in teacher learning. To address this gap, this case study reports on a CE teacher＇s （]anna, pseudonym） experience in preparing for and participating in an English teaching contest. Drawing upon multiple sets of data such as teacher reflective journals, interviews, observations of group discussions, and video-recorded teaching demonstration and lesson plan presentation, the findings reveal that teacher learning takes place at a superficial level through legitimate peripheral participation, yet at a deeper level through identity crisis. Vulnerable teacher learning is also identified in the CPD activity, with differentiated learning possibilities created by the tensions between resources and power relations within the community and the teacher＇s conceptions of teaching and learning. The study concludes with implications for research of teacher learning and practice for teacher professional development.

“The Monkey King Meets the Spiderman”:Narrative Inquiry into Chinese Students’Academic Socialization Experiences in a U.S.University

This narrative study explores four Chinese students’academic socialization experiences in one research-intensive public university in the US.By drawing upon Wenger’s(1998)communities of practice and Gee’s(2000)theorizing on identity as the synthesized theoretical framework,this research uncovers four Chinese students’academic socialization stories nestled in the shifting cross-cultural landscape.Meanwhile,this study reveals that the Chinese students’academic socialization intersects a matrix of factors,which can be categorized into“personal landscape”and“professional landscape.”Last,this narrative case study concluded that the Chinese students’academic socialization involves the continuous negotiations of their multiple identities embedded in the cross-cultural contexts.