50% and Progressing

So, it has been quite a while since I have written.  That's because I've been so busy at school I haven't really had time for blogging.  At any rate after this semester which ends in a few days, I am officially 50% finished with my doctoral program.  Time flies and I have decided the cohort program was the right thing to do.  I have met so many amazing, smart people.  I hope to keep in touch with them when this is all over.  I love the ride so far. 

Here is my introduction to my dissertation so far...
There is a significant body of research regarding online collaborative tools and communities of practice. Online collaboration refers to using technology tools that employ the World Wide Web as a medium for communication and collaboration. Muirhead and Juwah (2004) more specifically define online interaction as “a dialogue or discourse or event between two or more participants and objects which occur synchronously and/or asynchronously mediated by response or feedback and interfaced by technology. (p. 12)” Communities of practice are defined by Wenger (2004) as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” This research is two-fold. First, it examines the effectiveness and impact of using online collaboration tools to foster the development of a community of practice. This developing community consists of teaching professionals focused on educational technology. Second, it seeks to measure how the instructional practices of the members of the community as related to educational technology will be impacted. Online collaboration tools can be a powerful mechanism for learning, collaborating and creating relationships. However, research indicates that the effectiveness of these tools for learning and relationship building are contingent on existing relationships between the members of the community, the definition or discovery of a clear purpose and context for the tools being used, and the scaffolding that is employed to encourage their use (Barab et al. 2001, Schweier 2002, Daniel, Schwier, and McCalla (2003).