Title: Supporting a virtual community of tutors in experience capitalising

Authors: Elise Garrot, Sebastien George, Patrick Prevot

Addresses: Universite de Lyon, INSA Lyon, LIESP Laboratory, F-69621, Villeurbanne, France. ' Universite de Lyon, INSA Lyon, LIESP Laboratory, F-69621, Villeurbanne, France. ' Universite de Lyon, INSA Lyon, LIESP Laboratory, F-69621, Villeurbanne, France

Abstract: Nowadays, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are changing the way students learn. Many researches focus on the development of new forms of pedagogy and software for student learning. But ICT also involve changes in teachers| roles, which are not yet well defined particularly for online tutors. In this paper, we present new ways for tutors to define their own |professional identity|, their functions and |good practices|. By providing a platform to develop Communities of Practice (CoPs) for tutors, we aim at giving them the possibility to share knowledge and experiences and to refer to those in their day-to-day practice. We detail the interface to classify and retrieve experiences stored as knowledge in a database.

Keywords: virtual communities; communities of practice; online tutors; knowledge management system; KMS; information technology; communication technology; ICT; online communities; web based communities; teachers; knowledge sharing; experience sharing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2009.025216

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2009 Vol.5 No.3, pp.407 - 427

Published online: 16 May 2009 *

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