Technology-Enhanced Communities of Practice in an Asynchronous Graduate Course

Abstract

Many undergraduate and graduate courses have been recently converted to fully remote offerings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even within the remote structure, courses vary in their frequency of synchronous and asynchronous meetings. Fostering collaboration through students’ idea-sharing and supporting their learning is especially challenging in the asynchronous setting where it is challenging to replicate in-person communities of practice. This is especially the case in courses that are very theoretical and have traditionally relied on discussion boards for engaging students asynchronously. This paper aims to contribute to the research on technology-enhanced communities of practice by offering examples of digital discourse among peers that can be implemented asynchronously, including social annotations and jointly-developed slideshows with voice annotation. These methods allow for higher-quality interaction between learners, between learners and content, and between learners and the instructor.