Dear Teresa,

I read your account carefully several times and consider it to be very illuminating and stimulating for anybody trying to create an online-community by using tools like Moodle.

In the theoretical framework you elaborated three main topics: empowerment, collaboration, and learning organisation. In each subtitle you showed an excellent understanding of important questions and theoretical postulates which are important for the topic of your research. Although I am impressed with your theoretical introduction, I am not sure fits well in this kind of account. Namely, this part along with the introduction and the first part of the Methodology section takes more than 50% of the whole text. In my opinion, it is too much for a practitioner account. I would reduce this part and add something about your own educational context and about your role within it. In that way the paper would be more in accordance with the following presumption:

While the object of the practitioner’s research is the self, the self does not practise in isolation. In engaging with others it is assumed that research is carried out with, as opposed to on, such others. The interconnected nature of ourselves and others gives rise to the epistemological assumption that knowledge does not exist as an external object, but is constructed through a process of social interaction. (p. 24)

I like your sincere and reflective conclusion that you did not manage to undertake everything to improve collaboration in your practice (p. 26). Without understanding one’s own responsibility and the possibilities to improve something, we merely understand why things are as they are, but nothing would change at all. I especially appreciate your effort to encourage and support collaboration in your work place.

You transparently explained your values that are your living standards of judgement. However, from the paper it is not completely clear why other members of the team decided to participate in this collaborative project, and how they perceived your values. If you have any feedback about that, it could improve comprehensibility of the whole process. By the way, although I appreciate writing from your point of view, I would like to see more feedback from other participants since this was collaborative project and their understandings and experiences are very important for the whole story.

You divided the study into two cycles. The first cycle of your action research focused on the installation of an appropriate online environment. It is very important question not only because of technical and financial preconditions, but also because of the wider educational philosophy you wanted to promote. Although from reading the text and my own experiences I understand why you decided to use a Moodle system, I would suggest that you move the part of the text which tells us about Moodle (mostly on page 15) from the theoretical framework to this section (Cycle 1). In that way you will able better to connect your previous learning and the subsequent efforts you describe and explain in this paper.

It is interesting that you and some other people who tried to use web tools for creating learning communities are actually faced with the same problem – the level of involvement or lack of communication between participants of such communities. I hope we agree that the problem does not lie only in insufficient competence with ICT. In my opinion such way of communication is still strange to members of older generations who belong to “digital immigrants” (Prensky, 2001). This question could also be a question of values and lie with the expectations of people who use web technology. It could also stem from a wider social and cultural milieu that could be supportive, indifferent or discouraging to these new approaches. However, changes are always demanding and require personal involvement and effort, and in this the role of facilitator is especially important.

“Cycle 2” is in my opinion the core part of your study and although it is pretty well elaborated it could be extended with additional explanations and some data (e.g. examples of communication at the Moodle forums) even if that is to the detriment of the theoretical framework. Or more exactly, you could connect some of theoretical assumptions from the theoretical framework with your experiences and conclusions. I also hope that the videos you mentioned will be available in the final version of the paper. They could be an important contribution to the quality and rigour of your account.

I consider your paper as an excellent case study of using web technology in creating collaborative relationships in a school. I am happy that it will be published in the second issue of EJOLTS.

References

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5), 1-6. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf