| As higher education faculty transition from face-to-face teaching to teaching within an online environment, faculty development activities provide a means to help faculty succeed. This study identifies, describes, and analyzes how faculty, who are transitioning to online teaching, use a bounded community of practice as a requirement of an online faculty development course to solve problems which occur while they are teaching online. Narrative descriptive case records of three faculty member's collaborative experience were used to describe their collaborative experience within a bounded community of practice. Eight themes emerged which were used to perform a cross-case analysis to help answer the research questions and to determine whether or not the collaborative portion of the faculty development intervention held value with the instructors. The study shows that collaboration has a positive effect on behaviors, provides a sense of community, provides opportunity for group support, and overall was a positive experience for the instructors. However, in order to maintain building of knowledge beyond the bounded communities, members need the support and/or resources to continue to collaborate thus forming their own learning communities and continuing the learning process. |
