An Emergence of a Community of Practice: Five Engineering Faculty Coauthoring Electronic and Dynamic Textbook Material in Energy Sustainability

• In Event: Teaching and Learning Across the Disciplines

Abstract

This paper discusses the community-of-practice characteristics of five engineering faculty’s collaboration as they co-author an electronic-and-dynamic textbook in energy suitability. Funded by the NSF, two learning scientists and one technology expert have consulted five engineering faculty in drafting their textbook chapters over one year. To document the nature and the discourse of our collaboration, we conducted an instrumental case study with ethnographic data collection approaches, which included recordings of our weekly meetings and one-to-one interviews. Among the findings we discuss in the paper are the individual identities emerged, our common language and repertoire, the evolution of our mutual engagement and community goals, and the discourse of our interaction where we both practiced our common task and learned from each other.

Authors

• Mehmet C. Ayar, TUBİTAK

• Bugrahan Yalvac, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Christine Ehlig-Economides, Texas A&M University

• Dennie L. Smith, Texas A&M University