ICT Center: Knowledge Community

Springfield Technical Community College, Springfield MA

Investigators

Abstract

The National Information and Communications Technologies (NICT) Resource Center has developed an ICT Community of Practice (CoP) that impacts four distinct, yet intertwined, audiences: community college faculty and administration, community college students, industry representatives, and ICT-focused ATE centers and projects. The Center differs from other ATE centers in that it focuses on institutional processes of ATE centers and projects that result in sustainability of programs and long-term impacts on technician education. Past work has emphasized three major types of activities: 1) building community by working with other centers and projects; 2) empowering others by using social media and emerging technologies to generate discussion and share resources; and 3) connecting centers and industry to leverage knowledge within the community and beyond. In this extension, the Center continues these activities, but also focuses on collecting evidence that developing CoPs and working with other centers and projects positively impacts the quality of technician education. The evaluation plan details questions that directly track how process-oriented resource-sharing "the essence of CoPs" improves organizational efficiencies and leads to lasting changes in: 1) the management of the centers and projects; 2) the way that centers and projects interact with each other, with other community colleges and industry to sustain the objectives of the ATE program; and 3) the way that they interact with their students. The evaluation of this transitional year also focuses on: 1) identifying the changes that occurred in the behavior and operations of ATE centers and projects after seeking guidance from the ICT Center and the CoP; 2) tracking how these changes lead to improvements in technician education; and 3) identifying how the improvements impacted students. The strength of the ATE program is that it is a community and not just a series of projects. The community is established and nurtured by having a few projects and centers that mainly work with other projects and centers. This proposal studies the extent to which communities of practice can lead to outcomes that improve scientific and technical education at associate degree-granting institutions.