Understanding participants motivational factors for the design of a teacher community

Abstract

Online communities (OC) offer teachers a context for mutual inspiration, collaboration, and professional development. Yet, despite there being several studies analyzing teachers’ motivations to participate in these communities, it is still unclear how these motivations relate with the supporting collaborative platforms and how they can serve as an input for defining and prioritizing design requirements. A survey study was conducted with the participants of an open online and a face-toface training course in the different phases of a 'Maker' educational activity, which were introduced to a supporting platform for sharing, exploring, and co-creating learning designs. Information about 170 teachers’ self-reported motivations to participate in a collaborative environment and their perceptions about the usefulness of the implemented features was gathered. Findings show that participants’ main motivations are not only to gain knowledge, but also include to have fun or to collaborate with the community development. Regarding their perception about the supporting platform, more than the 30% of the participants acknowledged the usefulness of the features implemented and identified the lack of resources and training as the main limitations to participate. Results provide evidence of the importance of the participants motivations to determine design requirements for a platform to enhance collaboration within an OC of teachers.