This paper explores the nature of integrated networks of practice, and in particular, the important role of "hubs" within networks. Hubs are individuals or groups that energize cross-connections, improve knowledge flow, enhance learning across small clusters of expertise, and play critical roles in building and sustaining robust…

Purpose: To achieve the ambitious policy goals concerning organic agriculture in Germany, it is crucial to understand which actors and institutions in the German organic microAKIS are most important to farmers and how farmers within the system share knowledge. This study explores these questions by focusing on farmers who are members of organic…

Information literacy (IL) open learning object repositories (LORs) provide a space for librarians to find and exchange instruction resources and lessons. Given many librarians enter the workforce with little or no formal training or educational opportunities to learn about pedagogy, these repositories are indispensable resources to the Library and…

Sustainable Development Goal No. 4 (SDG4) resonates with all education systems of the world. It has resulted in education policies being created and promulgated with sustainability and development in mind. In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), sustainability speaks to the need for schooling systems to operate as a knowledge…

Virtual communities of Practice (VCoP) offer a flexible option for professional development that may be employed by geographically dispersed communities. Due to unique and dynamic operational demands and a reduced training budget, the United States Coast Guard's (USCG) afloat community has limited opportunity for formal professional development,…

In the information age, students must learn to navigate and evaluate an expanding network of information. Highly effective teachers model this process of information analysis and knowledge acquisition by continually learning through collaboration, professional development, and studying pedagogical techniques and best practices. Many teachers have…

Introduction: This paper reports on an extensive research project which aimed at exploring information sharing activities in a scholarly context. The paper presents and synthesises findings from a literature review and three qualitative case studies. The empirical setting is a geographically distributed Nordic network of design scholars. Method:…

This article addresses the question of understanding more about networked universities by looking at open source software developers working in academic contexts. It sketches their identities and work as an emerging professional community that both relies upon and develops digitally mediated networks and contributes to the progress of academic…

Educational researchers and policy-makers are now expected by funding agencies and their institutions to innovate the multi-directional ways in which our production of knowledge can impact the classrooms of teachers (practitioners), while also integrating their experiential knowledge into the landscape of our research. In this article, we draw on…

In November 2008 the Sloan Consortium published "Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States." This study produced survey statistics relating to enrollments in online courses. The study confirmed what most administrators and faculty members already suspected: the growth of online higher education continues to be astounding;…

Traditionally, undergraduate curriculum committees, consisting of appointed faculty and student representatives, have served as the sole departmental vehicle for investigating, discussing and promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) within an academic department. However, with the universal demand for greater accountability on all…

The cognitive and learning styles research domain is a highly complex one which has recently been the focus of rigour-relevance debates (Coffield et al. 2004; Evans and Sadler-Smith 2006; Rayner 2006). There is considerable support for the existence and value of style as a construct (Sternberg 1996) even though further work is needed to evidence…

The inherent opportunities for communication, collaboration and experiential learning in an online and global network create the impetus for the new network paradigm in higher education. A strategic knowledge network in education was designed and developed to build "Mode 2" knowledge capabilities; create new knowledge for innovative…

Shadow netWorkspace (SNS) is a web application system that allows a school or any type of community to establish an intranet with network workspaces for all members and groups. The goal of SNS has been to make it easy for schools and other educational organizations to provide network services in support of implementing a learning community. SNS is…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review a systemic organizational change initiative for improving collaboration, innovation and value creation at a global telecom. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a comprehensive internal assessment Telenor identified core issues and challenges in supporting collaboration after several years of…