Communicate with teacher members of your team frequently and regularly.

   Experiences:

The Consortium for Education teams used whatever means of communication was successful for them. Several teams began the project with a face-to-face meeting with the teachers and most of them had at least one face-to-face meeting during the lifetime of the project. These meetings were unanimously thought to be the most valuable exchanges. The most frequently used method of communication was e-mail. Most teachers have e-mail accounts through their schools, but may have to go to a resource center or computer lab to access them. It was found that most teachers were not comfortable using other types of synchronous or asynchronous electronic communication. Teachers usually do not have telephones in their classrooms and are difficult to reach during the school day, so several project leaders reported that they made telephone calls to teachers after work hours.

Bulletin boards, threaded discussions, and listserv services were used with varying levels of success. Most school (and federal agency) networks have firewalls that made Internet chat rooms, and audio or video conferencing problematic or impossible. All teams found that online communication was not enough to create a sense of community especially since it is easy to ignore e-mail and listserv notices. It was noted that dealing with the process of creating the learning modules by e-mail was easier than dealing with conflicts arising from disagreements over content. One group required the members to post their reflections about piloting their learning units in an Internet threaded discussion that other members could read. The feedback and encouragement that teachers provided each other strengthened the sense of community as well as the quality of the learning module.

   Recommendations:

• Plan and implement an orientation workshop to begin your collaboration.
• Examine the possibilities for other face-to-face planning sessions throughout the development of the learning module.
• Evaluate teacher members' comfort level with methods of electronic communication, and introduce others that might be beneficial, but be prepared to offer help in using them.
• Use any viable methods to keep lines of communication open among you and your teachers.
• Entertain creating a mutually agreeable schedule to send e-mail or make phone calls.
• Think about adding a clause to teachers' contracts that requires them to post written reflections and feedback about their work on the learning module in an online discussion area such as a bulletin board or threaded discussion.

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