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Thang Siew Ming is an Associate Professor at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, UKM. She graduated with a PhD in Education from the University of Nottingham, UK in 2001. Her areas of interest are Learner Autonomy, Distance Education, CALL and Learning Styles, Approaches and Strategies. She is the President of PacCALL, a very active CALL organization in the Asia Pacific region. She was the vice-chair of the GloCALL conference organized jointly by PacCALL and APACALL in Jakarta and Yogjakarta from 7 to 12 November 2008. She is also on the editorial boards and advisory panels of numerous CALL and Applied Linguistics journals. The journals include CALL E-J online, Journal of Pedagogies and Languages, Journal or Languages, Linguistics and Literature, Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Journal of Instruction. She has also published extensively in her areas of interest. A book edited by her and Barbara Sinclair entitled “Learner Autonomy: Research and Practice in Malaysia and Singapore” will be coming out very soon. For more information on her work, please visit her homepage at www.ukm.my/smthang
In 2007, while she was on sabbatical she worked with a research team from the University of Nottingham to develop and pilot an online distance educators’ training module at USM. Currently, she is heading a research project that explores teaching and learning in smart schools in Malaysia. The product of the project will be an online CPD model that can be used for training Malaysian teachers and teachers in other contexts too. Creating and Fostering e-Communities of Practice (e-CoPs) The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs and shared sociocultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals (Ragoff, 1985 and Lave, 1991). Lave & Wenger (1991) further used the term in relation to situated learning as part of an attempt to "rethink learning" at the Institute for Research on Learning. The construct has since been used in various fields including education, sociolinguistics, material anthropology, and second language acquisition. More recently, Community of Practice has become associated with knowledge management as people have begun to see them as ways of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation, or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization. It is now an accepted part of organizational development . This paper first describes this concept in the broader sense. Then it moves on to discuss the applicability of this concept in creating successful virtual community of practice by drawing upon relevant research studies (egs. Bourhis et al, 2005; Allen et al, 2003; Archdivili et al 2003 and Hinton, 2003). Finally, it focuses on the creating and fostering of communities of teachers in achieving teaching and learning goals. A teaching community of practice has been defined by Wenger, (2003) as a group of teachers who share a passion, a concern, a set of problems about any issue and knowledge and skills related to teaching and learning, by interacting continuously with each other. Such peer collaboration; that is, collegial sharing and reflection about practice, has been widely suggested to be effective for teacher professional development. The paper will further draw upon a research project (e-CPDelt Vision 2020 model) to illustrate how this concept has been used to aid online collaboration among twenty teachers from five Malaysian Smart schools. It will discuss to what extend these communities of practices have been successful in helping the teachers develop their teaching practices and their use of ICT.

In 2007, while she was on sabbatical she worked with a research team from the University of Nottingham to develop and pilot an online distance educators’ training module at USM. Currently, she is heading a research project that explores teaching and learning in smart schools in Malaysia. The product of the project will be an online CPD model that can be used for training Malaysian teachers and teachers in other contexts too.

Creating and Fostering e-Communities of Practice (e-CoPs)

The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs and shared sociocultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals (Ragoff, 1985 and Lave, 1991). Lave & Wenger (1991) further used the term in relation to situated learning as part of an attempt to "rethink learning" at the Institute for Research on Learning. The construct has since been used in various fields including education, sociolinguistics, material anthropology, and second language acquisition. More recently, Community of Practice has become associated with knowledge management as people have begun to see them as ways of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation, or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization. It is now an accepted part of organizational development .

This paper first describes this concept in the broader sense. Then it moves on to discuss the applicability of this concept in creating successful virtual community of practice by drawing upon relevant research studies (egs. Bourhis et al, 2005; Allen et al, 2003; Archdivili et al 2003 and Hinton, 2003). Finally, it focuses on the creating and fostering of communities of teachers in achieving teaching and learning goals. A teaching community of practice has been defined by Wenger, (2003) as a group of teachers who share a passion, a concern, a set of problems about any issue and knowledge and skills related to teaching and learning, by interacting continuously with each other. Such peer collaboration; that is, collegial sharing and reflection about practice, has been widely suggested to be effective for teacher professional development. The paper will further draw upon a research project (e-CPDelt Vision 2020 model) to illustrate how this concept has been used to aid online collaboration among twenty teachers from five Malaysian Smart schools. It will discuss to what extend these communities of practices have been successful in helping the teachers develop their teaching practices and their use of ICT.