Collaborative Strategies in On Line Communities of In-Service Teachers

The present paper analyzes a learning experience run at University of Macerata, during a post degree course for in service teachers and mature students. The course was delivered entirely on line, using a dedicated on line learning environment and proposed active and collaborative learning strategies to perform tasks and related activities. The whole course lasted one academic year and most of the 161 graduated applicants who enrolled in the Master were already working as teachers. During the intermediate phase of the course, students were asked to build collaboratively a didactic project to teach Italian language in their schools. The task focused on the final product, leaving the students free to choose how to design, organize and schedule their works. This paper aims to show how the ten groups, sharing both the path and the objectives, have negotiated their working modalities, in order to analyze different positioning in role setting, connections with the delivered materials, strategies implemented in decision making and during the design of the final projects. This research aims to inquire if there is a connection among groups’ different working modalities and results obtained at the end of the course.