The impact of the Internet on our lives has been pervasive. People are increasingly turning to the social interaction available on the Internet to satisfy their needs, whether these are professional or personal. The Internet offers users fast access to social contacts such as online chat groups and discussion lists, helping us to make connections with others. Online communities are being increasingly used by teachers for professional support, guidance and inspiration. These are often organised around subject areas and offer teachers opportunities to develop both personally and professionally. Online communities may present as a source of continuous professional development for teachers as they are able to deliver authentic and personalised opportunities for learning. This paper will present the findings of a study that was conducted on three online communities for teachers. It will explore the nature of online community membership and offer some conclusions regarding their potential as a source of professional learning for teachers.

Pre-service education students entering university can be categorised broadly into two distinct groups, those who are coming directly from secondary school and those who are not. The second group can be quite diverse, ranging in age, academic and/or work experience. However, what both of these groups share is a digital expectation and they expect upon completion of their studies to be more digitally fluent than when they entered university, they expect to be taught via a range of digital technologies and they expect to use their digital skills throughout their personal and professional lives. These expectations have been either largely ignored or have failed to be understood by universities, resulting in a mismatch between student expectations and their experiences. However, the teaching staff within universities may be ill-prepared to meet these demands, either due to being non-users or exhibiting the same or lower levels of digital fluency as their students. The mismatch between student expectations and the reality is highlighted by an empirical case study involving undergraduate students enrolled in pre-service education degrees at an Australian university. The study will present clear evidence that students' digital expectancy should be considered when planning and improving learning environments.

E-learning is an accepted and commonly used component in tertiary education. However, success would appear to remain variable. Effective e-learning is a concept which sometimes eludes even the most reputable of online educators. It is an issue which plagues both the corporate and education fields and which is frequently aggravated by the numerous, often contradictory, studies on the subject. This article seeks to yield the merits of these studies in order to decipher some of the better means of effectively evaluating, designing and managing e-learning programmes and to accurately envisage what the future may hold for the development of online education in the tertiary education sector. It attempts to merge the experiences of the business and education sectors into an effective approach to be used in the design of such programmes and to present guidelines concerning the future of e-learning in tertiary education. E-Learning: a new paradigm for learning in the tertiary education sectorThe impact of new technologies in the education sector has led to the rise of new terms, such as, digital pedagogy, techno-literacy, distributed learning and networked learning to name a few. A key advantage technology presents to the education sector is its ability to be more easily distributed to a wider student cohort in a more interactive form than has been previously available. E-learning is now an accepted component of tertiary education and is no longer limited to external students. It has transformed itself into an integrated component that has given rise to a new paradigm for learning in this sector. However, has e-learning been a worthy addition to tertiary pedagogy? Can it facilitate effective learning strategies? More importantly, is it worthy of the time and expenditure needed for it to be fully implemented in the tertiary sector? As highlighted by analyst Greg Cappelli, universities and other post-secondary institutions are far from being characterised by the 'idealistic notion of operating outside the daily financial grind of revenues, expenses and budgets' (Pittinsky, 2003, p. 41). The tertiary education sector today is a complex business and, like others, is cost-sensitive and eager to utilise the latest technologies to help streamline its operations. With this in mind, many educators have turned to online e-learning in the hope of incorporating a more costeffective means of education. Contrary to popular opinion, however, e-learning can often lead to a rise in costs -in the short term at least. Nevertheless, online e-learning does help widen the scope of education and can prove to be a vital asset, provided, of course, that it is effective. It also has the potential to transform traditional learning scenarios into more flexible learning that promotes lifelong learning (Martinez-Torres et al, 2006). The promotion and facilitation of lifelong learning should be a goal of post-secondary education, and e-learning enables these scenarios to be created and maintained more easily.This concept of effective e-learni...

Electronic communication is characteristically concerned with 'the message' (eM), those who send them (S), and those who receive and read them (R). This relationship could be simplified into the equation eM = S + R. When this simple equation is applied to electronic communication, several elements are added that make this straightforward act of sending and receiving a message more complex. These new elements are characteristics such as asynchronicity, unknown senders and readers, non-linear text and the absence of non-verbal cues. What is apparent is that the complexity of these messages lies in their impact outside the online environment. It is clear from the messages themselves that the information is being applied to real, authentic contexts and is not limited to the online environment. Conversational analysis frameworks must attempt to understand this complexity if the meaning of electronic messages is to be understood. This paper proposes a new conversational analysis framework, the electronic conversational analysis framework (eCAF), for use with electronic communication. The eCAF has been designed as a new methodological tool that incorporates the unique virtual/real worlds that individuals participate in and links these two locations to the phases of electronic discussions. Electronic messages and researchThe use of computer-mediated text messages in research has been well documented ). Text-based messages commonly used in computermediated communication (CMC) have unique characteristics. While they are written texts, they do not share the same features as traditional written communication (Henri, 1992) and contain more characteristics of spoken communication. Conversation is divided into threads, with responses to different threads not following logically after one another. This does not inhibit the communicative experience but is merely a distinguishing characteristic of the medium. McCreary (1990) stated that the written word demands an exactness and coherence of thought, indicating that text-based communication results in more well planned and structured interactions. The message itself can be regarded as a complete communicative unit (Henri, 1992) which has its own meaning and structure.Research has concluded that user participation and motivation increases (Harasim, 1990;McCreary, 1990) when communicating via text-based messages. Harasim (1990) also reported that there is a high level of interactivity in such communication, which in turn encourages collaboration and thus influences the learning process. The asynchronous capabilities of text-based CMC allows for more thought, reflection and processing of information (Hara et al, 2000). These two factors indicate that electronic messages are potentially a rich source of data for researchers.

Belonging to an online community offers teachers the opportunity to exchange ideas, make connections with a wider peer group and form collaborative networks. The increasing popularity of teacher professional communities means that we need to understand how they work and determine the role they may play in teacher professional development. This chapter will map data from a doctoral study to a recentlydeveloped model of professional development to offer a new perspective of how online communities can add to a teacher’s personal and professional growth and, in so doing, add to the small number of studies in this field. This chapter will conclude with a call for a revision of the way we approach professional development in the 21st Century and suggest that old models and metaphors are hindering the adoption of more effective means of professional development for teachers.