Designing online conferences to promote professional development in Africa

INTRODUCTIONIncreased interest in online conferences globally is largely driven by convenience of participation, savings in travel and accommodation costs, and ecological concerns. In Africa, where members of specialist professions are physically dispersed across large distances, online conferences can play a key role in professional networking and development. This role is especially important in emerging professions such as educational technology, which are characterised by uneven trajectories of development and reconfiguration. After reviewing some of the generic conference design issues which are relevant to both face-to-face and online conferences I will discuss how the affordances of online conferences provide further possibilities for engagement in time-bound professional learning communities. Thus designers of online conferences can remediate (Bolter 2001, p.23) the notion of a conference to produce events that only in part resemble their face-to-face precursors.This article considers the affordances of online conferences as convenors of learning across a landscape of practice for professional development in Africa and explores the drivers of participation in conference activities through content analysis of statements by highly engaged participants. It is the first of a series of three articles of which the second will focus on the contradictions in an online conference system and the third will explore the relationships between formal online discussions and the use of social media within an online conference which uses both conversational spaces. The challenges faced in the current article relate to the theoretical underpinnings and related design choices which can support online professional development conferences for an emerging profession across varied African contexts including shifting disparities in infrastructure, skills and experience.The current article introduces the "e/merge" series of online conferences on the use of educational technology in Africa which attempted to create engaging time-bound experiences of community of practice interaction including legitimate peripheral participation and conversations among and with experts although it soon became evident that valued interactions were also taking place across the boundaries of the communities of practice engaged in the conference. The uniqueness of the first e/merge online conference in 2004 resulted from 1) its primary focus on the online knowledge sharing, networking and professional development of colleagues in Africa; 2) the design of a system with multiple modes and technologies of communication to support engagement by participants; and 3) the effective use of a team of trained online facilitators to support the leadership of presenters and participation by delegates, e/merge 2012 involved 272 participants and presenters from Africa and five other continents through sharing of presentations and conversations in online discussions and live meeting rooms. The selection of participant statements will focus on the affordances for learning in an online professional community that were described by engaged participants.I will suggest that the opportunities for deeper professional development arise from the affordances of the online conference for social learning as participants engage in time bound community of practice interactions and boundary conversations within the landscape of practice where professional identity and expertise are formed. Thus a well-designed online conference can bring members of related communities of practices into engagement about shared boundary objects. In particular the opportunities for engagement within a landscape of practice (Wenger 2010, p. 183) may facilitate the development of relational agency (Edwards 2005, pp.169-170) which is essential to working effectively across professional and organisational boundaries.The primary research question in this article is: How can an online conference support professional development in Africa? …