Design and Development of a Knowledge Base for Teachers' Online Community (II)

[[abstract]]Abstract. In this research we developed a pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) sharing system to support a teaching 3 practicum course which was taken by 49 students being trained to become Chinese language arts teachers at secondary schools. The system dynamically collects and stores PCK items created by students as the course proceeds through the entire semester. The items include lesson plans, student worksheets, handouts, tests, journals and video clips of students' teaching practices. These items are structured around an underlying content knowledge (CK) database which stores more than 200 pieces of writings and related knowledge. As such, each PCK item is put in a meaningful context for evaluation and discussion. Related functionalities provided by the system include a My Wok Area where each student can manage his/her own PCK works, online journals for students to write down reflections on their teaching practices, message boxes associated with PCK items which allow the instructor to give timely feedback to students about each item and classmates to make comments on it, and a discussion forum whose postings are traceable from CK or PCK items. Results from user interviews, a questionnaire survey and observation about users'on-line behavior all confirm that this system helps the course to function much more effectively.