Design, Implementation and Evaluation of XarFED: Virtual Community of the Faculty of Education of the University of the Balearic Islands

Abstract

Virtual communities are one of the virtual spaces where learning from different contexts converges -professional, academic, informal,...-, which are located in the boundaries between institutional, social and personal virtual learning environments and involve a group of people united by common interests. This paper presents the process of design, implementation and evaluation of Xarxa de la Facultat d'Educació (XarFED) as a hybrid virtual community of learning and practice of the Faculty of Education in the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB, Spain). Information taken into account in the study during the academic year 2014/15 has been collected through Google Analytics, the platform where the community has been developed itself and a final questionnaire of satisfaction answered by the community users. The results point to a positive overall assessment of XarFED, both at a technological level and educational and participative possibilities, although a low level of use of the community tools is shown compared to the perceived usefulness by the users. XarFED is highlighted for its usefulness to connect academic and informal contexts, as well as the professional interests of the educational community of the UIB, and the importance of the interconnection with the social networks that the users utilize in their daily lives is noted as well. As conclusions, the possibilities for this type of hybrid communities are mentioned, which at the same time they foster academic learning and connect to the professional development of future graduated educators, pedagogues and teachers of the UIB.