MirandaNet is managed by a small secretariat consisting of the Director and founder, a web editor, an administration manager, and a Fellowship secretary. The Fellowship activity is overseen by an Advisory Council made up of 25-30 very senior academics, technologists, industry representatives, and government agency and education system representatives from across the United Kingdom. The Director, Christina Preston was well known in the Educational ICT area, both in academic and industry circles, well before she launched the MirandaNet Fellowship. It was largely her passion and vision, and on many occasions her personal finances, that guided, buoyed and prodded the community into the level of respect it now holds in the UK and International educational sector.
The MirandaNet infrastructure is underpinned by a discrete three-tiered structure and a clear pathway to a role in the community core. This structure is one of the Fellowships most unique attributes. Where many pundits will suggest that communities are all only about horizontal learning and are antithetical to hierarchy, the MirandaNet Fellowship proves a very successful exception. In this community an accepted member begins with Member status which allows them to enter into the discourse of the community. They have full access to the e-mail list, newsletters and web site profile and published resources of the community. They may then move to become Scholars, mentored to carry out a local action research project and to publish their findings to the community. Having met collaboration and publication obligations to the community, a Scholar may then be awarded a Fellowship. Fellows are the inner circle of mentors to the community. Fellows may hold office in specific areas as Consultant Fellows, Mentor Fellows or Speaker Fellows. Being a Fellow in MirandaNet is regarded as a both prestigious and very marketable in terms of a curriculum vitae and as proof positive of accomplishment in teaching with ICTs.
Members develop their profiles and status through opportunities for discussion, research and publication, project team work, presentation and shows, mentoring and leadership in the community. The leadership role of Fellows is integral to the community’s ability to realize a research capacity. Fellows work as leaders, collaborators, mentors and peer reviewers for fellow members. Scholars and Fellows, working in a voluntary capacity, often present on behalf of MirandaNet and the corporate partners at conferences, workshops and trade exhibitions.
It is worth examining briefly the role of the Consultant Fellows as consultancy and funding is a key enabler in this community’s ongoing work. The community leadership for research projects is supported by a Core Team of Fellows. This team includes project consultants; senior associates, consultants and academics with various ICT specializations. Project consultants are highly respected leaders, practitioners and researchers in the field of educational technology and active Fellows in the MirandaNet community.
Partnerships are also a key in the MirandaNet Fellowship. Some partnerships evolve through the prescribed structure of the community and the attendant roles. Members, as they progress to Fellow, are able to operate in collaborative groups as mentors, peer reviewers, buddies, team members and leaders. Partnerships also exist at senior and executive levels with the educational institutions, government agencies and vendor groups. These partnerships are actualized through the community dialogue, research projects, the Advisory Board membership and funding opportunities. A large part of the attraction for these highly respected senior partners, at least in the early days, was the credibility and high regard in which the community founder was held in this domain. She was a very successful educational software developer and researcher and had established relationships with many of these organizations in past collaborations. Fifteen years later the attraction for new members is the high regard with which the total community is held. This respect is in part due to the calibre of its membership, but also due to the community’s reputation for consistently producing high quality research from authentic contexts.
The Director’s role as leader, sponsor and champion and her interaction in this community cannot be overstated. She has worked to generate projects, tenders and professional development opportunities for the community. The Director described her role as sometimes being a matchmaker between the community partners and international relationships. Because of those efforts this community’s finance and support affords the collaborative professional activity of the members. This self-funding model is also quite unique amongst IMCoPs. In MirandaNet members can work on funded research projects income from which affords other activities of the community.
