Professional Development through Social Network Communities Ibáñez Cubillas, Pilar Nogueira, Fernanda Gallego Arrufat, María Jesús Communities of Practice Education Professional Development Professional profiles Social Networks Virtual Communities Comunidades de Práctica Comunidades Virtuales Desarrollo profesional Educación Perfiles profesionales Redes sociales This article is partially funded by contract Ref. SFRH/BPD/85083/2012. Foundation for Science and Technology. Ministry of Education and Science, Portugal. European Social Fund. European Union // This research also received public funding from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (Reference: FPU13/04744). Professional development has change thanks to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the adoption and proliferation of the Internet. Social networks contribute to professional development through open experiences and communities or through more restricted and specific groups. In this paper we analyze multiple forms of communication in social networks and argue that professional development is based on the construction of shared knowledge. Taken into consideration different types of online communities, we focuses our study in massive online courses (open and massive networks) and in virtual communities (more restricted and closed groups), in order to answer the following questions: In what extend social networks are influencing individuals and promoting professional development? Are individuals managing the information and experiences from social networks for their professional development? By exploring the main changes that social networks provide for professional development we expect to contribute for further research and actions in this field of expertise. El desarrollo profesional cambia gracias a las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC) y la adopción y proliferación de Internet. Las redes sociales contribuyen al desarrollo profesional mediante experiencias abiertas y comunidades o grupos más restringidos y específicos. El artículo analiza múltiples formas de comunicación en redes sociales. Se argumenta que el desarrollo profesional está basado en la construcción de conocimiento compartido. Considerando diferentes tipos de comunidades en línea, el foco de atención se centra en cursos online masivos (redes abiertas y masivas) y en comunidades virtuales (grupos más restrictivos y cerrados) para responder a las siguientes cuestiones: ¿En qué medida las redes sociales influyen en los individuos y promueven su desarrollo profesional? ¿Gestionan los individuos la información y las experiencias de las redes para su desarrollo profesional?. Se exploran las principales transformaciones que las redes sociales proporcionan al desarrollo profesional para el futuro en este campo. 2024-05-09T07:10:31Z 2024-05-09T07:10:31Z 2017 conference output Ibáñez-Cubillas, P., Nogueira, F., & Gallego-Arrufat, M.J. (2017). Professional development through social network communities. In EDULEARN17 Proceedings (pp.2930 2938). IATED. DOI: 10.21125/edulearn.2017.1612 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/91559 10.21125/edulearn.2017.1612 eng open access IATED