>If you just get together and talk about something, that's not a CoP. Sure, you talk (a lot) in a CoP, but the members also need to do things together ("engage in practice").

The question here is just what counts as 'doing something.' Negotiating identities, co-constructing the societies we live in -- I would consider these pretty important somethings and these are accomplished first and foremost through "just talking together." In other words, talking IS doing!

Don Carroll

María Jordano de la Torre

I have to say in advance that I regard Christopher as the group's expert in
residence on this topic, as he is steeped in the literature and as he says
eats, drinks, and breathes this stuff (and you can see him eating it on web cam
if you join us for our Sunday chats). So I am taking a risk here by engaging
the master in a topic I know relatively little about, but am eager to learn
more, and so look forward to the response.

Meanwhile, I wonder if our interest is really DISTRIBUTED communities of
practice. It's nice to have the clarification and the perspective of CoPs
being so ubiquitous in all our lives, and it's appropriate to have come to that
realization in this week of our session, but I think the interest of this group
is indeed DCoPs.

Vance

"CoPs are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis."

"As they spend time together, they typically share information insight, and advice ... help each other solve problems ... discuss ... ponder .. explore .. they may create tools ..." etc. "... or they may simply develop a tacit understanding that they share. However they accumulate knowledge, they become informally bound by the value that they find in learning together. This value is not merely instrumental ... personal satisfaction ... develop a unique perspective on their topic as well as a body of common knowledge, practices, and approaches ... personal relationships and established ways of interacting. They may even develop a common sense of identity. They become a community of practice." (p. 5 now)

After giving examples ranging from prehistoric gatherings to guilds in Europe and their modern offshoots in Detroit and Silicon Valley, ... "Communities of practice are everywhere. We all belong to a number of them -- at work, at school, at home, in our hobbies. Some have a name, some don't."

So according to this you're all correct,
Vance

>The question here is just what counts as 'doing something.' Negotiating
>identities, co-constructing the societies we live in -- I would consider
>these pretty important somethings and these are accomplished first and
>foremost through "just talking together." In other words, talking IS doing!

Very good question and point, we are getting into a grey area here. How is practice achieved? I agree a great deal of talking goes on. But a key aspect of practice is implicit knowledge transfer (transfer of non-verbal knowledge via doing). Can it be done online? Can you really collaborate online? Or can you do little more than divide up the work and check back with each other once in a while?

Here are ample questions for a lot of studies in this area.

Chris Johnson

It depends on what is meant by "knowledge transfer." For example, one might describe the acquisition of culture as "knowledge transfer" if one conceives of culture as a set of values, knowledge bases, and customs. But if instead one defines culture as a shared set of practiceS (again note the importance of the plural) then we need to ask whether learning a practice (I suppose in a Vygotskyan sense) can be adequately described as "knowledge transfer" -- to my mind, it is not. PracticeS arise out of interaction, are shared and co-constructed -- they exist OUT THERE as observable phenomena -- as opposed to "knowledge" which is usually thought to be internal to the mind of a single individual.

To say all this is a much simpler way, does a CoP have to be (consciously) goal oriented?

Don Carroll

I guess that when one decides to join a CoP, it is because there is a goal or a mission in that CoP that attracts our attention because it reflects some personal objective that one wants to accomplish. Then, if it is this way, and one is satisfied, other objectives arise that perhaps one had never though of, and in this way, the original objectives of the CoP can be enlarged according to each member's objectives.

After being involved in the practice with WIA, I see the work that we carry out as what in the techniques of Cooperative Learning is called Jigsaw. Each member possesses a piece of knowledge, unknown to the other members, that is important for the task that will be carried out. This process can be carried our in the total group (in the case of WIA), through the questions and the doubts posted to the forum by individual members and the answers given to them by others. However, small groups can carry out different tasks, where the process is the same, and this small groups inform the whole community the results of their observations. That is what we continually do in WIA when we try new web tools. Last year, we became true ethnographers, we settled in different platforms and from inside we explored them, we analyzed, we evaluated and then we reported our discoveries. I believe that this is what Chris means by "transfer of knowledge" that in fact, should be "sharing of knowledge". This knowledge can be brought by the members to the group, from their previous experiences, or collaboratively built inside WIA.

Last year, our goal was "learn by doing", while this year's objective is more of applying metacognitive strategies to learn what we know, from a theoretical point of view, about what we are doing with our practice.

Hugs,
Daf "paella" Gonzalez

Thank you very much for your insights on this matter. I'm finding these discussion fascinating and the interaction wonderful I suppose, however, one could go one step further and ask if one always (again consciously) "decides to join" a CoP. In the case of an e-list or something like WIA there are indeed conscious steps required to join. But in the whole range of CoP's we have been discussing, most of which are not online, how one becomes a member may be much more nebulous.

But perhaps all this is moving too far away from the "goal" of our discussion on online CoP's. I've just been trying to fray the edges a bit.

Don Carroll

PS. Please keep in mind that all we newbies still need to pass through the "learn-by-doing" phase!!! : )

I have to say in advance that I regard Christopher as the group's expert in residence on this topic, as he is steeped in the literature and as he says eats, drinks, and breathes this stuff (and you can see him eating it on web cam if you join us for our Sunday chats). So I am taking a risk here by engaging the master in a topic I know relatively little about, but am eager to learn more, and so look forward to the response.

Meanwhile, I wonder if our interest is really DISTRIBUTED communities of practice. It's nice to have the clarification and the perspective of CoPs being so ubiquitous in all our lives, and it's appropriate to have come to that realization in this week of our session, but I think the interest of this group is indeed DCoPs.

Vance

The way to motivate newbies is to find out what interests them and somehow show them that participating in the CoP will benefit them. There is no other way.

Easier said than done? Yep.

Chris Johnson

>My take on this? I think a moderator's involvement may make a lot of
>difference in such a group--coming up with interesting topics to discuss,
>new findings (research, web sites, techniques, etc.), and encouragement of
>the members. Aren't those also some of the principles that we apply in
>teaching?

Sure, that's possible. I would say a good moderator would inject things in during a lull, but a good moderator would also know when to lay off when the participants are doing all of the above themselves.

A good moderator would also get to know the members and their expertise and draw upon them to get discussion going, as well as introduce members to each other -- like a gardener, faciliator, coach, or ..... a cat herder.

However, if a moderator has to come up with the water to fill the sponges (the participants), this moderator is in for a long haul. CoPs have a rotating "sage on the stage" and not just one. So one day's/week's/month's moderator may well do the above, but someone else will fill that role another time.

First I'd like to say I'm really enjoying this discussion (and learning a lot), and the citations add an additional element of resource and education.

If I recall, my first posting to Vance last year questioned his "welcome to the community" statement; I was very skeptical that a group of strangers could form any type of connection that would pass for a real community. Having experienced both general chat rooms (which I quickly dismissed as unproductive), and the TESL-list, I decided that these groups added information to a general pool and little more occurred. Certainly the TESL-list is a great resource, but postings of a personal nature are strongly discouraged.

Vance informed me that EV_Webheads (now known to me as WiA) was indeed a community, a statement that was later reinforced by the groups members simply via their level of communication.

I would have to agree with Elizabeth, both in finding validity in Pallof & Pratt's definition and in her own assessment that WiA doesn't really fit all the definitions. This is perhaps a reflection of the technology used by the group; webcams and voice chat certainly allow for a more personal touch. But I would add that, in my opinion (excuse me, "IMHO" for chatters) a large part of who we are is due to the "tone" set by WiA's creator, Vance Stevens.

All the best,
Arlyn

Regards, Gar