Communities of practice online: Reflection through experience and experiment with the Webheads community of language learners and practitioners

 Week 2

Definition of CoPs - part 3

  The quote I posted from Wenger, McDermott and Snyder suggests that "if you just get together and talk about something," this could be a CoP (assuming what you talk about is a 'practice'). In the spirit of what Pallof and Pratt characterize as "willingness to critically evaluate the work of others" I wonder how Christopher will support his contention that a listserv would not be a CoP because it does not "engage in practice" by doing something other than talking.

I have to say in advance that I regard Christopher as the group's expert in residence on this topic,

DISTRIBUTED communities of practice. It's nice to have the clarification

Gar
Don asks
does a CoP have to be (consciously) goal oriented?
I went back to year 2001, more or less december, when I first got the information about this kind of activity promoted by TESOL. There were several alternatives, and I selected the one that best suited my interests or goals? or objectives?

When Vance organized the sessions, he stated goals he considered were important to reach. There was a description of what we were to learn-share-transfer, this implied the statement of goals.
Greetings,
María Irene Albers de Urriola
Isn't it great when we're all correct? Your final sentence made me laugh, Vance. Thanks for the humor and thank you very much for posting the direct quotations from the source. I don't have this book, but it would be worth my while to get it!
Christine

-----Original Message-----
From: Vance Stevens [mailto:vstevens@e...]

As long as I've got my Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder, Cultivating
Communities of Practice, 2002, Harvard Business School Press open, to page 4 this time, What is a CoP? . . . . . . . . .

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
About Moderators:

I couldn't agree more, Christopher. I just finished responding to the Sun-Th comments my online graduate students have been posting. They also take turns moderating the reading and hands-on links discussion forums, and it's simply amazing how much autonomous learning has been going on in those 4 days (in my virtual "absence")--about CALL pedagogy and technology--they are finding ways to implement this week's task into their classroom work and to preserve sound files in PowerPoint for use on other computers. This week's moderator is doing a super job in "herding" all the cats.

Christine
Hi all,

I don't think communities must be goal oriented. Well, it depends on the context. If the coomunity has been created for training and acquiting knowledge, I think it would be an error set a limit or a target. BUt If the community has been created for students, it would be impossible to work without a concrete aim or goal.

María
Don and everyone,

Knowledge exists in several forms, for example, community, explicit, and implicit. Community knowledge is the beehive theory: the sum is greater than the indivdual. Knowledge as something internally processed comes from cognitive theory. Vygotsky is the granddaddy of the theory leading up to CoPs - big influence from his viewpoint of social learning and knowledge processing. And absorbing and contributing to CoP culture is certainly part of this.

Well, I wanted to unveil this in Week 4, but while we're on the subject, please check out the link (again) http://sites.inka.de/manzanita/cop

At the bottom of the diagram is a link to a new mind map: Evolution of CoP theory -- pretty simplistic, but to illustrate how CoP theory evolved (and inspired by our own Dr. Cat and cathearder:-)

CoPs concern themselves with all of these types of knowledge, but implicit knowledge transfer (via practice, use of tools/artifacts, and storytelling) is key.

Chris Johnson
Wenger also says that a listserv that sends messages twice a year qualifies as a CoP. I have a hard time buying this. Talking about practice and telling stories online may transfer knowledge tacitly, but I don't see how you can negotiate a knowledge domain, have a community, and engage in practice (his 3 CoP requirements) can with 2 sets of messages per year. But, hey, maybe things just go at a slower pace.

However, JS Brown questions the ability of online knowledge transfer because of linguistic pointers via pronouns require physical presence of individuals. JS Brown also talks of "networks of practice" which are looser than CoPs. He doesn't think that talking about practice necessarily is practice - or, at least, not when the parties aren't physically present.

I am working on a diagram for Week 4 (the 3rd - in the works), which compares CoPs to other types of organizations.

Wenger's newest book with McDermott and Snyder is a lot clearer and easier to grasp than his 1998 book. My problem with Wenger is that he seems to use a lot anecdotal evidence in his examples. He also presents CoPs as a range of attibutes (not too much this way and not too much that way). My study about WIA seeks to solidify that a bit more. Wish me luck.

Chris Johnson
PS - My interest is distributed CoPs. That's the topic of my disseration and what characteristics separate them from other types of virtual communities - and WIA is the subject of investigation. Wenger has some interesting recommendations for large distributed CoPs.

PPS - Vance is right about Paloff and Pratt. It is about virtual community building in general, not necessarily CoPs. It is a good book though.
Chris,

>CoPs concern themselves with all of these types of knowledge, but implicit
>knowledge transfer (via practice, use of tools/artifacts, and
>storytelling) is key.

can we consider e-libraries as a CoP, or an evolving tiny CoPs then?

arif
Hi Arif,

Personally, I don't consider e-libraries as CoPs for several reasons.

First, they seem to me to be storehouses of explicit knowledge. Second, they are organized so individuals look through them for their own purposes, consulting librarians when they need help (but often only searching the databases themselves). Third, the knowledge domain of an e-library is too broad, for it is not a group of people focusing on a defined knowledge domain. Fourth, although there may be some community aspects to setting it up and managing it, the users are mostly individual.

However, they may be another point of view. The librarians themselves could be considered a CoP with the users as boundary members. For example, the librarians seek to advance library science itself as a knowledge domain. Yet most of these boundary members/users themselves don't seek to become core members (expert librarians).

That's my opinon only. I'm curious about other viewpoints.

Chris Johnson
Love the link. I think it is quite acurate in describing the development of
CoPs from the original (face-to-face) variety into the online variety.

Dr. Cat

>http://sites.inka.de/manzanita/cop
   
  Week 2 | Definition - part 1 | Definitions - part 2