Community of Practice (CoP) – Page 3

CPsquare Research and Dissertations Series

I was pleasantly surprised to be invited by John Smith at CPsquare (The Community of Practice on Communities of Practice) to discuss my work in the Research and Dissertations Series next week. The title of my session is “Jeffrey Keefer: work in progress – Educational Research + (Virtual) Identity in Postmodernity.” The subtitle for this sessions states:

We have a time-honored tradition of sharing mid-trajectory work, and Jeffrey Keefer’s Doctoral research to date follows it. He has said, “If we all waited for the ideal time, nothing would ever happen.” The synchronous session will be on Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 20:00 GMT (4 pm New York time). Jeffrey will post some bits here before that.

While this session is intended for members of CPsquare, I will share some bits and pieces of what I share there here as well, especially what I hope to discuss and what questions about it I have. For anybody planning or able to attend, here is the internal CPsquare url.

Weaving a PhD via #PhDchat

My life revolves around my doctoral studies at this point (at least outside of my full-time job, of course!), as I am busily working on my doctoral thesis proposal that is due at the end of the month. While I have heard it said, and even experienced it at times, that there are few things as lonely and isolating as doing a PhD, I think that having a community of practice (here’s to you, Etienne!) for support and with which to share and grow and weave thoughts, is worth its weight in qualitative methods texts.

With this said, I find that the #PhDchat that exists on Twitter is fantastic in its communal support of struggling doctoral students, sharing of resources, answering of questions, and suggesting of apps and software. With this said, just knowing that there are others out there who are reading along while facing their own struggles and liminal experiences is beneficial–I am not working alone in a vacuum but weaving my experiences with others along shared, but different, paths.

Some of my colleagues in this synchronous chat that exists in an ongoing asynchronous manner as well have started to discuss ways of studying, or at least beginning to explore this experience. Martin Eve @martin_eve discussed the early history of the #phdchat experience in his fine post On #PhDchat: Call for Collaboration/History, Overview, Themes and Response, and Andy Coverdale @AndyCoverdale talked about considerations related to ways of understanding Twitter networks, among other things, in On #phdchat – some initial thoughts. I have previously spoken about this experience in my earlier post PhD Chat as #phdchat and Liz Thackray @lizith with her Networking post soon thereafter. While this post here is partly in response to calls for people to discuss their experiences here (such as from part of an exchange I had with Jennifer Jones @jennifermjones) among others, I am going to take a slightly different perspective on this experience.

For those who know me, it may not come as a surprise that I am not terribly interested in understanding how the #phdchat network works, who responds to whom, who retweets what and when they do it. Yes, they are all valuable questions and may very well lead to some interesting research (anybody thinking about Internet Research 12 or 2012’s Networked Learning Conference that was just announced in this regard, please let me know!), though the questions I tend to ask are more around the area of meaning and how this experience helps to form identity:

How does your experience of participating in #phdchat help or hinder your doctoral studies?
What is your experience of community in #phdchat?
What have you learned through active or passive involvement in #phdchat?

Ahh, so many interesting ideas come about when we involve ourselves in something really engaging. I wonder how my (current or future) colleagues involved in this see themselves as part of something larger than themselves? How do you weave your PhD?

PhD Chat as #phdchat

I often find it easier to study the experience and process of doctoral studies (from both student and faculty perspectives) than to speak with people about my own doctoral work. One reason for this is that I often feel I am working alone, without a community of people who are doing similar or related work.

With this background shared, I am thrilled with the recent synchronous (on Wednesdays at 2:30 EST / 7:30 GMT) and ongoing asynchronous (it is Twitter, after all) phd-related chats using the tag #phdchat that have recently started to attract more attention. Do I hear interdisciplinary community of practice, anyone?

Support. Sharing. Ideas. Potential collaboration. New applications. Calls for papers. Conferences. Community. I suppose many people may be involved in this loose collaboration for many reasons (thank you @NSRiazat for getting this started), though I now feel I have more colleagues (and know more about some of these colleagues who I knew before) as a result of this experience. No, I have no idea where it will lead, how it will develop, and who else may or may not become involved for whatever period of time. This is somehow fitting that while so much of my research is from a distance, my community should be like that as well.

Nice to know that I am not alone on this road and others on this path are only a Tweet away.

I am a Mentor in the Foundations of CoP Course

I am very happy to share that I am one of the 4 mentors in the Fall 2010 Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop that is sponsored by CPsquare. In this capacity, I will work with workshop leaders Etienne Wenger, John Smith, and Bronwyn Stuckey and fellow mentors Joost Robben, Monique Léger, and Paul Lowe.

I have worked with all of these colleagues before, though never in the capacity of a mentor. While I will have a lot to share and explore in my own work, I will keep this brief as I have not yet posted my own introduction to the workshop. Ahh, the busy life of one who is interested in so many things related to teaching and learning from a distance!

Model of Formal Virtual Learning Communities

I am happy to share that our vacation from classes is over, and now we are back to the books and studies! Now that I have supposedly had some time off (though work and teaching does not really cease), it is time to again focus on my studies and my research.

One of the readings I did for our internal discussions has really captured my interest. I have previously read this book chapter, though now that I am actively engaging in research in this area, this model of virtual learning communities (VLC) is becoming more present and intentional in my thinking. I like this model for VLCs, with the various elements the authors are recommending:

While I generally think these elements are useful, I wish I could learn a little more about the research that supports there items; this was not included in the chapter, and as a developing researcher, I can’t help but wonder how the authors came up with these, and not others.

What do others think; do these elements fit with your practice and experience?

Reference:
(Schwier, R. A., & Daniel, B. K. (2008). Implications of a virtual learning model for designing distributed communities of practice in higher education. In C. Kimble, P. Hildreth & I. Bourdon (Eds.), Communities of practice: Creating learning environments for educators (Vol. 2, pp. 347-365). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing)