Community of Practice (CoP) – Page 7

Foundations of Communities of Practice Workshop – Tonight!

So, tonight begins CPsquare’s Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop. I have thought about taking this before, but neither the time nor the funding was flowing easily, so what better time than the present?!

I will be in the capable hands of Etienne Wenger, the CoP (Communities of Practice) guru, John D. Smith, a community coach and technologist with whom I have worked before, and Bronwyn Stuckey, an educational researcher and online facilitator whose navigation of time and space amazes me. I have read about and studied CoP for some time now, though really like the idea of focusing on it as an experience in itself.

As my doctoral program at Lancaster University is focused around the CoP (network learning) model, and as my recent research uses CoPs as the theoretical framework, I thought that spending some time with colleagues who have related interests may be a good experience.

Wonder what I will learn over the seven weeks, and how my own learning framework may develop . . .

Interview Questions Based on Wenger’s CoP Framework

I begin my research interviews tomorrow, so now may be a good time to consider some of my questions, both planned as well as possible.

The purpose of the study is to examine and try to understand, in some way, if Wenger’s Community of Practice (CoP) framework makes a difference within the research or experiential lives of those who conduct autoethnographic research, especially given that many in the larger research community still see this as a contested strategy of inquiry.

While there are numerous works from Wenger that I will detail in my literature section, the two that I have in mind at this point is his

Wenger, E. (1999). Learning as social participation. Knowledge Management Review, 1(6), 30-33.

Wenger, E. (n.d.). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. Retrieved from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm

I am being guided by Wenger’s Model (from the first article):

wenger-learning-components1

and from his defininition (from the second reference above):

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

where he discusses them as (also from the second reference above):

Note that this definition allows for, but does not assume, intentionality: learning can be the reason the community comes together or an incidental outcome of member’s interactions. Not everything called a community is a community of practice. A neighborhood for instance, is often called a community, but is usually not a community of practice. Three characteristics are crucial:

1. The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. A youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain: surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.

2. The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis. The Impressionists, for instance, used to meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting they were inventing together. These interactions were essential to making them a community of practice even though they often painted alone.

3. The practice: A community of practice is not merely a community of interest–people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems�in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. A good conversation with a stranger on an airplane may give you all sorts of interesting insights, but it does not in itself make for a community of practice. The development of a shared practice may be more or less self-conscious. The “windshield wipers” engineers at an auto manufacturer make a concerted effort to collect and document the tricks and lessons they have learned into a knowledge base. By contrast, nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. Still, in the course of all these conversations, they have developed a set of stories and cases that have become a shared repertoire for their practice.

The interview discussion will be informal and topics may emerge as ideas are exchanged. I hope to address (2) areas of inquiry:

1. What support or encouragement do you (or did you) have when you engage(d) in your research?

2. Do you find yourself a member of any identifiable community (of practice) that plays a role with your autoethnographic research?

PhD Process Reflections

I have received such helpful feedback based on my posting yesterday, “Reflective Journal for My Doctoral Studies – Do It Online?,” that I think I shall begin, somewhat carefully, sharing my daily thoughts about my journey through the process (or at least the current module). I will try to do this with political care (not mentioning colleagues by name, not giving away everything in the program, etc.) that will focus on my own developing thoughts in this process, rather than the process itself.

Of course, writing as if some of this can be considered independently is ridiculous; that is one of the things I am noticing based on our intense reading of some of Wenger and Lave’s earlier works around social learning / networked learning / communities of practice. In some ways this all makes a lot of sense, in that the very process of thinking about even writing about this publicly, with my own community’s feedback and guidance, is part of the process itself.

Twenty-First Century Community Education: Using Web-Based Tools to Build on Horton’s Legacy

I clapped when Joyce S. McKnight, the presenter, said that she was not planning to use PowerPoint. She is at Empire State College (in NY) in the Center for Distance Learning. She coordinates community and human services. She is an advocate of the Highlander Model (cf. Myles Horton). She focuses on narratives, as life is a story. I like her approach already.

I remember the first time I read Freire (and then Horton)—it blew my mind. I never considered education as a political topic, but the more I think about how those in power continue to teach the structures that maintain the power relationships and often the status quo (though veiled as change).

Oh, we are introducing ourselves (so fitting for a session on Horton) and mentioning what we hope to get out of this session. I am starting to get concerned, now that we are 15 minutes into the 45 minutes session, and we have only 1/2 of us introduced thus far. Looking out the window now (we are an inside-the-courtyard-facing room), I am noticing how some of the bricks on the inside look like they are going to need significant reconstruction. Ouch.

Ohh, just heard Vygotsky. Sweet. Another author who books adorn my shelves that have never been read.

Empire State College in NY college is exploding in the size of their Center for Distance Education.

Joyce is speaking about Horton, who speaks about community / labor organizer. Joyce is not about organizing communities—she is about helping others learn how to learn and do it.

Oooh, she is using the white board to show the model she developed and is using. First time I have seen this done here in the conference. Nicely refreshing . . . Now, the problem is I cannot read her writing on the board.

She is now speaking about one of her students who offered to have a community meeting online at his site, BuffaloPugs.org. Having 2 pugs myself, and I am now fully riveted. Having a set time online allows for more flexibility (with children, travel, etc.).

How do what Horton did in a F2F setting in an online context?

The course includes a process of thinking, which has a research agenda. This has a space

I am now getting lost with the drawing on the board, and while I like seeing how this develops, I think it could have been shown much more clearly using a PowerPoint build into the model, as that would allow her to still have the same discussion but for us to also see what she is writing (in a somewhat confusing graphical way) on the board. As Joyce has mentioned now more than once that she is having trouble reading her own writing, need I say more . . .

So, how can we do something online in the same way that Highlander did under Horton. How can we make a space, enhance the spirit of working together and social action, in a place that is virtual (and how we can understand this as a process). ARRRRRRGGGHHHHHHHH! Another drawing on the board . . .

This model should also include (as per Highlander):

self-directed
connection / collaboration
peaceful
interactive
reflective
safe space
transcendental
energy

She is using Elluminate, Facebook, and other tools like this.

I think there are a lot of interesting things she is doing, and am a little disappointed that she has not gotten to the point that she wanted to get to (as she acknowledged), as we are out of time and she mentioned that she is out of time because she did not know what time the session ended. It is unfortunate that she is continuing to present, acknowledging that the time has ended, though now half the people have left the session.

I think Joyce probably has a lot of amazing things to share about community organizing and how to teach it, though the information somehow did not fully come across. I want to read her paper and speak with her more about this as I am very interested in the work of Horton and how to bring it into an online world.

I wonder what Joyce’s work at Empire State (my home state) College is all about? Sounds like a very interesting program . . .

Online Course Discussion Board / Forum Suggestions

I just read an interesting paper by Ben Plumpton at Open University, entitled How students can make conferencing work. While it is not a research paper, there are many practical suggestions in it that I am planning to use for my Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design (PPOCCID) course that just began. I have previously used discussion forums to support our weekly synchronous session, though will increasingly rely on them as a student will be joining the course who cannot attend any of the synchronous sessions, and I need to establish a course esprit de corps for our work.

Plumpton had me when one of his paper sections was titled “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM?), which is one of the more practical and pragmatic concepts I know and use in my classes. He is right, as he says (p. 2) about online conferencing (use of discussion boards / discussion forums):

You get support when you need it (in exchange for giving support to others);

You have a richer vein of experience to draw on, because you can pool examples, references etc;

Very often a group can produce better work than an individual. One person might put forward a thought or idea, often not completely formed or finished, someone else picks up on it and takes it forward, that sparks off more ideas in others, and between them the group creates something much better than any could have done on their own;

Learning by ‘talking’ is more powerful for most people than learning by reading – you think about things more deeply, and are likely to remember things better;

The best way to check your own understanding is to explain it to others. Explaining things for your fellow students is good practice for the kind of explanations you’ll probably have to do in assignments.

I am planning to discuss this paper with some colleagues this week (online, of course!), and hope to get more of an understanding of it in the process. Perhaps others may find this useful as well?