Group items tagged

This article focuses on virtual communities of practice within higher education. It provides an overview of the definition, purpose, and literature concerning CoPs. Further the authors detail many of the benefits, barriers, and critical success factors associated with virtual CoPs. The article also includes numerous practical examples of virtual CoPs as well as quotes from faculty with experience in these communities.

This is a clip from a conference in New Zealand where the speaker starts to discern the differences between the focus of a network and that of a community of practice.

Melissa, thank you for sharing! I was having a hard time differing from the two, and this clip really help the viewers understand why each is important yet a little different. I really like the idea of communities of practice and what they can do for a professional!

Hi Melissa, I had not thought about the differences between a network and a community of practice. As the author identified the differences and the key aspects of a community of practice, I was able to gain better insight and understanding of a community of practice. I noted that she specified commitment, a purpose for improvement, and co-ownership as key characteristics. Thanks for sharing! Hanna

A community of practice that you could belong to and learn from.

Professional community of practice dedicated to training and develoment, with not only a good definition of COP but also employment offers, crtifications, and pd.

This article discusses adding CoPs to different organizations. It mentions the Internet Generation and describes various tools that will benefit a CoP. Finally, it describes that a CoP should have a purpose that has goals aligned with a specific purpose or vision in order to be effective.

I really appreciated this article and in particular the sense of purpose as a topic. So often I feel that CoPs can feel very purposeful and vibrant when they are created but lose their vigor or meaning as the primary task has been resolved. It seems that strategically placing emphasis on keeping the systems open and renewing purpose in order to develop leaders and new members creates a different energy for everyone involved.

This article summarizes the results from two research studies of how communities of practice can improve the classroom experience and instruction. Interactions among students and social opportunities were the emphasis of the studies. Some key questions in the studies were: How does relationship building affect student learning in communities of practice? How do different types of assignments and class activities affect learning?

The article discusses the state of nursing at the time of publishing but also delves into the creation of a community of practice that included international healthcare instructors. The article also discusses challenges that were faced by the community as they transitioned from a face to face environment to an online discussion.

This site contains a lot of information about COP and is organized as answers to FAQs. Importantly it covers tools that can be used to facilitate CoPs

This article has a great layout. I appreciated how I could decide what information I needed and click on the questions for answers. All of the information was interesting and useful in order to learn about social learning, communities and networks as well as cultivating communities of practice. Thank you for sharing this great resource.

In this article with an interesting format Wenger & Trayner tackle the frequently asked questions surrounding social learning, communities, and networks. Section 1.2 on Cultivating communities of practice was most helpful to me to truly understand the purpose of COP's by looking at the objectives.

This article talks about the early collaboration tools that were available at the time of its publishing and their possible use in medical education. A general background is provided of blogs and podcasts and the article offers advantages and disadvantages to using both.

Upon trying to find an article specific to CoP's and Twitter, I came across this study that utilizes Twitter to create CoPs. It is an interesting read, with the following quote laying a foundation to the context of article: "Twitter was not meant for building communities. Its original design - 140 character limit; postings accessible for a short time; and its prompting "What's happening" - were focused on immediate responses amongst those who already knew each other. But its enhancements such as improved search and the adoption by its users of conventions such as the hashtag and "@" symbol for communication have provided capabilities which can be used for conversation and collaboration (Gruzd, Wellman, and Takhteyev 2011).

This article talks about the evolution of Twitter and how recent enhancements like the hashtag (#) and the @ sign have made it a good tool for collaboration and conversations. The article gives a great overview of CoPs and Personal Networks as well. Twitter can now be used for what's trending in education and is more that only what is trending in social media news.

What an interesting article, I love how they are researching and analyzing social media tools such as Twitter. The graphs and data made this article easy to understand and helpful to those of us who are not so Twitter savvy. I especially love how it addressed the evolution of Twitter to address the users needs...THIS is education! :) Thanks for sharing @Katie Swanson Sathre

The article is written to show the pros and cons of using communities of practice in the nursing field to share knowledge and collaborate in the process of innovative nursing practices.

This is a more technical site that better describes CoPs.  It talks about what a CoP is and what the requirements are.  I particularly like that the it states that the learning is not necessarily the primary reason for the existence of a CoP.  It also gives some sources for further study.

This article is an outline of Communities of Practice with description of relevant terminology outlined and defined. Identifies the three components of CoPs - domain, community and practice. This article says that the central component of this learning theory is to draw participants deeper into the community through the attractiveness of developing skills relative to the domain.

This one I didn't summarize, only because I really had a hard time grasping the three elements of the CoP, and I thought this site encapsulated it nicely. Incidentally, my creative assignment for this week was inspired by the reference to Star Trek fans in this post. Here are the three elements make up CoP, and again, this information below is taken straight from the source (long quotes), because the definition is so good: 1. There needs to be a domain. A CoP has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest (e.g. radiologists, Star Trek fans, middle school history teachers, Seahawks football fans, etc.); it's not just a network of people or club of friends. Membership implies a commitment to the domain. 2. There needs to be a community. A necessary component is that members of a specific domain interact and engage in shared activities, help each other, and share information with each other. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. In this way, merely sharing the same job does not necessitate a CoP. A static website on hunting in itself is not a community of practice. There needs to be people who interact and learn together in order for a CoP to be formed. Note that members do not necessarily work together daily, however. Wenger points to the example of Impressionist painters who sometimes met in cafes to discuss their painting styles. He indicates that even though these men normally painted alone, these kinds of interactions were essential to making them a CoP. 3. There needs to be a practice: A CoP is not just people who have an interest in something (e.g. sports or agriculture practices). The third requirement for a CoP is that the members are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources which can include stories, helpful tools, experiences, stories, ways of handling typical problems, etc. This kind of interaction needs to be developed over time. A conversation with a random stranger who happens to be an exp

This is a training resource that I came across from a school district in Indiana. It focuses on how professional learning communities or communities of practice can avoid becoming a passing fad in educational reform. It gives three "big ideas" that educational CoPs need to focus on to truly be successful. They are: ensuring that students learn, creating a culture of collaboration, focusing on results by holding themselves accountable.

Thank you for sharing this. Just today, my school discussed starting PLC's and I feel that is important to focus on those three big ideas. I feel that this article makes us look closely at the questions and the answer to those questions before we begin creating networks and communities. Makes me think of the UbD-approach and how we should think about what the goals are and what we want our PLC's to do specifically before making them vent sessions amongst teachers.

This article follows the progression of a group of doctoral students in their journey to become scholars. Students were to use Communities of Practice in their studies, ultimately trying to see if this will allow them to emerge from the program with a stronger self-identities as scholars. Students had to learn to rely on one another while also providing for one another. Using COP, students were guided to not sit back and take the role of the student, but to get involved in their own learning to reach the role of scholar.

This article describes how the term Community of Practice can be ambiguous and vary depending on the circumstance in which it is being used. It has been discovered by the author that there are various descriptions of CoPs, but one common factor amongst them all, discourse. The findings revealed in this article show why the author finds that discourse is significant when talking about the studies done in higher education CoPs.

This study shows a very specific CoP example, using geography teachers in New Zealand as the subject of research. In the introduction, the researcher states "mandating professional development services to several hired geography teachers is impractical...and needs to be voluntary rather than mandatory." This statement is consistent with CoPs having membership of like-individuals connecting because of their learning needs and wants. Furthermore, the study shows a positive result when connecting 'distant' people as a cost effective way to circumvent budgetary restraints for professional development.

Communities of Practice need to be voluntary and non-threatening in order for an individual to join. In this study, I like how they set up their Community of Practice so that the individual could join a topic or subject matter group that was relevant to their situation or needs. As teachers we are often placed in professional development training that has no relevance to the needs of our classroom. I also like how they set up a dialogue for the members of the group. Participants not only posted their own ideas but shared thoughts and ideas through discussion with others in the group. It seemed to be less intimidating because much of the dialogue took place online. One of the factors that impacted the participants was time. Just like educators in the U.S., the educators in this study found it difficult to find the time to fully participate in these Communities of Practice and some did not even finish the modules. As a result, dialogue toward the end of the module fizzled out and was less engaging for some participants. That is one of my concerns with Communities of Practice. Sometimes if one is not being forced to complete a project, it does not get completed. It takes a lot of discipline to be part of a Community of Practice and a willingness to be there for the other group members.

I really like annotated bibliographies because they provide so much information on a topic in a fairly simple analytical summary, and they allow the reader to delve further by providing the source. The author, Kristi Newgarden, has two fields of interest: educational technology and teaching English as a Second Language. Overall, the focus of the bibliography is on Communities of Practice and Lave and Wenger's concepts of Legitimate Peripheral Participation.

Scott, it's great that you found this annotated bibliography. What caught my attention initially was that it was posted on a TESL website, but after reading further the author mentioned that the resources mentioned could benefit any teacher in any subject area. This is a nice way to find resources on a topic without having to type in a search engine or review resources at the end of a research study. Even better when there is a summary provided so you don't have to figure out if that is a beneficial resource or not.

J Matibag - One thing I didn't touch upon, but didn't, is the benefit summaries provided in an annotated bibliography like this one. Thanks for putting that into your post. Having these description certainly gives the reader a chance to discover more sources in less time. Most studies I've read tend to be 10-25 pages, so this circumvents sifting through studies that may not be what one is looking for.