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This is a great resource with videos about communities in practice. I really enjoyed the table about communities of practice vs teams.

This resource had both videos and a visual table to explain communities of practice. I liked how they described it using the terms: "Communities of Interest and Communities of Action". I think that is important because people can access their own specific interest catered directly to them.

I think this is a great resource to have for Communities of Practice. It provides a clear definition of Communities of Practice and also provides videos and visuals to provide further clarification.

CoP's a great place to share ideas, resources, post questions/concerns with other professionals within your contetn area. Great video and explanation of CoP!

This is a great place to get started because there are videos as well as text. The diagram toward the bottom of the page by Heather Smith and James McKeen from the School of Business at Queen's University is particularly useful. Often knowing what something is is easier when you know what it is not! Good stuff, thanks.

This article discusses that the idea of communities of practice (CoP) is that learning occurs in social contexts that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals. It mentions the negotiation of meaning which involves two components: reification and participation. The article also compares communities of practice with teams and community of practice as knowledge management.

This article describes in detail the development of CoP and the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. There is a short video embedded that gives an example of CoP in the workplace at Caterpillar University. At the bottom of the article it shows a table that contrasts teams and CoPs. This gives a good visual on what the differences are in each category.

I especially like the way that this resource outlines the difference between teams and CoPs. It makes complete sense and is very intuitive but it is extremely useful to have it outlined in the chart format.

Lave & Wegner are the originators of the idea of 'Situated Learning' which is described as being fully engaged and "learning to talk instead of learning from talk." Within CoPs, participants engage in frameworks with structure. Alcoholics Anonymous was a good example from this article.

Sometimes when I spend time researching and learning about new concepts, I get lost in the details of definitions and citations. What I liked about this article was the table comparing CoPs to Teams. It breaks it down and compares the two in a way that makes sense.

As many have already commented on, this article gives a nice foundation for what CoPs are and their framework and purpose in society. I especially like the analogy chart made between CoPs and teams, showing what makes up each, how they may be similar, but how they are different.

This article summarizes the work of Lave and Wenger on the theory of communities of practice. It discusses how participation in communities of practice leads to learning and contributing to community goals. The article also includes a helpful chart that outlines the differences between communities of practice and other types of teams or focus groups.

This article explains the idea of communities of practice (CoP) and has some great videos to further explain giving examples. There is also a nice chart that shows the difference between a team and a CoP, which can be a common misconception that they are not the same thing.

This article gives insight to Wenger's components of learning, and then discusses the differences between teams and CoPs. I found this very helpful, as it can be easy to confuse the two at first. Through this chart, one can better understand the objective, membership, organization, termination, value proposition, and management of CoPs and compare this information to that of teams.

The communities of practice concept is explained in detail with many references to the work of Lave and Wenger. The article speaks to communities of practice as social learning in the workforce for organizational development, change management, and knowledge management.

This article offers an introduction to communities of practice. It also examines impacts on learning, makes distinctions between teams and offers direction for benefits for knowledge management.

Communities of practice, credited to Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, is a concept that claims that learning occurs through social interactions when people have a common goal and they interact while moving towards obtaining the goal. These communities are best ran with reification and participation. The alignment of these two concepts are what directs the communities of practice to their common goal. A community of practice is different than a team. A team has a goal, but their goal is to finish a specific task or project while a community of practice's goal is to share knowledge and learning on a particular subject. Teams also have a leader and disperse once the goal is completed while communities of practice are self organized and only disband when there is no interest left in learning that topic.Communities of practice facilitate the exchange process of knowledge.

A CoP evolves when people (educators) have common goals and collaborate to meet those goals. The chart comparing CoPs and teams was really helpful. The objectives, membership, and values are all distinctive differences when comparing CoPs and teams. Thanks for a great link!

This short article outlines what communities of practices are and provides a useful table showing the differences between them and teams. This chart is from Heather Smith and James McKeen from the School of Business at Queen's University (2003). They discuss the objective, membership, organization, termination, value proposition and management through the lenses of communities of practice and teams.

This article is a good, brief description of a CoP. I found analyzing the chart helpful for a a better understanding of a CoP. I previously considered a CoP to be a formal learning group. Now, based on the article you've provided, I can see how a CoP can be informal and include marginal group members.

Re"construction of his/her identity through these communities" Finding your voice and place in a CoP is important, as you need to be an active member to achieve the greatest return.

This chapter by Hoadley breaks down a community of practice (CoP) and explains the theory behind it as well as well as its history. An interesting piece of the chapter compares a CoP to other groups and how each works a bit differently. It was also interesting to read about how technology is used in successful CoPs.

I learned the feature-based as well as the process based definition of communities of practice. I also learned how we can support a community of practice. It was valuable to learn how technology ties into communities of practices in the form or presentation or communication abilities, integration in content and context, etc. The article mentioned C4P framework, which encouraged me to take a deeper look at the C4P framework.

This is an exhaustive article that covers the definition and history of COPs, thoughts on how to sustain COPs, and ideas on how technology can support and enhance COPs in the 21st century. It is practical, useful, and interesting. While I found it to be perhaps a little too detailed, it was nonetheless a good article.

The concept of communities of practice has been used as both a theory to explain how learning occurs, and a "metaphor for how instruction should take place." From an anthropological view, knowledge is not completely contained within individuals, but is more often found in groups/communities. Knowledge can be "sticky" or "leaky". "Sticky" knowledge is difficult to disseminate, perhaps because it is highly technical, or because the target audience does not absorb it. "Leaky" knowledge is knowledge (like trade secrets) the disseminates despite efforts to keep it secret. Knowledge involves practice in context. One way we learn with situational learning is by peripheral, or tangential, participation. Learners should be allowed to "lurk" before participating, much as beginner social media users do. A knowledge building community and a community are practice are not the same thing. A knowledge-building community seeks to learn and build knowledge, while a community of practice wants to improve some type of work function. The learning may be the same, but the goals are different. Forced knowledge-building communities may never read the stage of community of practice depending on the level of connectedness and peripheral participation. Technology can facilitate communication and collaboration for CoPs.

This explains what a Community of Practice is, it goes into two definitions, features-based and process-based. It also discusses how communities of practice and technology often go hand-in-hand and how this has changed and developed over time.

This chapter provides an overview and history of communities of practice. There is a nice description of the theoretical assumptions underlying its development. The differences of communities of practice and other knowledge communities are explained thoroughly. There is an appreciation for how technology plays a role in today's communities of practice, how it can support it and how it is not less effective than face to face communication. It is explained that the key to a successful community of practice is "connections, conversations, content, and information context."

Christopher Hoadley explains CoPs, focusing on definition and practice. Essentially, Hoadley illustrates that CoPs are informal yet highly connected, constructivist in nature, and supported by technology like social media. He states that technology supports communities of practice by "linking people with similar interests, providing a shared repository of resources, directly supporting communication, and providing awareness of various resources within the information context" (Jonassen & Land, 2012). Additionally, he goes on to express that individual learning fails when it comes to application but that group learning often creates deeper, more meaningful understanding especially when built upon authentic situations.

This article gives two separate definitions for communities of practice, a feature based definition and a process based definition. Between the two it explains how learning through practice can be more beneficial than following a manual or example. It also states how participation is important as well as being viewed as a member of the community of practice. The article then goes into explaining how technology has played a positive role in communities and has helped with communication to allow a community of practice to function even better.

The details given about the various roles in a connectivist approach to learning helps clarify the concepts of what connectivism actually is.

I also appreciated the list of the role of the educator and the learner. It simplified the concept for me. I believe learning should "extend beyond the classroom" for all students today. Thank you for sharing this article.

Thanks for adding this - I really enjoyed it. I like his comment that professional development is now the responsibility of the educator through PLNs than the institution. Also the comment "we really do want to be found by strangers online now." People don't learn just from their face-to-face worlds any more. I am going to download his TED book.

I like what he says about learning being constant in this internet age; with PLN's we are always learning. When we choose the right people to follow we are getting a wealth of knowledge everyday. We see what others are doing and get advice about what we are doing. "Learning is moving away from the institution and more to the individual." Educators and leaders need to support this change by "modeling" and "facilitating." This is exciting, how do we sell our leaders on this?

This was one of the most helpful articles to read because it not only showed connectivism as theory but also its limitations. It explores connectivism as theory and as a phenomenon because detractors feel like it does not fit the qualifications for a theory. However Mr. Bell does show how if not a theory connectivism certainly does have merit. He also compares other theories to connectivism to show that merit in today's digital learning.

This article looks at Connectivism and explores if is a learning theory. The article also addresses how technology has created the need for researchers to move beyond more traditional learning theories and develop theories that relate to the use of technology in learning.

In EdTech504, I took particular interest in Connectivism Learning Theory and its relationship to information literacy. I think this article also portrays that, although I wish the relationship would have been more explicitly stated. Thanks for posting!

A brief blog post on connectivism and its implication and application to 21st century learning. Each of George Siemen's principles of connectivism are connected to a mode or practice of learning.

This blog post discusses Siemens core principles of connectivism and how it relates to education, and more specifically 21st century learning. The main purpose of this blog is to show how educators need to rethink the educational process and apply connectivism in the classroom.

I like that fact that this article breaks down principals of Connectivism into today's learning. The thing I take away from this article is that the Teacher is no longer the holder of information. Endless information is out there and our job as educators is to teach our children how to access the knowledge out there - making them life-long learners!

I liked this article and how it appears to break down Connectivism into what appears to be a "should do" list. What the educator should do in order to connect with the student and stay connected to resources.

This is an expansion of a previous blog by the author highlighting how connectivism can be applied to 21st century learning. Also reviews the impact of connectivism to teaching and learning applications.

I liked this article because it went into detail about the connecting nodes component of the theory. I think there is a whole lot of value in exploring the fringe topics or seemingly unrelated knowledge and seeing what happens when these "nodes of knowledge" are put together. It's modern design thinking coming into the world of learning and education.

This blog post breaks down Connectivism in the 21st century. Looking at students as digital natives and the impact this has on teachers, education and learning.

This blog post discusses the impact of Connectivism on education. Marquis lists the Seimen's seven principles of Connectivism and then goes on to explain how the principles can be meshed with 21st Century learning.

This webpage offers a few external links that are helpful in understanding the theory of connectivism. The author lays out the core principals for this theory and then explains in more detail additional principals that harden the foundation of connectivism.

This article summarizes Siemens article on Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. In this age where so much information is at our finger tips, it is the role of the teacher to help the learner access the best information and make sense of what they access. Dr. Marquis brings up a good point that there isn't much research to implement connectivism or what affect it actually has on learners.

This article is an outstanding review by Mark K. Smith of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's theories of social learning through communities of practice. It gives a great overview of the theoretical foundations as well as additional explanations of those theories.

This article outlines the theory and practice of communities of practice, and discusses the idea that learning is social and comes from of our experience of participating in daily life. The authors identify a variety of types of CoPs that all humans are engaged in, even if they are not formally identified as such. A CoP is defined along three dimensions: what it is about, how it functions, and what capabilities/resources it has produced. Also emphasized are the importance of the relationships formed between the people within the CoPs - hence, the community in CoP. Stemming from that, they extend the idea of CoPs to apply to the classroom culture and environment and discuss the need for educators to cultivate a similar idea to best facilitate learning among their students.

The point that I learned from this article is that communities of practice go beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skill. They build relationships where people within the community work together to share their skills, knowledge, and interests they have learned in order to complete new or more complex tasks. We learn best through active participation.

Articles like this one make it clear that we are actively involved in communities of practice every day, without even realizing it. This is largely due to the internet; now, if one needs to reach out to another person for advice on baking, for example, one can use online forums or message boards to connect to others in their community of practice. This was not possible before the internet, or at the very least it was difficult to accomplish so easily. I'm interested to learn a little more about what COPs might have looked like before the internet.

Learning is social and takes place by participating in daily life. Learning takes place situationally in communities of practice. These communities of practice exist all around us: home, work, school, etc. As we pursue our goals within our groups, learning occurs. Members off s community of practice (CoP) are united by common activities and by what they learn through participating in those activities. A community of practice is defined by three factors, "what it is about," "how it functions," and "what capability it has produced." For a community of practice to be effective, it needs to "generate and appropriate a shared repertoire of ideas, commitments and memories." There also need to be resources like documents, tools, procedures, and a shared vocabulary. The the developers of this theory, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, focused on the kinds of "social engagement" that caused learning to take place. People join groups and initially learn from the periphery. Eventually, they become more proficient through their participation as they move toward the center of the group. The situation in which the learning occurs has a significant effect on the learning.

After reading through this article, I kept coming back to this quote: "Rather than looking to learning as the acquisition of certain forms of knowledge, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger have tried to place it in social relationships - situations of co-participation." These are ideas I try to integrate into my classroom on a day-to-day basis because healthy social relationships can enhance learning experiences due to students becoming vested in goals. Students are more willing to put their feet outside of the box, without fear of sharing and participating in these learning environments---and they become active inside members of these groups, rather than outside onlookers.

This quote from the article: "A Personal Learning Network can be seen as one's gateway to continuous learning" is a true statement. Continuous learning is vital in life. This article has some remarkable points that make PLNs so important and an easier way to gain knowledge.

I think this article illustrated a number of valid points. This day and age only thrives with the means of PLN's. When we look in the past back to the 80's and 90's, it is very evident how we've evolved as a society. Back then, it was almost unheard of to have practical means of communication among those across the nation and across the world. We are so fortunate for the advancements of modern technology and networking.

This article built a strong case for belonging to a Personal Learning Network. It is imperative to keep up with today's resources and knowledge base. The small amount of time I used to build my PLN has proven to be so beneficial. I appreciated the final thoughts of the article to help guide me throughout this process. I am excited to strengthen my PLN and grow professionally this semester and beyond.

This article makes a case as to why Personal Learning Networks are an important part of continuing education. She describes this age as one of constant influx and change and therefore encourages people to use their PLN's to tackle new practices with a sense of creativity and innovation.

This is a great article to pass on to educators who want to know why a PLN is necessary and how connectivist theory makes it possible. Connectivism facilitates continuous learning, exchange of thoughts, and validates insights. Establishing networks allow teachers to tailor a professional development plan, and it doesn't need to take place at the faculty meeting or on teacher work days.

This elaborates on how chaos theory relates to all this, something I didn't really understand until I read this particular article. Additionally, it gives you an idea about the skills required in order to build a proper PLN... Here's a telling quote from the article... "In short, the concept of teams working shoulder to shoulder every day, literally and metaphorically standing by each other, talking over problems and challenges at their desks, is slowly being replaced by virtual teams who interact via social tools and platforms, use Webex for meetings, and update each other via enterprise social networks and WhatsApp. This is why the skill of being able to build one's Personal Learning Network is essential. It's time for everyone to take charge of their own professional development. One of the ways to keep on top of our game, and remain on the cutting edge of relevant skills and knowledge, is to be a part of communities of practices and to focus on building and maintaining our Personal Learning Networks with a deliberate intention to learn, share, and collaborate."

I really like this article. It is always good to read about the "why" behind our practices. The article explains that "A Personal Learning Network can be seen as one's gateway to continuous learning." This reminds me of the thinking behind connectivism, that connecting to a network of resources and people will help us become lifelong learners as we continuously connect to new resources and knowledge.

The layout of this article is wonderful! I like how everything is numbered and listed out for easy reading. The glossary was also especially helpful since the theory does have it's own language.

Nice share. I agree with Ryann. Reading this article helped me better simplify the connectivist theory. I like how the sections are neatly organized and open for the reader. I epsecially liked the History section.

The authors David Boud and Heather Middleton acknowledge that in many cases the learning that goes on through informal discussions between coworkers is almost always more valuable than the learning that takes place inside a classroom or formal professional development workshop. As part of the article the authors examined informal workplace CoPs in four different workgroups within the organization. They wanted to see what types of learning occurred. Through interviews with participants they found that the larger the workgroup the more diverse the opportunities for community professional development. What they discovered in that end was that sometimes these workgroups developed characteristics of CoPs and other times the group is not cohesive enough to really develop a shared learning environment.

This was a very in-depth paper looking at how adults learn from one another in the workplace in informal ways. I have been reading a lot about Communities of Practice this week and I was struck by how the authors discussed structural factors, such as seniority and large scale workforce, could effect the true development of communities of practice. It discussed political and beurocratic issues could be possible setbacks. This is not something I had considered but is a true reality. When reading, I saw it is easy to assume that like-minded practioners in a similar domain could all just work together in harmony. It is truly more realistic to realize that certain issues like seniority could possible stand in the way.