Group items tagged

By: Eitenne C. Wenger and William M. Snyder Wenger, E. C., & Snyder, W. M. (2000). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard business review, 78(1), 139-146. The first article I started with was a Harvard Business review entry regarding communities of practice within organizations. While my other articles focused on the education world and describe actions within the social environment, this article took a different approach in explaining the inner workings CofP's play in the office. The fundamental meaning communities of practice represent go unchanged, but it is interesting that this article puts a table and explanation for the differences other office groups represent, such as an informal network, project team, and formal work group. This distinction allows for other varied communities of practice to be represented. Such as the education field and social psychology. Wenger and Snyder then take the article one step further by explaining the uses of CoPs for management and how to facilitate their growth for strong company cultures.

This article is great that CoPs and PLNs (PLEs) build upon one another to drive a foundational strategy. The primary group might only be a few people but will continue to build to the point that the entire organization is involved. I also think it is important to discuss how this is utilized not only in education but also in business (or other fields). Great pick Jason!

I liked some of the real world examples for benefits of CoP's. The story of the technician who came up with the pneumatic tube idea that was ulitmately adopted because of support from his fellow technicians was really cool to hear.

This site contains a paper that explains the characteristics and distinguishing features of personal learning environments. It includes a table that outlines ownership, control, and literacy components.

This article discusses the use of communities of practice for university teachers as the demand for research increases. Cites how many professors got into teaching to teach, not to do research, and are either leaving the profession or joining communities of practice to develop research skills and get help to meet the research demands. The bottom of page 972 talks about the challenges for those who are not well trained in research. The bottom of 973 talks about what it takes to change a teaching culture to a research culture. 979 has a useful table on what it looks like for education faculties to build their research capability.

I believe that a lot of individuals enter the university teaching profession thinking they are only going to teach! So many of my professor friends have found that they have to write grants and build in their yearly incomes just to stay employed! Thanks for sharing!

This shows how communities of practice is defined, explains the process of how they've created and what they look like. Further explanation into how they can be applied in a wide variety of environments. The application part discusses how specifically it can exist within education both internally and externally. For EDTECH students, web communities of practice enable us to " extend the reach of our interactions beyond the geographical limitations of traditional communities."

I forgot to add my summary! This is an excellent source that fully explains what a Community of Practice is and how it can be applied. "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." I particularly liked the section about what CoPs actually look like. This is a must have resource for every EdTech student.

The author lists three "must-haves" to be considered a community of practice: the domain - shared interest, the community - learn from each other, the practice - share a repertoire of resources. Communities of practice fall back to learning theories. The term community of practice refers to a living curriculum. The concept is being applied in organizations, government, education, associations, social sector, international development, and the web.

This website is a great resource to be creative with Google Sheets, explains how to create tables, charts, images, etc. This makes a presentation more engaging and visually appealing.

An eBook creator and social sharing tool that provides a lot of interesting illustrations that you can customize along with your original story. 

I love this site! I was just looking for something similar to Photostory on PCs. This isn't exactly it, since it doesn't allow audio voiceovers and student drawings (at least from what I can tell) but it is drop-dead gorgeous. Can't wait until they release an iPad app -- imagine this on the retina display :) I am definitely going to use this in class -- maybe even this week. I also love that it's a creative writing social networking tool that encourages best work, creativity, and collaboration. Thanks for posting!

Discover an endless library of free books, picture books, & poetry or use simple tools to create books in minutes. Storybird is a creative community where readers & writers celebrate storytelling.

This page on the Wenger-Trayner website, there is an in-depth explanation of communities of practice as well as a brief history of its inception. I really appreciated the part of this site that gave examples for how to effectively use communities of practice (CoP). It was interesting to read myths about CoPs as well as to be provided with links to further reading on the topic. I also found it incredibly insightful that the site explained how CoPs are being used in a variety of forums, not only in education.

This article provides examples of where COP can exist!

I like how it emphasizes that the three components of COP are domain, community, and practice. You need each of these to have a successful COP. Thanks for sharing.

This article by Wenger and Snyder in the Harvard Business Review is a great reflection of a community of practice (CoP) by the creators themselves in a well-known publication. While the article is in-depth and covers every aspect of a CoP, the included chart may have been the most helpful part of this article to really break down a CoP and the difference between that and other groups.

In this article the author provides an introduction to the concept of communities of practice, describes benefits and utility for business, and strategies for implementation in that context.

The highlight of this article for me is that CoPs have to be organic in their organization and management.

Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Traynor provide an introduction to communities of practice in this PDF found on their website. The introduction includes a definition, examples of what communities of practice may look like, how they began, and in what sectors of the community they are used today. Myths about communities of practice are also addressed.

By Etienne and Beverly Wegner-Trayner, this is an 8 page pdf of the basics of CoPs. I really like that there are myths debunked and demystified within the content of this paper as well.

I appreciate the scope of this resource including elements such as where the concept of communities of practice comes from, where it is applied, and myths about its usage. Moreover in regards to the myths I find it helpful that the resource includes a guide to how true the assumption listed may be such as: partially true, mostly false, false and maybe. I believe this section adds value to the theory of learning communities by acknowledging the misconceptions and limitations. Additionally I found the table with dialogue examples featuring various types of learning community tasks to be quite helpful in making sense of the dynamic ways these communities can be utilized.

Learning communities help to share the responsibilities of student success within a school system. Since PLNs require a shared goal, when used in a school it helps align the vision for students, teachers, and administrators. PLNs are a continuous cycle of research, planning, and implementation. They are data driven and reflected upon. Everyone within the PLN is responsible for the development and implementation of the community. When everyone participates it creates an environment of trust and expertise that can be shared equally amongst all of the members. The learning that takes place within PLNs helps to keep school systems aligned and functioning.

This was a very interesting article that really had me thinking deeper bout PLN. One specific line " Learning communities convene regularly and frequently during the workday to engage in collaborative professional learning to strengthen their practice and increase student results" really caught my eye. How does one find time for such intensive participation? Separate from that I like the idea of learning being a group responsibility and not just an individual one.

Hi Ryann, I love this article and how it chunks the topics into easy comprehension for the reader. Collective responsibility stuck out to me the most. I think this is so important whenever tackling a project as a team. The team is interdependent and I think its important for each member to take responsibility of their strengths that they bring to the table. Nice article!

One of the articles in the resources for Module 2 mentioned collaborative learning vs. cooperative learning, so I wanted to read this article about the differences. This article details cooperative, collaborative and problem based learning in these areas: origins of the approach, definitions, essential features, goals, specific strategies and techniques and research that supports it. While there are multiple definitions, the authors say that "cooperative learning combines active and social learning via peer interaction in small groups," but that this also applies to collaborative learning. In contrast, cooperative learning emphasizes interdependence, where collaborative learning focuses more on discovery, understanding and producing knowledge. Collaborative learning also involves the teacher as well, working together with students to learn. In problem based learning, students work in small groups to solve a problem, often a real world problem. This type of learning does also involve cooperation and collaboration. There is a table on page 33 that summarizes the 3 approaches.

This case study examines which factors play into a successful MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Some of these factors include peer interaction, professor engagement, and accessible course resources. The researchers concluded that these factors are as important in MOOCs as they are in traditional classroom settings. The article implies that classes based on the philosophy of connectivism are effective, but a number of factors must be taken into account when planning instruction.

It is difficult to maintain continuous student engagement in a traditional class setting. It is doubly so when the setting is online. This study researched what characteristics promote student engagement in online classes. Course takers identified 5 characteristics of MOOCs that encouraged their continued participation in the course. For the most part, courses that focus on problems and clear solutions, contain high levels of peer interaction and teacher participation, and include many active learning activities with accompanying course resources are well-liked by MOOC participants. The authors are certainly right to suggest that future research examine courses that are not as highly participatory as the MOOCs that are focused on in this study. I wondered as I read the article if the same level of engagement can be seen in other courses.

As this study emphasized, online courses have a unique challenge when compared to traditional brick-and-mortar courses because learners are physically separated from an instructor by a computer screen. Instructors do not just have to overcome motivation barriers, but also administrative obstacles. The article's "Table 2: Summary of Strategies Used" presented some well-designed methods to increase instructor accessibility---from the "Code Clinic" to weekly live interactive discussions.

On page 7, there is a useful table comparing behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism and connectivism. Connectivism is seem by some to apply only outside formal learning environments and so serves as a great vehicle for life-long learning. On page 13, the author discusses that connectivism is dependent on electricity and runs the risk of tying learners to their computers to the detriment of their physical and psychological health. This is something I have thought about and was glad to find this author acknowledging it.