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This article looks at four major definitions of communities of practice.

This paper compares four different resources on community of practice. The paper breaks down the different versions of communities of practice by looking at multiple topics: concept of community, view of learning, power and conflict, change, formality, diversity, and level. This is a great resource to learn about different views on communities of practice.

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 link to a paper about building online communities of practice with social networking tools. It details the CoP model introduced by Wenger, McDermott & Snyder: that is comprised of members and continually changes, that it is mutual engagement that binds members together, and that there is a shared set of resources that develops over time. The domain of CoP is is common ground that created a community. Practice comes from the resources that are created. The authors lead of of this into their proposed phases of the learning process in a CoP: Context, Discourse, Action, Reflection, and Reorganization.

This paper shows how members of communities of practice can increase their learning through social networking tools. They discuss how social networking is the forum for the domain (common ground) where people can discuss their ideas. This helps create personal meaning. This happens with a community which is a group of people who want to learn and interact together. The practice is the knowledge that the group develops. Within the article, he discusses how different social networks enhances communities of practice.

Community safety section includes links to a variety of pages: Getting Around, Hanging Out in the Neighborhood, Helping Out in the Community, Riding Right, and Safe Shopping.

This article discusses how communities of practice benefit from technology, particularly in social work contexts. To start, it talks about how groups such as Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous are communities of practice (this was good for me to see as I have certainly been basing them on more "tech based" models). A key part of communities of practice, according to the article, is becoming a practitioner and not simply acquiring knowledge about practice. Page 593 also had a useful "stage" description to see communities of practice along a continuum.

I thought this article was interesting, about the communities of practice because it was discussing who you interact with can shape your learning and thoughts. If you create a community of practice for a specific group, your learning is shaped by those who are in that community. It was discussing a teachers community of practice, how most of them collaborate with their own colleagues and therefore share and learn from each other which them reflects on their teaching.

Research regarding the benefits of being a member of a community of practice. While the information seems a bit forced (the communities of practice used for the study were exclusively face-to-face communities), the benefits of being a member of a community of practice still seem valid. According to the study, they are (1) autonomy and freedom to think beyond, (2) sources to ideas, (3) sounding board, (4) intellectual discussion, (5) like-mindedness, (6) alternative perspective and cross-pollination of ideas, (7) overcoming intellectual isolation, (8) move towards collaborative research, (9) response to research pressure, (10) synergy and leverage, (11) time and energy saving, (12) an informal ground for learning and training, (13) fostering of tangible returns, (14) driving research, (15) opportunities to met, (16) networking, information sharing and updates, (17) support and guidance, (18) sense of belonging, (19) identity, and (20) intrinsic fulfillment. As the article is about higher education, there are certainly some benefits that are more specific to their context, but I think the findings of the article are still valid.

Although this site is dedicated to knowledge management, this particular page focuses on what Communities of practice are, and it explains what learning is like within communities of practice. The bulleted lists are particularly helpful in summarizing the key concepts of CoPs.

I like this article because it addresses legitimate peripheral learning. The idea that we don't directly instruct new members, but instead allow them to do basic tasks within the community and then learn more important roles through daily observation. This idea and set-up reminds me heavily of an apprenticeship. New Members start at the bottom and learn until they are no longer on the outside but fully included within the community. Nice find with this article!

Great read on how we learn in COPs and the essential parts of COPs.

This article looks at some of the possible obstacles of forming communities of practice. The article broadly looks at communities of practice in organizations. The limitations include hierarchical organization as well as socio-cultural backgrounds. The authors make a well-researched case that both elements must be taken into account when forming effective communities of practice.

The author of this article, Etienne Wenger, is one of the leaders in the field of communities of practice. Wenger briefly defines and describes communities of practice. He also explains how communities of practice are being applied in organizations, government and education. The resource is a great overview for those wanting to understand the basics of communities of practice.

The authors state the the use of blogs as aggregators for student Personal Learning Networks (PLN) is an effective tool to help organize the many fascists of unique environments. They point out that in order for students to successfully create and use their own PLNs there must first be a successful example by an instructor for the students to model. They point out that although students may be using several of the tools that will ultimately comprise their PLNs, it is a fallacy to assume that students inherently understand the power and connectedness of these environments.

This article explores connectivism as a learning theory, then discusses how to use personal learning networks in your communities of practice. The author quotes from many experts in communities of practice and connectivism. Much detail was given to blogging.

Although this article is focused specifically on public affairs education, it is relevant to all learners. The author discusses professional learning networks as methods to connect and build communities of practice. Using personal experiences teaching a college course, the author's creation of communities of practice took learning for students to the next level.

This article provides a definition and description of communities of practice. A community of practice is a social way to learn and share a common practice/activity/topic. Three implications are identified for learning: learning occurs through relationships, educators need to facilitate these communities for their students, and experience and activity lead to knowledge.

As learners, we can learn most, if not best, through our interactions and relationships with others. Co-participation in groups and/or activities are viewed equally as valuable as content delivered in traditional methods. Educators should strive to get students to include themselves in communities to learn through doing.

This article concludes by focusing on the implications for educators. It does not provide solutions but rather questions and ideas to consider.

Discusses Communities of Practice and their value to organizations and indicates that cultivating COP's is key to success for global knowledge. Focuses on the nature of knowledge and states that knowledge is dynamic and ever changing.

This paper considers the case of one mid-sized international company and how it built a community of practice. It looks at different strategies and their effects on communities of practice and on global distribution of knowledge and then suggest areas to look at for further study. One such area for further research is to look into seeing how to link multiple communities of practice so that sharing can be more global.

This limited research study provides an interesting look into the viability of using Twitter to create a community of practice. Instead authors consider how different social media options have evolved over time to meet the growing diversity to technology users and uses in creating CoP and PLE.

This is an interesting read! It is interesting to read about the evolution of communication through computers.

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?