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Despite current ads and slogans, the world doesn't change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what's possible. This is good news for those of us intent on changing the world and creating a positive future. Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don't need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred spirits. Through these relationships, we will develop the new knowledge, practices, courage, and commitment that lead to broad-based change.

Anecdote is an Australian consulting firm that specialises in helping organisations to tackle complex problems like organisational change, learning and project evaluation. We help to create the conditions for insight and empowerment. Anecdote can help organisations when traditional methods have failed. Better still, we can help you to avoid failure. We use a range of contemporary but proven approaches that draw on group intelligence, participation, complexity thinking and the power of narrative. We believe that everyone in an organisation has something valuable to offer in making improvements and our techniques draw on this priceless and diverse resource. Our techniques are based on the disciplines of complexity science and knowledge management and include business- narrative, storytelling, communities of practice, social network analysis and open space technology. In fact Anecdote is regarded as a world leader in the practical applications of business-narrative.

Personal and Group Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools : eLearning Technology In my previous post, I examined Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective. That post focused primarily on how Social Bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us or Yahoo My Web can be used as part of Personal Learning. In this post, I want to focus on a specific scenario that involves Personal and Group Learning and how Web 2.0 tools apply to this need. Scenario - a learning development department in a mid size corporation has five staff members. They want to define an eLearning strategy that will look at (a) the business needs of their company and internal clients, (b) their performance and learning needs, (c) their learning strategies, and (d) what they need to do from a services, technology, process and people perspective to support this strategy. They will be creating this strategy over the next few months and have many strong feelings among the group about different things they can and should be doing. The strategy will ultimately be presented as part of the fall planning cycle and be used as part of budget justification. It will also be used to help communicate with internal clients about the services they provide and how they can work with these clients. They also want what they define in the strategy today to live on and evolve over time. In order to accomplish this, they need to learn quite a bit about where things are today in their business and in eLearning and where they are going in the future.

Asynchronous and Synchronous E-Learning Asynchronous and Synchronous E-Learning Author(s):Stefan Hrastinski (Uppsala University) © 2008 Stefan Hrastinski EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4 (October-December 2008) Asynchronous and Synchronous E-Learning A study of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning methods discovered that each supports different purposes By Stefan Hrastinski Today's workforce is expected to be highly educated and to continually improve skills and acquire new ones by engaging in lifelong learning. E-learning, here defined as learning and teaching online through network technologies, is arguably one of the most powerful responses to the growing need for education.1 Some researchers have expressed concern about the learning outcomes for e-learners, but a review of 355 comparative studies reveals no significant difference in learning outcomes, commonly measured as grades or exam results, between traditional and e-learning modes of delivery.2

Building an online learning community to support nurse education 24 March 2009 This article explores developing an online learning community that student nurses can use to support their education Abstract Lee, P. (2009) Building an online learning community to support nurse education. Nursing Times; 105: 11. This article explores the topic of developing an online community for student nurses to use in learning. It examines the different definitions and types of e-learning and outlines the online community's role in healthcare education, together with some of its pitfalls. A comparison is then made to the process of bidding on eBay, to determine possible similarities.

Community Member Roles and Types By Nancy White Updated 1/12/01 Every community and online group is different. The purposes vary, the structures are different -- and the people are different. But there are some common participation styles or patterns that have been observed. These can be helpful when you are trying to understand participation patterns in an online interaction space. Take note that for each style, there are attributes that can be seen as both positive and negative. That said, be careful of stereotyping people.

Why Facilitate Online? Online group interactions do not always "happen" spontaneously. They require care and nurturing: facilitation. The core of facilitation and hosting is to serve the group and assist it in reaching its goals or purpose. Some describe this role as a gardener, a conductor, the distributed leadership of jazz improvisers, a teacher, or an innkeeper. It can be this and more. Levitt, Popkin and Hatch, in their article "Building Online Communities for High Profile Internet Sites" wrote, "Communities are organic in nature and site owners can't make them successful or force them to grow. As site owner can only provide the fertile ground on which a community may grow, and then provide some gentle guidance to help the group thrive. Much of the challenge in fostering an online community is social, rather than technical." Facilitation is a balance between functions that enhance the environment and content, create openness and opportunity, and functions that protect the members from harassment.

Understanding Member Roles and Behaviors We all know that humans will be, well, humans. Just as in offline community spaces, there are a range of behaviors that community hosts will encounter. These mirror offline behaviors, but manifest differently in the text only environment. Without the non-verbal cues, we can misinterpret a person's actions online. Likewise, one voice can be very loud. Good stuff really is great, and difficult stuff can be awful. It helps to understand some of the roles that members take on so you can anticipate and appropriately respond to different situations.

Facilitator Qualities and Skills These online facilitator qualities and skills started with the the QUALITIES FAQ created by the Group Facilitation Listserv GRP-FACL@CNSIBM.ALBANDY.EDU. I took the qualities posted to the list, then sorted them alphabetically. After letting them set, I started sorting and adding in context for online facilitation. I'm looking for sets of qualities and patterns. What do you think is important in the online context? What is less important? What is missing?

The purpose of your community and the needs of the group will dictate what tools you use and kind of community you build. Internet access, access costs, computer and browser types, geographic and time zone issues all affect the type of community you'll build. If you've got a group of people who all have high Internet connection costs, or who don't have web access, you might be best off using the email, email topic subscription features,and newsletters rather than expecting people to show up and spend (expensive) time in online in conferencing. If you have a geographically diverse group with international time zone disparities, it's hard to get them together for a chat very often, which requires that people show up at the same time and place.

In the late 90's there was a lot of energy around "virtual communities." They were touted as the ultimate web deployment, the key to online commerce and later online education. Early adopters swarmed sites and racked up web hits in the millions. But then there was a deafening silence. Commerce and media sites began closing down their discussion boards. Even busy boards like CNN's were shuttered. Was the online community movement dead? No, it was just transforming itself, settling down and maturing into a space where it had real value and applicability. The bottom line is that online community or online interaction is not the goal. It's one means for helping groups achieve their goals. It is not necessarily about "online community" but what conditions and process are needed to enable communities to use the online environment.

These pages seek to describe tools that are used by communities of practice, explain how each functions from a community perspective, and suggest why you might select the tool, given your community's orientation and the activities your community wants. The pages attempt to define each tool, describe relevant features, the tool's uses in a community of practice, how the polarities can show up, examples, and resources. Although not all pages conform to a standard, we have developed a Tool Description Template that suggests a standard of completeness for tools pages. A Use in Combination Template suggests how tools are used together in a community context.

How can you build a successful community of practice that is integrally linked to your company's strategic vision? Learn from the first-hand experience of Hubert Saint-Onge, recognized by Fortune magazine as a leader in the field of knowledge capital, and co-author Debra Wallace, the people responsible for a recent project to establish a community of practice for independent agents at Clarica Life Insurance Company- voted one of the most admired knowledge enterprises in the world by practitioners and researchers.

Thinking about building or hosting an online community? Looking for specific tips, tools and ideas? Start here. The following is a collection of articles that may help inform your work. They are all covered by our Creative Commons license which makes the material available with limited restrictions. Check it out. Have something to contribute? Let us know!

Almost the first thing that gets built when anything needs management is a good measurement system. It allows tuning, enables detection of deviations from norm, and gives feedback on the effect of changes and initiatives. Communities of practice are complex creatures, and thus their measurement is not simple. The number of perspectives that can be used is enormous. At the same time, the availability of data for each of them is very different, and the temptation to use subjective management impressions is high. So the history of CoP management is full of references to indicator-building, to attempts at significant reporting, and to a wide variety of more or less objective measurements. But we have not found a coherent, complete set of measurements that could be used to consistently evaluate not just one CoP, but a set of them, and eventually even to benchmark different ones, along most of the lines that can be affected by management. So we've attempted to put forth a simple, practical list and brief explanation of straightforward indicators that can be implemented in most CoPs, and especially in those with an online component. The first result of it is the linked white paper, but it should not be the last one.

Welcome to the DARwiki, a resource and a meeting place for distributed action researchers. If you are new to Wikis you may like to visit introduction to wiki or experiment in the sandbox. You can also ask for help by adding a question here.

Social Return on Investment (SROI) Primary purpose SROI aims to help organisations understand and manage the social, environmental and economic benefits (value) that they are creating. It is a measurement approach, developed from traditional cost-benefit analysis that captures the economic value of social benefits by translating social objectives into financial measures and focuses on the most important sources of value as defined by stakeholders.1 The SROI model developed by nef is designed to promote the inclusion of all stakeholders' voices in the way organisations make decisions about allocating resources.

Communities of Practice, a Brief Introduction Print This Page. Author: Etienne Wenger Etienne Wenger is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of communities of practice and their application to organizations. He was featured by Training Magazine in their "A new Breed of Visionaries" series. A pioneer of the "community of practice" research, he is author and co-author of seminal articles and books on the topic, including Situated Learning (Cambridge University Press, 1991), where the term was coined, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Cambridge University Press, 1998), where he lays out a theory of learning based on the concept of communities of practice, and Cultivating Communities of Practice: a Guide to Managing Knowledge (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), addressed to practitioners in organizations. Etienne is also a founder of CPsquare, a cross-organizational, cross-sector community of practice on communities of practice. His work is influencing a growing number of organizations in the private and public sectors. Indeed, cultivating communities of practice is increasingly recognized as the most effective way for organizations to address the knowledge challenges they face. Etienne helps organizations apply these ideas through consulting, public speaking, and workshops, both online and face-to-face. His new research project, "Learning for a small planet," is a broad, cross-sectoral investigation of the nature of learning and learning institutions at the dawn of the new millennium. Check out his website www.ewenger.com

Community of Practice Case Study Posted on July 25th, 2007 by Harold Jarche I'm working on a community of practice for green building technologies and am discussing business community networks here in the Maritimes. I thought it would be a good time to review some lessons from the first online community I was responsible for. The first online community of practice for which I was responsible was a project to enhance collaboration of members of the learning industry here in New Brunwsick, Canada (LearnNB). The initial focus of this CoP was research and development, especially business models and commercialization. It was not intended to be a theoretical or academic community, but one looking at the development of practical applications- be they products, services, standards or models. Membership was open to anyone.

A couple of short videos on communities of practice. The first is from Dave Vance, former president of Caterpillar University, who shares some of Caterpillar's experiences in facilitating online communities of practice. His advice?