Communities of Practice Issues - Essay Example

Communications of Practice Summary Communities of practice are defined as groups that have been formed by people who participate in a process of collective learning in a “shared domain of human endeavor.” Examples of communities of practice would be a group of students at a school defining their identity, a group of artists looking for different and new ways of self-expression through the arts, and a nomad tribe learning how to survive off of what they are given or can obtain through working together. In conclusion, communities of practice are groups of people that share a passion or need and feel that they have a better chance at being successful at continuous achievement of this passion or need if they work together with others. Communities of practice may or may not be formed for the sole intention of learning with each other. Some may come together purposely, but there are others that come together unintentionally yet still the same benefits as those that are planned. Furthermore, not all communities are communities of practices, such as a neighborhood, which is also called a community. There are three very important characteristics that truly define a community of practice. The first characteristic is the domain. The identity of a community of practice is the shared domain of interest. As a member of the domain, an individual implies a commitment to the domain, showing a competence that helps to set members apart from other people. A domain is not always considered to have an expertise by those outside of the domain. An example of this would be a street gang. They survive and learn from each other, but people outside of the group are unlikely to consider them to have an expertise in what they do. The second characteristic is the community. What makes a community is that the people in the group are learning together and helping each other. Simply being part of a group that shares the same interest does not constitute as a community. Members of a community of practice engage in activities and discussions together, using different methods to share with each other their knowledge of how to better or move forward with their passion. As per example, the Impressionists would meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting that they were inventing together. The third defining characteristic is the practice. The practice is something that is physically undergone, and not necessarily a hobby. The people of the community use their practice - art, teaching, engineering, et cetera - to bring to their community experiences, stories, tools, and ways of addressing issues that continue to arise. Interaction is a vital part of a community. A conversation may be useful, but physical and visual interaction with others proves to be more helpful in the practice. Communities of practice do a variety of things together to benefit their practice. The problem solve, considering the problems that others in the community are having. The request information and seek experience from one another. They share assets to help inspire new ideas out of old ones. The community coordinates to help with costs of materials, relying on one another to get the materials that they need. They discuss new developments and keep documentation on solutions that have proven useful for their practice. Communities of practice visit one another to get ideas for their own practices, and they keep track of knowledge and gaps that they find in their practices. They are able to identify these gaps with the others in their community of practice. To be considered a community of practice, the group must contain the three aforementioned characteristics. However, they come in a variety of different forms. Some communities are small while others are large. There are some that are local and others that cover the globe. There are communities that meet in person, but there are still some that meet online. Some communities are formally recognized and receive a budget to function with it, and yet there are some that do not even exist to people outside of that community. Communities of practice are age-old concepts, stemming from the first human beings that learned and shared together. For the most part, everyone belongs to a community of practice, or more than one. We encounter them through work, school, hobbies, and at home. We often go through numerous communities of practice throughout our lifetimes. Communities of practice are everywhere, and they are so familiar to us that most of us hardly notice that we are involved in these communities of practices. When we finally do realize what we are a part of, we begin to understand our world better. We start to make better use of the resources that come with being in a community of practice. The concept of communities of practice comes from learning theory, and is a term that was decided upon by the author of the article and Jean Lave while they were studying apprenticeship as a learning model. While most people believe that an apprenticeship involves a learning relationship between a master and their student, it goes much deeper than that. The apprentice would learn their trade from their master, asking questions, seeking advice, and learning all that they could from that master. Likewise, the master would ask questions of their apprentice and seek new knowledge and information themselves. The author saw these relationships, these communities, everywhere he looked. The concept of communities of practice have become common in business, organizational design, government, education, professional associations, development projects, and civil life. Businesses use communities of practice due to acknowledging the fact that knowledge is an important part of managing a business. By coming together and sharing information, knowledge, and prior experiences, businesses can function to the best of their ability. The government uses communities of practice in a similar way as businesses. The government applies communities of practice when it comes to figuring out problems with education, health, and security, all of which requires coordination and knowledge sharing across various levels of government. The other branches of society that implement community practice work in much the same way, relying on each other to function to the best of their ability and to overcome any problems they may run into. They learn from each other and thrive with each other. Communities of practice have become such a common, sought after concept that they have spread like wildfire via the Internet. Communities of practice no longer have to be in person, nor do they have to be local. Due to the expansion to the Internet, people are finding it possible to take part in numerous of communities of practice as the Internet has no limits to the communities that one can find. Whole websites and chat programs are dedicated to certain practices, opening up community possibilities for everyone. New communities are being formed based on shared practices. The concept of community of practice has influenced theory and practice in many domains, going above and beyond simple apprenticeships or classroom teachings. The sharing of knowledge and experience has found their way into other sectors of the world. Palette Summary This document offers a categorization of tools and a clarification of the conviction of “scenario.” The inventory of tools and the suggested categorization focus on a user perspective. Contemplation was given to the existing internal and external tools, systems, and educational scenarios connected to collaborative learning. Furthermore, the development and evolution of CoPs in different contexts are also discussed. People that are interested in these tools are often technical developers who have already built tools. They feel the need to improve their tools specification or to build new ones entirely, so they find it beneficial to fir CoPs practices. One method to accomplish this is to get good feedback on which tools are currently being used and how they are being used. Teaching specialists also have uses for these tools, having adopted these tools and used them on collaborative work. The categorizing of the tools is not a simple task. The defining of the appropriate criteria and categories tends to make the categorizing of tools a complicated matter. The purpose of the document is to create a tool identification sheet to describe and characterize all the tools that have been presently developed by the technical partners. To accomplish this, two varying points of view needed to be taken into account. The technical partners’ point of view was regarded, as well as the users’ point of view. The first step of categorization was based on a collaborative design experience. The following actions were undergone during the project: an inventory of current classifications were created, an interview guide that focused on the currently used tool by GoPs was written, customized classifications were developed and data was processed, and external regards were made to make sure enough attention was paid to the developments of tools and features. More over, the objective is to discover strong links between tools developed by technical partners and the activities of the eleven communities of practice that were preselected by the project. There are two major issues that need to be looked at to make attempts at discovering these links. There were three fields of the investigation in regard to the methodology of the project. The first field involved the tools already in use by CoPs involved in the project. The second field covers all of the tools already developed by the Palette partners. Finally, the third field gathers and looks at the tools, features, and use cases of virtual communities outside Palette. Similarly, the three main categories that will be looked at in these regards are information services, mediation services, and knowledge management services. The literature review undergone for this project showed that there are numerous ways to classify groupware technologies and their functions. Of these categories, there are three approaches that can be used to summarize three uniquely focused perspectives: technical perspective, collaboration process perspective, and community of practice needs perspective. It are these categories that show how difficult it truly is to categorize tools. However, on another note, it can be seen that scholars felt the need that groupware categories had the ability to be overlapped. By definition, categorization is the process in which objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood. There are commonalities between objects that can be grouped together. “A category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge. Categorization is fundamental in decision making and in all kinds of interaction with the environment.” It is because of this that it truly does become difficult for approaching categorization of tools. Tagging activities of users, a new system for categorizing, has been implemented to make categorizing easier. This is done through folksonomy, which is a collaboratively generated, open-ended labeling system that enables Internet users to categorize content such as Web pages, online photographs, and Web links. Examples of tagging can be seen on Web pages such as YouTube or Flickr. Essentially, a tag is a keyword or a series of keywords that describes the content of the image, video, or whatnot. Other users can find certain objects on the Internet via these tags; if they are looking for a specific clip from a specific television show, by typing in that tag in the search engine they can find that specific clip with ease. Not only does this help users find specific things with ease, but it also enables the Web page to remain orderly. As some companies find it difficult to categorize things the way that users would be able to look for them, many of them decided to just allow the users to categorize everything. Users would know what other users are looking for, or what the specific keywords would be for other users to find these items via the Internet. Some of the most common user tools that can benefit from tagging are collaboration tools - tools that allow users to write and edit information from other users. Prior to the programs and systems now available, users would send word processor documents to each other via e-mail, allow the other person to edit them, and they would e-mail it back. Nowadays, systems known as Wikis are used for the same purpose, except that these documents are easily accessed directly via the Internet. The Website Wikipedia has become a phenomenon in the Internet age. Millions of topics have been collaborated by millions of people, if not more. If a user searches for a specific bit of information and finds that it is incorrect, they are able to edit it. If someone else comes along and determines that the new information is inaccurate, they can edit or delete it. WriteBoard and Writely are similar Websites that allow numerous users to edit informational documents, eventually collaborating to get that information out. Likewise, there are other ways to share information via the Internet and various programs available. While these are not direct collaboration, the feedback that can be given to these tools essentially form a collaborative effort. Blogs, or journals and diaries kept on user-accessible Internet Web pages, are very common, especially when it comes to travel or hobby blogs. One user can write the entry, but those that have the access are able to comment on what has been written in the blogs. Instant messaging and web syndication are similar tools. Instant messaging allows for direct Internet communication between users, while web syndication, more common with video sharing, allows users on a specified list to view videos as they are uploaded. These, again, are not direct collaboration methods, but they act as tools to spread information around the Internet and allow others to comment on the content. These tools are important to the spreading of information via the Internet through collaboration. There is no one single person in the world that has all the correct information, therefore by relying on things such as blogs and wikis allows all of the correct information to eventually make it to the public. These editing tools are useful, and they are easy for users to utilize. The tagging possibilities also make it easy for users to find information based on certain keywords and phrases. References Erpicum, M. (2006). Pedagogically sustained adaptive learning through the exploitation of tacit and explicit knowledge. Retrieved from http://palette.ercim.org/images/stories/ DocumentPDF/d.par.02-final-complete_v2.pdf Wenger, E. (2006). Communities of practice. Retrieved from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ Read More