Communities of Practice

Here is a paper on Communities of practice
It mentions the 3 characteristics of communities of practice:
1. Domain – more than a network connections between members. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest
2. Community – members engage in joint activities and discussion, help each other, and share information
3. Practice – members are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems. This takes time and sustained interaction.

It further highlights that:
- Learning is a process of social participation
- Learning as increasing participation in communities of practice

It’s has been more than 4.5 months since our community  on Connectivism Education and Learning was created. Would it be time for us to reflect on our community progress?
We have 111 members in our Community, and there have been numerous events held and forum discussions shared.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to our members who have contributed and supported the communities in various ways, including the presentations by Nellie and various facilitators, the sharing of personal blogs and their presentations, the sharing of learning through postings and comments in forum, the sharing of resources, artifacts, and URLs by our members etc.

As we are still a young Community (or Community of Practice), your views, sharing and contribution are important in ensuring our growth, development and sustainability.

How about our sharing of views on the characteristics: domain (identity), community and practice?

What are your views and expectations of our community?
To what extent do you think we have achieved our goals in sharing and learning?
How could we build a community that could better serve you?
What would you like to see for the rest of this year within our community?

As a start:
Would our sharing of learning via blog/wiki/delicious/Facebook/Tweeter help? Would you like to share your address of blog/social networks so we could visit each other?
Would you like to let us know more about you – in your introduction here, or your personal blogs?
Would you like to share a story, an experience, a video, a tool, a slide show, or a blog post that may be of interests to our members?

My blog http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com

I am also available in Facebook and Tweeter.
Many thanks for your support.

John

How could we evaluate our Community of Practice?

This is my response to Viplav’s Connectivist Metrics.
I like your approach to this Connectivist Metrics. I think this is important for us to consider within our CCK08 Ning Community. As I stated upfront when we established the Community: the Community would be formed based on the individual needs of the members, and would be run for the Community and by the Community. Each of our Members are welcomed to share and contribute there, so as to steer the Community towards some common vision and specific goals.

I also think your Metrics will pave the way in objectively evaluating a Network and Community of Practice.

This may stimulate us to reflect on the network/community dynamics and life-cycle characteristics. I also hope that this could help us in developing strategies in achieving a sustainable Community of Practice or Learning Network.

I just wonder if you would be interested in posting this on our Ning Community Network?

I also think that this may be an important area to research. What do you think?

Many thanks for your stimulating insights in your post.
John

Community of Practice

I resonate with Jenny’s views on sustaining communities, her insights on the Community of Practice, and the challenges we all face in sustaining networks and community of practice.

I think educators and learners are leading multi-visions and missions in the journey of life long and life wide learning. It’s similar to the metaphor of having virtual learning flights that I mentioned at the end of the course of CCK08, where you visit the virtual world of learning.

People have already landed on the wonderland of “Connectivism”, and some are exploring other different virtual flights or avenues in their wayfinding and sensemaking. I suppose most of “us” have gone to the stage of putting those theories (whether it’s Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Complexity and Chaos Theory, or Social Network Theory) into practice. Mere connections and discussion may not necessarily fulfill our needs.  Educators have developed interests in exploring how each of those new social network tools Web 2.0 could be integrated into their connections and interactions as they navigate through the Web, and putting them into action.  The emphasis is more in sharing and contributing to our own families and closed personal networks (strong ties), the personal communities of practice (not only for the CCK08 community),  and social and academic networks and communities (weak ties).  This time with an ever bigger wave (some obvious, some yet to be revealed) of learning using a macro, adaptive but systematic approach (wise connections, smart time management, macro and micro views of education and learning integrated).  Community of Practice could fulfil the desire of our educators and learners in weaving together the new knowledge and learning they have experienced throughout the networks and the Web, and share and learn in a collaborative manner.

Have the concepts of meme and “selfish genes” taken on a new coat?  This time with a more refreshing dress of “wise meme” and “altruist genes”.  This is evidenced by the work of  Nellie, Cris, Frances, Doris whose work and contributions to the communities are fantastic.  And many other leaders in the field, George, Stephen, Terry, Howard, Jay, Nancy, Jane and Tony etc. who have led the informal education and learning movement, and continued in building communities of practice.  These social networks and learning communities all foster a climate of active learning and change that is conducive to life long and life wide learning.  Such transformations could take months or even years to reap their fruits in society and community.

I suppose many of our fellow participants are still observing how these communities of practice or networks unfold.  It’s great to witness such great changes in the blogosphere and virtual communities.   And learn through such changes.  We are observers, theorists, thinkers, reflectors, and practitioners within the networks or communities.

It takes a year to grow crops, tens of years to grow people, and perhaps many tens of years to grow communities.  However, under the current learning ecology, will it just take months to grow the community?

I sincerely hope that there will be more interactions and activities happening in the ConnectivismEducationLearning Network in the coming weeks or months. 

I will endeavour to play an active part in the community ConnectivismEducationLearning - you will get what you give.  Will you?

I also wish to express my sincere thanks to Jenny for her great encouragement and support in this initiative.  ConnectivismEducationLearning is our network and community!