Communities of Practice: An Overview

1
Communities of Practice An Overview

• VTcite Phase II Initial Meeting
• May 3, 2007
• Jon Bellum Sandy Lathem

2
Communities of Practice

• Educational origins in Carmichael (1982), Fullan
  (1993), Astuto, et al. (1993) and in
  organizational theory in Senge (2000)
• groups of people who share a concern, a set of
  problems, or a passion about a topic, and who
  deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area
  by interacting on an ongoing basis Wenger,
  McDermott and Snyder(2002)

3
Learning Organizations(Senge 1990)
PersonalMastery
Systems Thinking
SharedVision
MentalModels
TeamLearning
4
Personal Mastery
PersonalMastery
Systems Thinking
SharedVision
MentalModels
TeamLearning
5
Shared Vision
PersonalMastery
Systems Thinking
SharedVision
MentalModels
TeamLearning
6
Mental Models
PersonalMastery
Systems Thinking
SharedVision
MentalModels
TeamLearning
7
Team Learning
PersonalMastery
Systems Thinking
SharedVision
MentalModels
TeamLearning
8
Systems Thinking
PersonalMastery
Systems Thinking
SharedVision
MentalModels
TeamLearning
9
Online Communities of Practice

• Four levels of online community Henry Pudelko
  (2003)

Community of Practice
Learners Community
Intentional
Goal-Oriented Community of interest
Community of interest
Cohesion
10
Findings (quantitative)

• Online Learning Communities (n19)

11
Findings (quantitative)

• Online Tools (n19)

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Findings (qualitative)

• 10 of 30 participant blogs analyzed looking for
  emergent themes using Nvivo
• Three themes emerged within the general concept
  of community evolution

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Findings (qualitative)

• Themes
• Personal
• Participants expressed excitement
• Caused them to reflect
• Course
• Expressed frustration with course structure but
  understood the need for common language
• Community as Whole
• Even with other distractions felt they did build
  a community though in its infancy Whatever the
  final outcome for VTcite to be successful, it
  will need continued support of those with the
  fire in their bellies

14
Discussion

• Community Evolution
• Core vision was never fully developed
• Course vs. Community Structure
• The course distracted from the development of
  community, but community helped the course
• Online Communities of Practice
• They feel COPs need technology but they also need
  face-to-face meetings

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VTcite Phase II

• Second phase of supporting a community of
  practice
• We will continue to research our efforts and
  publish our findings
• Based on mission --
• VTcite -- creating a community of practice that
  uses and promotes technology to support student
  learning