virtual communities of practice – does technology make a difference?

Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold

FET8605 Conference

How are Communities of Practice used for Knowledge Management, and how is technology impacting

and/or assisting?


Virtual Communities of Practice – does technology make a difference?

This paper reviews the development and nature of virtual communities and how new technologies can be introduced to help the growth of CoP.

It also compares the features of the main tools for CoP and suggests how to choose the most appropriate technologies to develop and enhance the community.

It concludes that CoP, whether virtual or face-to-face, has more to do with cultural, social and organizational issues than to do with technology.


Introduction Communities of Practice - groups of people

who “share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger, 2005).

Communities of practice - have been around for centuries (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002) “when we lived in caves and gathered around our fires at night to discuss the hunt.”


In education CoPs are sometimes described as ‘learning

networks’, ‘knowledge communities’, ‘occupational communities’ or learning communities/ communities of learning.

An individual class or course could be considered a community of learning as they are formed around a domain, are an interacting community and have a shared learning experience or practice.


Virtual Communities “Webs of personal relationships in cyberspace”

(Rheingold, 1993). Virtual CoP have been around since the Internet

became accessible Early tools used by virtual communities were

email (1972) and list servers (c1975). Chat systems and instant messaging Bulletin boards, websites, virtual worlds VOIP, web conferencing, collaborative Wikis,

blogs and other Web 2.0 tools


Technology Stewards

Smith, Wenger and White (2006) define technology stewards as “people with enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with technology to take leadership in addressing those needs.”


Technologies for Virtual CoP Virtual Communities Technologies grow from existing

tools used by the members Tools exist to support CoP, but no technology is

available to fully support CoP (Wenger, 2001) . The driving force for CoP is not, or should not be, the

tools that support the CoP but the people who belong to the virtual community.

“An efficient technology is only part of the process underlying a successful online community.” (Garber, 2004)


How to Select Technology Tools Smith, Wenger & White, (2008) set out the

stages in selecting technology platforms as follows:

Step 1: understand your community, its characteristics, orientation, and current configuration.

Step 2: provide the technology: choose a strategy, select a solution, and plan the change

Step 3: steward technology in use, in the life of the community and at its closing.


Step 1: Understand your CoP Consult to find out what technology members do

and do not use or want. Find out what stage they are at in the CoP

Lifecycle – technical skill, language level etc Identify any technology constraints (e.g.,

bandwidth, operating systems, etc.) Create an orientation profile of your community -

consider the activities going on. Finally, what are the current technologies being

used, & what may be needed in the future.


Step 2: Provide the technology

First consider the resources and constraints in your environment that will influence decisions – these may be internal or external.

Second, choose a strategy – (e.g. use what is already available, use free or open source platforms, build one or buy in a proprietary platform).


How to decide on the Technology1. Want to start quickly but aren’t ready to invest

in technology yet? = use what is available.2. Need something that works across

organizations and requires no money? = use free platforms.

3. If you have an existing IT infrastructure = build on an enterprise platform.

4. Are a variety of bundled tools and features needed, or is convenience critical to the community? = deploy a community platform.


How to decide on the Technology

4. Does the community have unique needs & do are you technology savvy? = build your own.

5. Does your community wish to benefit and contribute to a larger network of people using the same software? = use open-source software.

6. Is the community interested in new functional, basic tools that can be combined (e.g. blogs and forums) & is quick, low-cost acceptable? = patch the tools together to make what is needed.


Making Decisions Is the platform adequate for the community? Can it be integrated and used easily? Is the pricing acceptable? Are the features what are needed? Is it complete and secure? Make plans for implementation, training of users,

integration with existing tools.


Step 3: Steward technology in use.

Important: Support new members in their use of the new technology, in identifying and spreading good practice, in supporting community experimentation and in taking care of the practical and technical issues.


Technologies and Polarities

Technologies and Polarities (from Smith et al, 2006)


Use of Technologies

managed documents live communication asynchronous

communication

search collaboration team and project

workspaces e-learning spaces web

presentation.

The most widely used and useful technologies for virtual communities fall into eight areas:


Comparison of TechnologiesTechnology ↓ Purpose →

Example Pros Cons

Wiki Mediawiki, Wetpaint

Collective knowledge, great for documenting consensus ideas

Sometimes not easy to use and can become cumbersome

Social Networking Facebook, MySpace, Elgg, Xanga

Users can find relevant content, network & share news & photos

Many connections not useful, info can be hard to find, dormant groups

Blogs Wordpress, Blogger

Communicating at a personal level

Blogs can be monopolized & unreliable

Forum/IM Yahoo groups, MSN/ICQ

Instant online conversation

Difficult to find discussion threads

Virtual World Second Life Realistic, engaging community

Can be difficult to learn and technical issues

LMS Blackboard, Moodle

Good for organizing course contents

Very structured & not user-friendly compared to other tools

CMS Mambo, Joomla Allow non technical people to publish, & distribute content

Complicated & can be difficult to manage


Conclusions A successful CoP – whether virtual or a face-to-

face has more to do with cultural, social and organizational issues that to do with technology.


Conclusions

Technology is a valuable tool to manage, develop and support the community

Technology, can encourage communication, collaboration and mutual support


Conclusions

There is no perfect technology platform, and there will always be challenges in the virtual environment.

Further more detailed study would be useful with field testing of the suggested platforms to collect user data.


Some discussion starters How can virtual communities try to replicate

face2face communities? What are the main factors that help develop virtual

communities? What are the most appropriate technologies for

CoP at this time?

What do you

think?


Contact me

Paul Penfold School of Hotel & Tourism Management The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (852) 2766-4092 Skype: paulpenfold Blog: http://penkyamp.blogspot.com Wiki: http://shtmteacherswiki.pbwiki.com

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” Marcel Proust

virtual communities of practice – does technology make a difference?

Education