Workshop from the PDW for eTwinning Ambassadors, Rhodes, Greece

1. Communities of
Learning & Practice:
Basic Design
Considerations
Dr. Apostolos Kostas
Member of Laboratory & Teaching Staff
Dept. of Primary Education, University of the Aegean
Email: apkostas@aegean.gr

2. Community is …
• Community is the fundamental social environment
where learning and knowledge construction takes
place on the basis of meaning negotiation via
peer’s interactions.
• It refers to a group of people who live and act in
the same geographical area sharing common aims
and values.

3. Community consists of…
People, common purpose,
social interaction, activity
in space/time
Agency, belonging,
cohesion, diversity
Acting together,
dialoguing, collaborating,
bridging

4. Community to… V-community
• Virtual community = social aggregations in the
network, where people join public conversations
thus forming a web of interpersonal relationships
within the Cyberspace.
• Internet community = group of people interacting
in a virtual environment, having common goals,
specific rules and behavioral norms.

5. Community of Learning is…
• A community in which members are tied
together by a common interest to inquire a
certain case in depth and learn together,
share knowledge and solve problems
collaboratively by this process.
• A group of people who shares a common
goal, works together, respect different
opinions, promote opportunities for active
learning and develop a collaborative
environment for empowerment of
membership and new knowledge formation.
Learning
Communities
{reflection, meta-
learning}
Communities of
Learners
{enquiry,
knowledge-
generations}

6. Community of Practice is…
• A group 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.
• A group of professionals tied together in an
informal manner via their engagement in a
common class of problems and efforts to find
solutions, thus comprising a potential inventory of
shared knowledge and expertise

7. A Typology …

8. Community of Practice is not…
• According to Wenger et al. (2002) “… a CoP is not
just a Web site, a database, or a collection of best
practices. It is a group of people who interact, learn
together, build relationships, and in the process
develop a sense of belonging and mutual
commitment…”(p.34)
E. Wenger, R. McDermott, W. Snyder, “Cultivating Communities of Practice: A guide to Managing Knowledge”, Harvard
Business Review, pp. 139–145, 2002.

9. CoP consists of …
 Domain: it is a shared field of interest and
competence, related to members’ commitment and
passion.
 Community: it is a group of people engaging in
joint activities, with regular interaction,
relationships and mutual trust.
 Practice: it is the shared repertoire of experiences,
tools, techniques, stories, learning activities
engaged to build, share and apply to practice and a
sense of joint enterprise.

10. Cop vs. IMCop
CoP IMCoP
Design Emerge from
existing groups
Top-down
Membership Closed, follows
certain norms
Open, without certain norms. Identification is based on an
idea or a task, rather than the place, with more fluid formal
boundaries, less dominated norms and greater flexibility [18,
21]
Leadership Emerge from the
community
Pre-Assigned
Communication Face-to-face ICT-mediated
Development Less Time More Time: virtual community is the designed community,
whereas the CoP is what emerges from the designed
community
ICT Plays no role “Place” in virtual communities is substituted by the Web

11. The Big Questions Now…
• Can relationship and trust developed and
sustained in IMCoPs?
• Can tacit knowledge and practice be shared within
IMCoPs?

12. Which are the critical
elements of IMCoPs?
Kostas, A., Sofos, A. (2012) Internet-Mediated Communities of Practice:
Identifying a Typology of Critical Elements. In Daradoumis, T.,
Demetriadis, S., Xhafa, F. (Eds) Intelligent Adaptation and Personalization
Techniques in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, Studies in
Computational Intelligence, 2012, Volume 408/2012, 311-334, Springer
Berlin/Heidelberg.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-28586-8_14

13. Critical Elements

14. MOTIVATORS Short-term Long-term Personal Community Explicit Implicit
Professional Development
Professional challenges encounter ▪ ▪ ▪
Improve quality of processes ▪ ▪
Reach learning environments ▪ ▪
Development of synergies ▪ ▪ ▪
Learning curve reduction ▪ ▪
Personal Development
Emotional improvement ▪ ▪ ▪
Informal learning activities ▪ ▪
Reduce project completion time ▪ ▪
Creativity & innovation ▪ ▪ ▪
Peer relations & social networking ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Resource and Information Sharing
Get answers from experts ▪ ▪ ▪
Experts network formation ▪ ▪ ▪
Promotion & dissemination of practices ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Resources re-use ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Information and knowledge sharing ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Ethics
Recognizability ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Altruism ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Common values/vision/objectives ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪

15. SUCCESS FACTORS
personal …
• media literacy level
• prior knowledge and expertise
• writing skills
• communication capabilities
• self-control
• learning self-organized capabilities
• learning self-acting capabilities
• learning self-assessment capabilities
• learning on reflection capabilities
• socialization capabilities

16. BARRIERS personal …
• lack of time for a member to engage in various activities
• cultural diversities
• no motives
• high level of competitiveness
• low professional confidence
• lack of trust/hide identity
• reluctance to innovation and use of new practices and methods
• low digital skills/inflexibility
• common understandings diversities
• modesty/ personal particularities
• members are not familiar with knowledge sharing values

17. SUCCESS FACTORS
technology …
• quick member registration
• member’s security & privacy with security levels
• efficient search engine
• role management system
• dynamic & flexible CMS
• avatars
• push-pull mechanisms
• Usability, reliability and availability of services
• user-interface transparency
• simulation of face-to-face communication

18. SUCCESS FACTORS
operational
• security and trust environment
• clear definition of common goals
• focus on the strategic objectives and sub-objectives of the community
• efficient members support
• successful cultivation of “feeling of belonging”
• balance on typical and non-typical procedures
• community assessment and evaluation mechanisms
• pluralism and rhythm on communities’ activities

19. BARRIERS
design/organization …
• insufficient ICT design and development
• social capital takes time, while the web favors short-terms connections
• low interest due to ill design
• lack of objectives
• lack of common values
• lack of support
• indistinct practice
• lack of a core group
• information hoarding/lack of trust
• insufficient flow of information
• cohesiveness reduction through time

20. A “healthy” community …
Fade out

21. Now what?
eTwinning is offering a viable environment where
many of the IMCoPs’ success factors can be traced...
Its up to YOU now to utilize all the motivators and
build sustainable virtual communities!!!
Thank you!