CoP: Best Practices by Etienne Wenger [Published in the "Systems Thinker," June 1998] You are a claims processor working for a large insurance company. You are good at what you do, but although you know where your paycheck comes from, the corporation mainly remains an abstraction for you. You are an engineer working on two projects within your business unit. You are a CEO and, of course, you are responsible for the company as a whole. We now recognize knowledge as a key source of competitive advantage in the business world, but we still have little understanding of how to create and leverage it in practice. We frequently say that people are an organization's most important resource. However, they are a company's most versatile and dynamic knowledge resource and form the basis of an organization's ability to know and learn. Defining Communities of Practice Communities of practice are everywhere. Communities of practice develop around things that matter to people. Communities of Practice in Organizations Dr.
Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice contents: introduction · communities of practice · legitimate peripheral participation and situated learning · learning organizations and learning communities · conclusion · references · links · how to cite this article Many of the ways we have of talking about learning and education are based on the assumption that learning is something that individuals do. Furthermore, we often assume that learning ‘has a beginning and an end; that it is best separated from the rest of our activities; and that it is the result of teaching’ (Wenger 1998: 3). But how would things look if we took a different track? Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines – Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Communities of practice The characteristics of such communities of practice vary.
Less Formal Training; More Informal Social Learning This is an excerpt from Sharon Boller’s newest white paper, Learning Trends, Technologies and Opportunities. The white paper describes today’s learning landscape… then predicts 7 trends for the next 12 – 18 months. Here is Trend 6: Twitter chats, Twitter lists, massive open online courses (MOOCs), YouTube channels and blogs devoted to highly specific topics, resources such as Lynda.com, CodeAcademy, etc. are all examples of resources that enable people to build highly customized “personal learning networks” for themselves. Social learning has been touted by a brave few for a long time – Jane Bozarth and Jay Cross are two big names who’ve been beating the social learning and informal learning drum for the past few years. What it might look like: At BLP, we are our own “Learning Lab.” The premise is pretty simple. We’ve discovered a ton of new tools via these talks and we’ve also picked up new ideas for methods we could employ. If you miss the live chat – no problem.
6 Free easy online collaboration tools Here at trendblog.net all collaboration happens online. We started the blog while living in 3 different countries, and all this time we have managed to work together perfectly, even without seeing each other for a long time. Since the initial launch of trendblog.net we had to get used to working together remotely, using only free online collaboration tools. These tools not only allow us to work from 3 different locations, but also to be more productive and stay organised. Nowadays, more and more teams/companies are forced to work together remotely. But switching from a regular day-to-day work-flow to a complex and expensive project management software is very difficult to do. Have you ever struggled to successfully collaborate online with your clients or suppliers? Which Collaboration Tools Should You Use? During the last 3+ years we have successfully managed to work on several projects using only free online collaboration software (we switched to some paid plans though over time). 1. 2.
Knowledge Networks: Introduction Editors, Paul Hildreth and Chris Kimble Publisher, Idea Group Publishing Hard cover ISBN: 159140200X Soft cover ISBN: 1591402700 The current environment for organizations is one that is characterised by uncertainty and continuous change. In the mid 1990s, a new approach called Knowledge Management (KM) began to emerge (Ponzi and Koenig, 2002). Communities of Practice (CoPs) as a phenomenon have been around for many years but the term itself was not coined until 1991 when Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger used it in their exploration of Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Lave and Wenger (1991) saw the acquisition of knowledge as a social process where people can participate in communal learning at different levels depending on their level of authority or seniority in the group, i.e. whether they are a newcomer to the group or have been a member for a long time. Thus, a new member of the community moves from peripheral to full participation in the community. What it is about? Evolution
Parker J. Palmer: community, knowing and spirituality in education Parker J. Palmer: community, knowing and spirituality in education. Parker J. Palmer’s explorations of education as a spiritual journey and of the inner lives of educators have been deeply influential. We explore his teachings and contribution. contents: introduction · parker j. palmer – life · education as a spiritual journey · parker palmer – knowing, teaching and learning · participating in a community of truth · creating space for learning · attending to the inner life of educators · calling · parker palmer – assessment and conclusion · further reading and references · parker palmer links · how to cite this piece My vocation (to use the poet’s term) is the spiritual life, the quest for God, which relies on the eye of the heart. Parker J. The terrain that Parker J. Life Parker J. Parker Palmer made the decision to leave the academy believing that a university career would be a ‘cop out’. Instead Parker J. The time at Pendle Hill was of fundamental significance. Parker J.
Jo Bloggs: Connectivism and Communities of Practice The term Knowledge Management has traditionally referred to ongoing efforts to harness explicit and tacit knowledge within an organisation while 'organisational learning' tends to be more focussed on static efforts to meet specific learning objectives. Recently, the lines have become blurred to the extent that a merger in strategies should be considered by any organisation serious about harnessing knowledge and promoting learning. Siemens' article, 'Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age', discusses the need for 'a theory that attempts to explain the link between individual and organizational learning' (Siemens, 2004). He expands his theory of networked learning further in his article ‘Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation’ (Siemens, 2005). I will demonstrate that the theories outlined in Siemens’ two articles are aligned with Wenger’s attempts to rethink learning in the shape of Communities of Practice (CoP). References: Pór. Siemens. Siemens. Wenger. Wenger.
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2013 Communauté de pratique Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre. Pour les articles homonymes, voir COP. La théorie des communautés de pratiques formalisée par Wenger (1998)[1] s'inscrit dans une évolution épistémologique qui a conduit le domaine de la gestion des connaissances d'une vision technocentrée vers une vision anthropocentrée. Cette théorie prône une perspective sociale de l’apprentissage, insérée dans les pratiques collectives au sein des communautés de pratique. Wenger (2005), développe le concept de communautés de pratique comme un groupe de personnes qui travaillent ensemble (à travers des plateformes internet par exemple tels que des forums, des vidéo-conférences, des courriels…) et qui sont en fait conduites à inventer constamment des solutions locales aux problèmes rencontrés dans leur pratiques professionnelles. Pour Wenger, trois dimensions structurent les communautés de pratique (Wenger, 1998) : Un engagement mutuel : Tous les membres de la communauté doivent respecter cet engagement.
Connectivism Connectivism is a hypothesis of learning which emphasizes the role of social and cultural context. Connectivism is often associated with and proposes a perspective similar to Vygotsky's 'zone of proximal development' (ZPD), an idea later transposed into Engeström's (2001) Activity theory.[1] The relationship between work experience, learning, and knowledge, as expressed in the concept of ‘connectivity, is central to connectivism, motivating the theory's name.[2] It is somewhat similar to Bandura's Social Learning Theory that proposes that people learn through contact. The phrase "a learning theory for the digital age"[3] indicates the emphasis that connectivism gives to technology's effect on how people live, communicate and learn. Nodes and links[edit] The central aspect of connectivism is the metaphor of a network with nodes and connections.[4] In this metaphor, a node is anything that can be connected to another node such as an organization, information, data, feelings, and images.
Connectivism Clarissa Davis, Earl Edmunds, Vivian Kelly-Bateman Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology, University of Georgia Review of Connectivism Introduction Just like anything else that involves human experience or interaction, the act of learning does not happen in a vacuum. If you would like a quick introduction to connectionism, try looking at networked student in plain English video. Half-Life of Knowledge New technology forces the 21st century learner to process and apply information in a very different way and at a very different pace from any other time in history. Taking into account the ideas presented in the video, how is the 21st century learner supposed to assimilate all this information, and make valuable use of it? Components of Connectivism Chaos Theory Importance of Networks According to Siemens, “considering technology and meaning-making as learning activities begins to move learning into the digital age” (2005, para. 15). Citation
The dynamics of managing/nurturing networks of practice Image by D'Arcy Norman via Flickr I received a beautiful article (thanks to Julie Ferguson!). Just got a tip through the comments that it's also online. Agterberg, M., Van den Hooff, B., Huysman, M., & Soekijad, M. (2010). The authors make a distinction between NoPs and CoPs; networks of practice and communities of practice. CoP or NoP doesn't matter, there are important insights into the management interventions to support NoPs (or CoPs I'd say...). I've never held the belief that communities are fully self-emergent and that you can not intervene/facilitate in communities of practice. What are the findings from the study of 22 NoPs in one organisation? 4. Personally I feel relational and structural embeddedness are very connected to each other and both relate to the level of social capital. But what did the study find out about management interventions in all these types of embeddedness?