Etienne Wenger describes Communities of Practice as a group of people who share a concern/passion for something they do and they learn how to do it better by interacting regularly. (http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm).
How would you know when a community is a community of Practice?
The following characteristics will be present, and it is a combination of them that will make up a community of practice:
- I will be a group of people who share a domain of interest
- In pursuing their interest in their domain the members join up in activities / discussions to help each other out and to share information
- Members of community of practice are practitioner. They develop and share resources. (experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing problems)
There is a lot more to CoPs but for the purpose of this assignment I am constrained to the total words for the whole assignment, and unfortunately I am on my limit! I do feel that all the students enrolled in semester one for 157.240 are a community of practice and we share our knowledge and information on the blogs we created and also on Massey stream web site.
studentmommyof3 