Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
FET8605 Conference
How are Communities of Practice used for Knowledge Management, and how is technology impacting
and/or assisting?
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.”
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.”
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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)
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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).
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
Technologies and Polarities
Technologies and Polarities (from Smith et al, 2006)
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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:
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
Conclusions
Technology is a valuable tool to manage, develop and support the community
Technology, can encourage communication, collaboration and mutual support
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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.
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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?
Judith Hodder & Paul Penfold
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