Virtual Organization

Home	Applications	Articles	Feedback	Leadership	References	Technology	Site Map

Communities of Practice

Introduction

Wenger and Snyder (January - February 2000, p. 139) defined communities of practice as "groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise."

Applied research

CoP's can not be mandated, but can be formed, encouraged, and nurtured. This researcher and writer has been encouraging the formation of a community of practice within a set of practitioner faculty. The faculty work on a part time basis and under normal circumstances have little interaction with each other, let alone meet with one another. Formal meetings are held periodically, but with new faculty coming and going, social relationships are tenuous.

The challenge has been to find ways to encourage something more ongoing than periodic meetings and whatever networking opportunities these meetings bring.

This researcher has been shaping the formation of a CoP, documenting the outcome, re-shaping some more, collecting more data, and shaping again.

Many of the same technologies that support virtual teams have been found effective in this particular CoP -- namely the Internet -- especially electronic messaging and a Web site to host various types of information such as directories, best practices, and event postings, as well as newsletters. A Web site provides shared space for governance statements and ideas as well as ongoing projects and notes.

This research is ongoing and more documentation will be added to this site over the next few months.

Date last revised:
June 05, 2006

David Gould, Ed.D.
daveg@seanet.com