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Without close attention to building and maintaining functional communities of practice, even the most carefully designed online program can will degenerate as facilitators, support, and subject matter experts speak “at” each other instead of to or with each other. Granted, communities of practice in a distributed environment have a different look and feel than those that are forged in small groups in face-to-face settings. Nevertheless, they are vital if ongoing e-learning products and programs are to be developed, nurtured, and sustained. The main pillars of success — communication, relevant tasks and outcomes, shared vision and mission, needs-responsive and ever-evolving instructional and developmental strategies — will collapse.

What does a distributed community of practice look like in e-learning?

As in the case of typical communities of practice (CoP), the group members work together on many projects over time. They may not be on site together. However, they do communicate via e-mail, chat, project management interfaces, and collaboration tools.

Subject Matter Experts: Sometimes institutions use a subject matter expert to develop a single course. This is not always a good idea, particularly if one wishes to have an effective
CoP develop over time. Ideally, a core of subject matter experts cooperate over time, and concern themselves with more content-integrative issues such as effective instructional strategy and emerging technologies.

Instructional Designers: Instructional designers are a vital part of the CoP. Their role can be a vexed one, however, if they do not have direct communication with the other members of the team, and do not adhere to a philosophy that encourages constant adaptation and modification to meet changing needs and challenges, they can be perceived as dictatorial, rigid, obstructive, out of date, or simply irrelevant.

Instructional Design Assistants: This is often the most overlooked piece in a CoP. It is important to have long-term, committed assistants who view their work as an apprenticeship and who are committed to keeping up-to-date with new versions of technologies as well as new and evolving approaches, such as video game-based simulation integrated into a conventional e-learning course.

Information Technology Team (includes Learning Object Coordinator): SCORM compliancy is more important vital than ever as learning objects must work across platforms and course management systems. Learning objects must be flexible enough to be shared in multiple applications, and a clear way of organizing access (files, server space, etc.) must be established at the outset and communicated clearly in order to avoid chaos, and to accommodate expansion in the future. Learning objects, properly classified and organized, should migrate easily with expansions and uploads. This may sound trivial, but anyone who has experienced a portal or system upgrade knows that it is not. All the course management system design, portal design, learning object development, etc. are for naught if the objects they employ are scattered randomly through different folders and on different servers.

Project Manager: The project manager should have a clear sense of the big picture as well as the details, and should be able to classify them into hierarchies. Project managers who cannot differentiate forest from trees are not helpful to their team, and will essentially drive a wedge in an emerging CoP. They should be able to guide the group by developing effective project management approaches that mesh with the culture of the organization. For example, a simple GANTT chart or Critical Path can help individuals set milestones and organize work.

Facilitators (Instructors): The instructors are often overlooked in the development of a Community of Practice. Although they should be required to participate in training and to be familiar with instructional Best Practices, as well as cognizant of effective instructional strategies, they are often kept on the periphery, and are marginalized, often for control issues. Their feedback is vital, however, particularly in terms of maintaining an evolutionary stance to instructional strategies, and reporting on the effectiveness of learning objects.

The following points can assist in creating distributed communities of practice for e-learning programs:

* Control of learning is distributed among the participants (e.g. students and instructors) and does not rest in the hands of a single subject matter expert or instructor.

* Learning activities are flexible, and modifications are encouraged if they suit the needs of the learner and the group as a whole.

*Multiple parties interact and they are united by a shared goal, problem or project, which provides a mission, vision, and focus. Incentives - both intrinsic and extrinsic - are incorporated into the learning environment in order to motivate learners.

*Learners and Facilitators are committed to the sharing of knowledge, and to encouraging the generation of new knowledge.

*Multiple perspectives and alternative explanations are not only encouraged, but required of learners and facilitators.

* Investigations and inquiries cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.

*Conceptual and intellectual risk-taking is encouraged and rewarded.

*Instructors should model intellectual risk-taking and innovative approaches to problem-solving.

*Instructional designers utilize appropriate instructional technology in order to actualize the development of a community of practice. In most instances, the activities will be structured around and within a course management system, which both foments and constricts the construction of a flexible learning space.

Nevertheless, the following strategies should be accommodated (Collins, 1991) and Nardi (1996):

Collaboration and Social Negotiation: Encourage the members to collaborate on projects. The project manager can facilitate this, and determine the most effective approach. Sometimes collaborative software is vital. At other times, simply using a blog can help encourage thinking and responding to ideas.

Exploration: A community of practice that does not encourage exploration — both of curriculum (content) and new techniques (software and hardware) will quickly find that individuals will lose interest, and the e-learning courses will flounder. A word of caution, though — one needs to be aware of who and what is driving change. If changes are made by the IT side of things without explaining the benefits to the others, or without getting their buy-in, large-scale failures are likely. Too-frequent change is as demotivating as no change at all.

Problem-Solving: Collaborative problem solving is perhaps one of the most immediate benefits of effective CoPs. Problem-solving can be technically focused, or can revolve around curriculum. For maximum effectiveness, however, it is vital to pay attention to marketing and outreach in order to maintain an awareness of the emerging and evolving needs of students.

Reflective Thinking: If a desired learning outcome includes the development of reflective thinking, then it is important that each member of the CoP contemplate how they can play a role in achieving the goal. For example, facilitators can think of ways to interact with learners to encourage reflective thinking. Instructional designers can think of activities. SMEs can bring new readings and content to bear. Instructional technologists can develop new applications of technologies — simulations, etc.

The most effective instructional strategies analyze the desired objectives and then frame them in terms of the learning outcomes. Appropriate approaches keep the technology in the background, and foreground the cognitive processes at work.

References
C. van Winkelen. Inter-Organizational Communities of Practice. http://www.elearningeuropa.info/doc.php?id=1483&lng=1&doclng=1

Resources from van Winkelen

1. Hubert, C., B. Newhouse, and W. Vestal, Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice. in Next-Generation Knowledge Management: Enabling Business Processes. 2001. Houston, USA.

2. van Winkelen, C. and P. Ramsell, Building Effective Communities. in Henley Knowledge Management Forum Second Annual Conference. 2002. Henley Management College.

3. Wenger, E. and W. Snyder, Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier. Harvard Business Review, 2000. 78(1): p. 139-145.

4. Gongla, P. and C. Rizzuto, Evolving Communities of Practice: IBM Global Services Experience. IBM Systems Journal, 2001. 40(4): p. 842-862.

5. Wenger, E., R. McDermott, and W. Snyder, Cultivating Communities of Practice. 2002: Harvard Business School Press.

6. Wenger, E., R. McDermott, and W.M. Snyder, Cultivating Communities of Practice. 2002, Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Publishing.

7. Lawrence, T., N. Philips, and C. Hardy, Watching whale watching. Exploring the discursive foundations of collaborative relationships. Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, 1999. 35(4): p. 479-502.

8. Miles, R., C. Snow, and G. Miles, The Future.org. Long Range Planning, 2000. 33(3): p. 300-321.

9. Ashby, W.R., An Introduction to Cybernetics. 1956, London: Chapman and Hall.

10. Park, S.H. and G.T. Ungson, Interfirm rivalry and managerial complexity. Organization Science, 2001. 12(1): p. 37-53.

11. Johnson, G. and K. Scholes, Exploring Corporate Strategy. Sixth Edition. 2002, Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.

12. Inkpen, A.C., Learning, knowledge acquisition and strategic alliances. European Management Journal, 1998. 16(2): p. 223-229.

13. LaPorte, B., Knowledge is currency at the World Bank. KM Review, 2002. 5(5): p. 10-13.

14. Skapinker, M., The Change Agenda. 2002, CIPD: London.

15. Boisot, M.H., Knowledge Assets; Securing Competitive Advantage in the Knowledge Economy. 1998, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

16. McKenzie, J. and C. van Winkelen, Understanding the Knowledgeable Organization: Nurturing Knowledge Competence. (Forthcoming). 2003, London: Thomson Learning.

17. Kwiecien, S. and D. Wolford, Gaining real value through best-practice replication. Knowledge Management Review, 2001. 4(1): p. 12-15.

18. Stewart, T.A., Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations. 1997, New York: Doubleday.

19. van Winkelen, C. and P. Ramsell, Aligning value is key to designing communities. Knowledge Management Review, 2003. 5(6): p. 20-23.

20. Owens, D. and E. Thompson, Fusing learning and knowledge at the St. Paul Companies. Knowledge Management Review, 2001. 4(3): p. 24-29.

21. Braun, P., Digital knowledge networks: Linking communities of practice with innovation. Journal of Business Strategies, 2002. 19(1): p. 43-54.

22. Adler, P.S. and S.-W. Kwon, Social Capital; Prospects for a new concept. Academy of Management Review, 2002. 27(1): p. 17-40.

23. Lesser, E. and K. Everest, Using Communities of Practice to Manage Intellectual Capital. Ivey Business Journal, 2001. 65(4): p. 37-41.

24. Botkin, H. and C. Seeley, The Knowledge Management Manifesto: Why KM requires community-building. Knowledge Management Review, 2001. 3(6): p. 16-21.

25. Tosey, P., The peer learning community: a contextual design for learning? Management Decision, 1999. 37(5): p. 403-410.

**** Crag Hill — http://scorecard.typepad.com/crag_hills_poetry_score/2004/08/genre_bender_su.html