Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

However, bringing in a new practice and related
tools to a community can enhance the engagement
of members. Nonetheless, the following points
should be considered in relation to the introduction
of new practices and technology (Wenger,
White, Smith, & Rowe, 2005):
1. Experience of the new members as they
join the CoP, because their experience can
bring out shortcomings and opportunities
not noticed by long-standing members.
2. Experience and use of similar practice and
technology in other environments.
3. Experience of other CoPs in adopting new
practices and tools.
4. Sharing experience and observing each other
when using existing tools.
5. Exploring how existing tools can be
used in new innovative ways to enhance
collaboration.
In general, exploring new technologies and
practices should be encouraged in a CoP, as long
as it does not distract the community from its
objectives. Therefore, introducing storytelling
using MOD to a CoP may be facilitated by running
workshops that articulate the concepts underpinning
storytelling and the MOD paradigm,
and demonstrate how MOD can be used to create
educational stories.
Story Creation Workshop
Crafting stories is a creative activity and collaboration
with people coming from different
viewpoints enhances creativity. Therefore, developing
educational stories is best approached
as a collaborative activity.
Workshops are a good interaction model for
enhancing collaboration, and for engendering creativity
and innovation in a group (Sharda, 2007).
Running story development workshops in a CoP
would offer many benefits, such as:
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Using Storytelling as the Pedagogical Model for Web-Based Learning
• Stimulating creativity
• Developing innovative ideas
• Provide time and space for this creative
activity
• Learning the MOD methodology to create
educational stories
• Enhancing collaboration with people from
similar as well as diverse backgrounds
Creativity is “the ability to generate and use
insight” (Stevens, 2007). Stuck in a routine, most
people cannot use their creative potential to the
fullest and their ability to innovate suffers.
Innovation takes place when even a small
improvement to something that already exists
enhances the way it works and can be used. Innovation
does not imply the invention of something
completely new. Innovation can be made to improve
a product or even a process. Joyce Wycoff
states that innovation as a “mental extreme sport”
and that it requires “pulling unrelated things together”
(Newhart & Wycoff, 2005). Consequently,
story creation workshops will generate new innovative
solutions as the members of a CoP consider
a problem from different perspectives.
A number of workshop running techniques
have been developed to enhance collaboration
and creativity, such as the Design Consequences
workshop technique (Reichelt, 2007). In most
workshops, to get the best outcomes workshops
should provide some ‘personal time’ and some
‘shared time’. Personal time gives the opportunity
to individual participants to contemplate,
think, imagine, document and present their own
ideas. Free-form documentation techniques, such
a mind maps can be combined with structured
story development techniques such as MOD for
documenting the new ideas. Shared time is also
important to be able to brainstorm ideas and
provide feedback.