Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

around the shared goal to enhance the biological
production in a agricultural area in the south of
Italy (Puglia region, Brindisi province) called
Torre Guaceto. The main goal of the farmer group
was to build a repository of best practices to be
used to inform potential customers about the
agricultural production and its biological value,
then hopefully enhancing the sales of the Torre
Guaceto local products. The main objective for the
farmers’ group was to increase the profit gained
from the biological production. On the other hand
other project partners were more concerned about
the quality of the product and of the biological
production in term of environmental protection.
In particular several local agencies (such as Torre
Guaceto Park Agency, Liberaterra, Slow Food..
etc) were involved in the project each one to accomplish
different tasks, such as coordinating
the activities, enabling the commercialization of
products, implementing pilot cultivation projects
etc. In this scenario the planning team was in charge
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Supporting Communities of Practice by Advancing Knowledge Management
Figure 3. Compendium icons that have not equivalent in CoPe_it!
of helping the Torre Guaceto community of practice
to build their past and present project history.
Thereby the tools (Compendium and CoPe_it!)
have been used both to rebuild and represent the
past history of the community and to capture and
represent the new on going activities.
Results of the Experimentation
Torre Guaceto case study has been designed to
test the integration between CoPe_it! and Compendium.
A group of four CoP members has been
asked to discuss new challenges and open issues
for the Torre Guaceto community to address in the
near future. CoPe_it! has been used form the community
members to conduct at distance discussions
about results and challenges for the new biological
production. Compendium maps that were used to
represent organizational networks, face-to-face
discussions and topic of past meetings have been
imported in a CoPe_it! workspace to trigger the