Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

30 – Supporting E-learning through Communities of Practice
solution where hardware, software, and technical support
resources were provided by a host provider.
LearningTimes (based in New York) was chosen as
the host provider because of BCcampus staff’s first hand
experience in helping launch their LearningTimes.org
site and confidence in the underlying technical solution
on which their online community services are provided.
BCcampus research revealed LearningTimes to be
uniquely positioned as an online community provider
for the education market and a leader and innovator in
the use of online community for education. The online
community technology provided by LearningTimes is a
customized version of Ramius’ CommunityZero platform.
This technology is very robust and provides support
for a mix of asynchronous and synchronous
capabilities, including: text discussion forums, file posting,
contributions area, calendar, live meeting rooms,
automatic email updates, integrated instant messenger,
photo gallery, polls and surveys, announcements, group
email broadcasts, basic chat room, related content,
search, admin controls, and more.
With LearningTimes’ help, the first community in the
BCcampus network of online communities was configured,
branded, and launched within a few short weeks.
ORGANIZING YOUR CoP
We can think of a CoP in terms of a model of participants
and interactions that can guide its implementation.
Diagrams of CoP models take a number of shapes,
including pyramids, concentric circles and interconnected
nodes. To illustrate one possible approach in an education
context, we will look at a learning-community
model and extend it to a full CoP for researchers, teachers,
and students working in a classroom or distance
education setting.
Figure 30.2. Learning community model.
Tom Carroll (2000) suggests a no-boundary model
for a classroom-centred learning community consisting
of students, teachers, and other resource experts. In this
scheme, activity is centred around the problem itself.
Teachers become expert learners who actively participate
in the learning rather than just guide students from
the side. If we apply these concepts to creating an online
learning community, we can construct a detailed model
(Figure 30.2) that shows not only the interconnections
between the learners and expert learners, but also some
of the tools that a learning community might use. Wikis,
forums, chat, email, and even cell phones and text messaging
can be used. The circle in the diagram is not
meant to show an impermeable boundary, but a collaborative
space for interaction. In this scenario, a guest participant
from another university or organization has
access to the learning management system (LMS) space
for the course that is attempting to solve a common
problem, “P.”
We can extend this model to a full CoP using Wenger
& Snyder’s (2001) suggestion of an “overall network
structure” with “several layers of participation” centred
around the community creators. While their work had
an industry focus, there are elements that also apply to
learning communities, including layers for charter
members, stakeholders, and peripheral community participants,
such as the Co-op alumni and Co-op employers.
In education, stakeholders might include research
grant funding agencies (e.g., CURA), department chairs,
college deans, or program assessment coordinators. Peripheral
community participants might include support
staff and faculty from units, such as the technical support
staff at SFU’s LIDC who support SCoPE. Charter
members might be the first cohorts of students who
joined the learning community, and now they continue
to participate even though they have moved to other
classes or have graduated from an institution like
BCcampus.
Since neither model completely meets our purposes,
we can refine our own, original model for communities
of practice for online teaching and learning (Figure 3).
Wenger & Snyder drew boundaries around the core
community members, but Carroll makes a good argument
to avoid boundaries. On the other hand, Carroll
focuses on just one problem, “P,” while it is more likely
that a learning community would focus on a set of
problems. Hence, our drawing below depicts several
problems for the community to solve within the same
topic area, possibly using the concept of subgroups described
by Kim (2000). Learners in different subgroups
might only address one problem, as depicted here, but
some learners are attracted to more than one problem in
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