Class Notes

If you are presenting and leading the discussion of a particular paper, please edit this page by posting notes, handouts, questions, of other materials to help the class get prepared for discussion. (I have suggested some templates.)

All class member should feel free to post their comments on class discussions here also.

Week 1

September 4; Introduction

Week 2

September 11; Learning

Week 3

September 18; Community

A Limit (Matrix)

In class, we noted that there is a limit to how far you can draw from the real world in trying to better virtual communities. I don't think that there is. However, it may be appropriate to say that there is a limit as far as current technology allows us to do so. Any thoughts?

I also think there are proximate communities in the Sims Online. Any comments? Face-to-face interaction was the only thing brought up in class. I would argue that face-to-face interaction doesn't add enough to proximate communities to make them distinct from virtual communities. Any more thoughts?
~John~

Week 4

September 25; Extending notions of community

John's Presentation on "Capitalizing on the Internet" (Rough Draft)

Online Education

Can online learning replace traditional learning in some scenarios? I used to work for a company in North Carolina building a web-app that facilitated teaching over the internet. The basic idea was that if a student had an interest beyond the scope or ability of the teachers at the school, they would not be limited by those geographic boundaries. If a student in Garysburg, NC wanted to learn how to program in C++, they could have an online class (while in a traditional school setting) with a teacher across the US. Another idea that comes from this is that teachers could take classes from other teachers as well. A by-product of these systems is that a student in a state (lets say Arizona) can get a high school diploma from another state like North Carolina, without ever having stepped foot in North Carolina. Should there be concern about this type of education?
~John~

Week 5

October 2; Forums

Week 6

October 9; Inquiry

Some Pointers on Inquiry

I found these websites interesting. They give some pointers about promoting Inquiry based learning using the internet.

http://www.biopoint.com/inquiry/ibr.html

http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/usingdata/pedagogy.html

~Thomas~

Problem with Inquiry-based Learning

The five basic steps of inquiry-based learning (asking, investigating, creating, discussing, reflecting) is a structure for the process of case-based learning. The problem with following a pure inquiry-based learning paradigm is that if the learners are not motivated to learn/think, then the system fails as it is completely learner-driven and learner-centered. A combination of instruction-based learning and inquiry-based learning would be viable, where the former would cultivate a learning environment and the latter would channel the learner's motivation into an effective learning process.

Umer

Week 7

October 16; Construction

Some questions for Etienne Wenger

I just thought I'd post these as they are based on some additional readings I did, specifically Lave and Wenger's book on Situated Learning.

1. In your book "Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation", you have said that your view of learning stands on its own, reserving the analysis of schooling and other educational forms, and that legitimate peripheral participation is not a pedagogical technique, rather an analytic perspective on learning. But I think we should be gravitated toward applying this notion to current methods of education, which is predominantly schooling in classrooms. This type of work has been done by Barbara Rogoff where she
examined the work of an innovative school in Salt Lake City and how learning occured through interested participation with others, more on the lines of what she calls "intent participation". My question is about what you think about ways in which we can apply the concepts of situated learning and communities of practice in existing pedagogical practices, especially schools.

2. You have said in your book " Participation involving technology is especially significant because the artifacts used within a cultural practice carry a substantial portion of that practice's heritage." So here, you talk about technology and artifacts as already being part of the heritage. My question is about the introduction of new technology to supplement participation in a community of practice. For example, if there is a community network that does not use the Internet for online activity, how do we introduce the notion of new technology in their practice as a community? In other words, instead of just considering what technology they already use in their practice, what does the introduction of new technoloogy entail? And how can this new technology be made a part of the practice's heritage as an inherent and transparent artifact? Do you think it can increase the
legitimate peripherality by attracting more newcomers to the community of practice?

Umer

More Questions...

1. What does it take to successfully design a virtual CoP?How can social engagement be facilitated in such a community?

2. What are the best (or most reasonable) measures of social interaction and how can we use this information to assist the community of practice to meet its collective goals?

3. How can measures of online interaction support the kinds of "interventions" the group moderator or facilitator may desire?

4. Can we define measures of the group conversation that are useful to individuals within the community and helpful in shaping or informing the community?

~Thomas~

Even More Questions...

1. Some cross-organizational communities of practice suffer because of competition, yet others thrive. For example, open-source communities of independent developers do not have a problem sharing knowledge. However, independent gaming communities (such as garagegames.com), who are seeking an open-source mentality, are locked in a paradox. Sharing knowledge is awesome for the community, but at the same time the members do not want to collaborate because they have a vested interest in their knowledge staying within their group/team. How can these communities of practice be pushed into sharing more information among themselves? It seems to me as if the core values of the community need to be shifted in order for this to happen. How can technology help?

2. Even in communities where the collective are completely responsible for their own technology, they are still forced to change technology by technology itself over time. How does changing technologies hurt CoP? If technology is part of their "heritage", then how can the effects of trying to change their heritage be limited?

~ :: John :: ~

Even More Questions...

1. In your book, you indicate that the third wave of knowledge management now is discovering that communities of practice are a practical way to frame the task of knowledge management. How do you foresee the COP framework playing out in the social sector?

2. You also indicated that communities or practice are in the best position to codify tacit knowledge because they can combine the tacit and explicit aspects of knowledge. How is this tacit knowledge codified?

3. You indicate that COP goes beyond the social network discourse of social networks.. What is the relationship between social networks and COPs?.

~ :: Roderick :: ~

Even More Questions...

1. If we can say that there are two schools of knowledge management (KM) in organization, the top-down model and the bottom-up model, which school do you think the community of practice (COP) is close to? What advantages and disadvantages it has compared to other models?

2. If COP is used as a framework for knowledge management in business organizations, what are the relationships between COP and other business processes, or, what is the position of COP within the total organizational business operations?

3. Paul Strassmann is a big advocator for top-down measurement when using the term "knowledge capital". In your discussion, you mentioned that this method is risky and a better measurement should be a combination of top-down and bottom-up. How? Do you have examples?

4. The practices of COP in organizations are tightly connected to the organizational cultures. What kinds of rewarding systems do you think the organizational culture may adopt to facilitate the development of COP?

~ :: Haiyan :: ~

Week 8

October 23; Sharing

Where do we draw the line ?

We had a pretty interesting discussion in class yesterday trying to differentiate between knowledge and information. I had an interesting conversation with John last evening as to what is meant by programming. Another of those questions where drawing the line between programmers and non programmers would be tough.

Does writing lines of code(in some formal language)only constitute programming? Does personalization of software, systems, games etc constitute programming? I am sure a lot of people have differing views about this

~Thomas~

What about end-user programming? Is that programming? I think we need to clear out what "programming" is, computer and non-computer. As I had discussed with Thomas the other day, macros in MS Word is programming.

Umer