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Virtual Community of Practice

 

Definition

 

This collaboratory is a network of individuals who share a research  area and communicate about it online. Virtual Communities may share news of  professional interest, advice, techniques, or pointers to other resources  online. Virtual Communities of Practice are different from Distributed Research  Centers in that they are not focused on actually undertaking joint projects.  The term "community of practice" is taken from Wenger and Lave  (1998).

 

Example

 

Ocean.US is an electronic meeting place for researchers studying  oceans, with a focus on U.S. coastal waters (Hesse, Sproull, Kiesler, &  Walsh, 1993). The project runs an active set of bulletin boards/email listservs  used to exchange professional information (e.g., job openings), along with some  political and scientific issues. Ocean.US also provides online workspace for  specific projects and develops online support for workshops and distance  education in this field. The project began in 1979 as ScienceNet, providing  subscription-based electronic discussions and other services before email and  Web services were widely available. ScienceNet was shut down in the mid-1990s  when the technology became ubiquitous and the project could no longer be  supported with paid subscriptions. It was re-implemented as a set of web-based  services, and renamed Ocean.US. The service is owned and run by a for-profit  company, Omnet.

 

Technology Issues

 

As with Open Community Contributions Systems, the main technology issue  is usability. Successful Communities of Practice tend to make good use of  Internet-standard technologies such as listserv, bulletin boards, and  accessible web technology. A key technology decision for these projects is  whether to emphasize asynchronous technologies such as bulletin boards, or invest  time and energy into synchronous events such as online symposia.

An example of network collaboration might be members of the team in the first example above bookmarking websites as they find them, using a shared or ‘social bookmarking’ tool. This benefits their team, and possibly their related communities of practice if they are also sharing bookmarks. But it also benefits the wider network of people interested in the topic. At the same time, team members may find other bookmarks left by network members relevant to their team work. This sort of network activity benefits the individual and a network of people reciprocally over time. The reciprocity connection is remote and undefined. You act in self-interest but provide a network-wide benefit.

Appreciation for the periphery, which may be silent but is learning and carrying community learnings out to the world