Research on Web 2.0 & CoP

I think this is a terrific resource. It is relatively large as it is someones thesis, but it provides some great insights and even more importantly some concrete data to back its conclusions.

Martin Kloos has written his Master's thesis Comm.unities.of.prac.tice 2.0and made it available on open licence for people like me to read and learn from. Not that I am pretending to have fully absorbed all of it yet...

The goal of the thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies, particularly Social Bookmarking, Wiki's, and Blogs, for supporting the learning activities of CoP's. He does this by establishing a theoretical framework which he bases around components of learning architecture proposed by E. Wegner (Communities of Practice: Learning Meaning & Identity. 1998)

He evaluates Blogs, Wiki's and Social Bookmarking for supporting learning in CoP's based on the following criteria:

Engagement - Mutuality, Compotence, Continuity

Imagination - Orientation, Reflection, Exploration

Alignment - Convergence, Coordination, Juristiction

The data for his evaluation comes from interviewing and collating the responses of people (mainly students) who are active in using the technology. Then using the framework established he is able to measure and critique the effectiveness of each tool for learning and supporting CoP's.



He comes up with a number of conclusions, too many for me to go into here, but a couple that have caused me to think harder are:

- "When not applied in a CoP, social software cannot support learning in terms of Wenger (1998). "
While this conclusion is quite specifc in terms of Wenger's framework it has fuelled my growing sense that the social nature of Web 2.0 in and of itself does not necessarily enhance learning. Often it may just contribute to the modern information overload, cheaper social communication or dumbing down of mass culture. Yet the same technonology can be put to great use in specific enviroments with some purpose and structure to harness the information.

-" To cultivate CoP's it is best to start with social bookmarking. Next is is best to adopt group blogging and then to start a wiki."
This conclusion resonates with a discussion I had recently with a friend who teaches some diploma subjects online. He shared of trying to start wiki's on different topics but found students ended up using them as discussion boards more than wiki's. Maybe part of equippng people to particpate in CoP learning online involves a level of explanation of the tools involved, and the ordered introduction of the different tools strikes me as a possible way forward.



Resources
Kloos, M. Comm.unities.of.prac.tice 2.0 How blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking offer facilities that support learning in practice in communities of practice. Masters Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2006. Retreived on 3/12/07 from http://www.martinkloos.nl/thesis-M.Kloos.pdf

Sociable Technologies and Education

"Web 2.0 is structured around open programming interfaces that allow widespread participation. Increased user contirbution leads to the growth of 'collective intelligence', and re-usable dynamic content. Such engagement with content promotes a sense of commuity, empowerment and ownership....Web 2.0 also encourages significnatly more interaction between users, a feature that many theorists argue is vital in e-learning. Interaction encourages deeper and more active learning engagement, builds communities of learning and enables feedback from tutors to students."

In their article on Web 2.0 technology and its uses for education Maged N.Kamel Boulos and Steve Wheelert provide a useful critique of how Web 2.0 can assist in building social learning environments.

They provide a helpful overview of the different types of Web 2.0 technology and their applications for creating a more dynamic learning enviroment.

They also demonstrate how Web 2.0 is producing a different set of outcomes and driving a new way of thinking about the internet and learning technology compared to that of Web 1.0. They are not suggesting that web 1.0 is oboslete, in fact they suggest "Web 2.0...provides many useful extension to Web 1.0 rather than fully replacing it."(16)


The way that Web 2.0 does differ from previous technologies is "Web 2.0 is primarily about people...the sociable technologies of Web 2.0 have the potential to promote active and engaged learning, where participants themselves construct their own knowledge through social interaction and exploration. " (17-18)



The sociable nature of Web 2.0 is clearly applicable to learning in CoP's. Yet one of issues raised is that information genearated and catergorised on the Web 2.0 is from the bottom up. Tools like social tagging are very democratic yet can also be unstable and inefficient. This suggests that while the organic nature of user generated information and classification is of great benefit to CoP's, there may also need to be some agreeing to norms or protocols and top down thinking in order to maximise the storage and retrieval of the collated information generated. Maybe this process could be used as another means of establishing community identity by the way information is organised and labelled.



Resource
Boulos, M. N. K., & Wheeler, S. (2007). The emerging Web 2.0 social software: an enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care education. Retrieved 5/12/07 from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2007.00701.x?cookieSet=1

A Case Study

A fascinating article about two different CoP's opperating in a rural setting using Web 2.0 technology as a means of supporting their communities. Josien Kapma traces and reflects upon the experience of farmers in Portugal and the pros and cons of Web 2.0 technology for use in CoP's.

What I found interesting about this article is the two CoP's seem so different despite the fact they are drawing from the same population. Every group really is unique!

Comparing the two communities side by side highlights some interesting points which seem to support most of the common theory of CoP. Being clear about "Domain" definitions and working hard at establishing the "Commmunity" aspect seem to significantly affect the success of the community.


Kapma also helpfully highlights some of the potential issues that can exist within web based communities such as no-one from within the community taking a leadership role, lack of visibility and thus lack of identity, public -private boundaries of the community and interestingly the rise of cliques and a seperateness created by an overly inward looking community. Gender likewise seems to play a role in the nature and quantity of particpation.

It is worth considering how many of these problems were specific to the cultural and communal particularities of the rural Portugal and Dutch culture, and how many of them might be relevant in urban professional environments elsewhere.


Reference
Kapma, Josein (2007). Web 2.0 supported rural communities: a case study from Portugal. Knowledge Management for Development Journal 3(1): 79-92. Retreived 7/12/2007 from http://www.km4dev.org/journal/index.php/km4dj/article/viewFile/95/162

Mixing It Up

Weaving Together Online and Face-To-Face Learning is a thoughtful look at the benefits of combining both online and face to face interaction in developping CoP's.

The article by John D. Smith and Beverly Trayner analyses actual workshops they were invovled in running as part of the CP Square network. The approach taken was to use online tools leading up to and following up after the face-to-face meeting.

Smith & Trayner really emphasise the importance of process They contrast the way web based and face to face interaction both contribute to the process. Reading the Heuristic table that chronicles participants experience is interesting and it is helpful to appreciate the dynamics of not only moving between the two different expressions of community, but also just what it is like to participate in community in both media.

It goes without saying that these CoP's are by no means accidentally or spontaneously formed. With facilitators spending up to a year discussing how the community would function the level on intentionality is quite high. So while the process seems succesful does it need that level of attention and preparation to be paid to it? Is this one of the difference between bottom up more organic forms of CoP and top down more orchestrated forms?

I am also curious as to how the two aspects would effect each other if the order of engagement was somehow different i.e. meet face to face first then just continue online. Of course CoP's that exist in a more localised setting would benefit greatly from regular face to face engagement with the online expression serving as a continuation and augmentation of the face to face time.


Resource
Smith, J.D. & Trayner, B. Weaving Togehter Online and Face to Face Learning: A Design From a Communities of Practice Perspective,(2005). Retrieved 7/12/07 from http://www.cpsquare.org/News/archives/F2F_ONLINE_CYCLE.pdf

The Long Tail

Web technonogy can go a long way to helping organisations facilitate social learning and harness that precious informal and tacit knowledge that lurks amongst all of those "knowledge workers."

Eric Sauve co-founder of Tomoye Corp puts forward a good case for the use of web technology as a means of supporting CoP's as both places of learning and knowledge management.

He quotes research that suggests 80% of adult learning takes place via informal learning outside the classroom and much of it is incresingly taking place on social networking web sites. I suggest this is a trend that can only conitue to grow as the Gen Y digital natives continue to increase as a percnetage of the total work force. I am also not suggesting that social netwroking sites are always used as tools of learning either.

Of particular interset is his reflections of the affects of CoP's in leveraging the "Long Tail" of knowledge management. The Long Tail (reffered to in an earlier post) concerns the statistical distribution of information due to the rise in web technology and the internet.


Now with CoP's this once web based phenomenom can be transferred to knowledge management in organisations. Instead of organisations only producing and disseminating significant core information produced by the few, through CoP's information flow can now be about less core or niche, but still important, information being harvested and diseminated by the many as well.

Of course web 2.0 features like tagging, social bookmarking, wiki's, and topic specific blogs are a cheap and easily accessed platforms that by their very nature capture the knowledge of the many and sort it.

A great example of Web 2.0 not only supporting CoP's but helping shape CoP's.



Resource
Sauve, E. Communities of Practice as Learning and KM Strategy. Retrieved 4/12/07 from http://astd2007.astd.org/PDFs/Handouts%20for%20Web/M213.pdf

Ideas Behind Web 2.0

What is web 2.0? I kept seeing this "Web 2.0" term come up in discussions and wondered if I was missing out on anything important. Was there a whole other World Wide Web running in parallel to the one I was using? Is it referring to an application or a platform? What happend to Web 1.0?

What I discovered to my relief was that Web 2.0 refers to a group of technologies that have emerged to make the web a more socially engaged and connected envrionment where users are able to create, add, edit as well as just read information on the web. In short tools I had already been using like RSS, Wiki's, Blogs etc.

The term "Web 2.0" was coined in 2004 by Dale Dougherty an Executive of O'Rielly Media Inc whose founder Tim O'Rielly published a popular discussion paper What is Web 2.0. In this article he outlines 7 principles which he believes need to be considered when reffering to something as being Web 2.0 technology.

In an article that further expands on O'Rielly's principles, Paul Anderson (2007) presents 6 key ideas behind Web 2.0 and evaluates the use of these technologies for higher education.

In reading these articles I couldn't help but be struck by the similiarities between the key tenants of Web 2.0 and that of CoP theory. CoP's are driven by the rise of the information age & knowledge management, learning as social practice, and global technonolgy. As I considered Anderson's 6 Key ideas it became evident to me that Web 2.0 is about the convergence of the very same factors.

Consider Anderson's description of 6 key ideas behind web 2.0

1. Individual Production and User Generated Content
Otherwise reffered to as User Generated Content, Web 2.0 like CoP's is about indviduals expressing what they know and making it available to others.

2. Harness the power of the crowd
Andersons reffers to Wisdom of Crowds theory (Surowiecki) which suggests that problems are solved more effectively by groups operating under specific conditions than by the most intelligent indvidual member of the group. CoP's tend to harness a similar dynamic, using the minds and expereinec of all invovled in a particular field to harness the most helpful knowledge.

3. Data on an epic scale
Web 2.0 companies are successful in not only collecting data but also in kowing how to mine it and recombine the data in new ways. This results in the question of who owns the data and IPR. Interestingly a question that is raised when considering the ideas generated by CoP's.

4. Architecture of participation
Services that get better the more people use them is the key idea behind this phrase. Just as a service like Google improves the more people use it, so too CoP's are at their best when members are active and the architecture supporting the community lowers as many barriers as possible to enable participation.

5. Network Effects
One of the Newtork effects mentioned by Anderson is the Long Tail. This concept shows how all niche ideas or items when put together can actually be of greater substance than core or manistream products. CoP's would seem to be about maximisng the effects of the Long Tail in the area of knowledge management for organisations.

6. Openess
The use of open standards and re-use of data to move forward and inovate. This area is not as directly relevant to CoP but it does raise again the problems of IPR but also suggests that low cost tools are avilable to be used by CoP in gathering and archiving their knowledge.

"In short these are ideas about building something more than a global information space; something with much more of a social angle to it. Collaboration, contribution and community are the order of the day and there is a sense in which some think that a new 'social fabric' is being constructed before our eyes" Anderson (2007)pg 14.

The similarilties of thought behind both Web 2.0 and CoP's does raise the question "is one driving the other?" These articles don't answer that question and it is probably a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation. I think both Web 2.0 and CoP's are a response to the new information age and the increasing pervasiveness of social captial theory across all arenas of society.

At very least there is a remarkable confluence and synergy between the principles of Web 2.0 and CoP's which suggests that Web 2.0 services are ideal technological tools for supporting and assisting in building CoP's.


Resources
O'Rielly, T. What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software (2005). Retrieved 28/11/07 from http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228
Anderson, P. What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education. JISC Technology & Standards Watch, Feb 2007. Retrieved 30/11/07 from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf