CPsquare

Conversations with him and about Etienne Wenger’s 10-year research plan: 17th May - 20th June

Etienne has produced a 36 page research agenda entitled: “Learning for a small planet: a research agenda.” He is proposing to expand the conceptual framework of communities of practice to theorize learning in terms of identity formation and large-scale social learning systems. The goal is to produce a future-oriented portrait of learning: what is learning becoming in the world today and what are implications for action, design, and institutions?

We’re organizing a community-wide event where we’ll be discussing some of the issues raised in the document. Join us as we discuss the multiple facets of this research agenda: the theoretical framework, the hypothesized learning trends and design implications, as well as the methodology appropriate for such an investigation. We expect to develop questions and insights with a view to reaching a common understanding and we hope the conversations will lay the foundation for some collaborative relationships. In principle the conversations will be based on the five topics of the research agenda between these dates:

In a way this is like a baby shower, as Etienne makes a big transition from consulting to academic life, so we envision several festive teleconferences, the dates of which are still to be confirmed. The online conversations will be in the “Projects” area on the CPsquare website. The event is being organized by Beverly Trayner, Elizabeth Doty, John Smith, Mark Irving, Nick Noakes, Seth Kahan, and Ueli Scheuermeier. Although the organizers have not designed it with newcomers in mind, this conference could be a great introduction to the wonders and foibles of CPsquare.

To participate in the event, we’re asking CPsquare members to sign-up before the 15th May: that means that you have to sign-up to be able to post in the discussion. (Of course, everybody in CPsquare can read.) We’ve experimented with this before and having people sign up beforehand helps clarify people’s commitment to the conversation and is helpful in terms of clarifying the audience when you post.

Note: during May and June this conference will take the place of the Research Forum series.

CPsquare co-founder William M. Snyder has written a report with Xavier de Souza Briggs, titled “Communities of Pracitce: A New Tool for Government Managers.” It’s published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government:

http://www.businessofgovernment.org/pdfs/Snyder_report.pdf

Although we certainly can’t claim as a community to be fully living up to the ideas expressed in this document, we share it here with the idea that the only way to improve the practice of cultivating global literacies is to practice them. In that spirit, we share our thinking here.

CPsquare as a learning space for cultivating global literacies;

Initial Guidelines and Considerations

Summarizes a CPsquare discussion in July 2003 with: Beverly Trayner, Brian Foster, Bronwyn Stuckey, Nancy White, Ueli Schuermeier. Denham Grey, Erik Van Bekkum, Jim Palmer, John Smith, Martin Roulleaux Dugage, and Nick Noakes made contributions to the discussion.

For the three areas of culture, logistics and language, this report summarizes the discussions and issues raised. Then it offers a series of recommendations. It also includes “an example of good practice”.

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The document is intended to be the basis for practice and ongoing reflection and improvement. Comments and suggestions are invited from CPsquare practice groups and from individuals or groups who use and adapt them for their own purpose(s).

The spirit of these guidelines is that of social action for globally interconnected working and community life that is evolving in the context of newly discovered borders. Designing for and facilitating conversations that cross borders requires global literacies. Global literacies address substantive diversity of cultural, geographical and language differences as well as diverse modalities such as web based, asynchronous, synchronous, visual and paper.

We view CPsquare as a learning space for cultivating these global literacies.

These guidelines come in three parts, representing the discussions in the three folders: cultural, logistical and linguistic. A summary of the discussion that took place in each folder precedes recommendations that arose from each discussion. A summary checklist is included at the end of the document.

Two papers at the First International Conference on Communities and Technologies drew upon experiences in the Foundations Workshop:

• Adding Connectivity and Losing Context with ICT: Contrasting Learning Situations from a Community of Practice Perspective by Patricia Arnold and John D. Smith
• Babel in the international caf

Lurking from a Legitimate Peripheral Participation perspective…

Project Leader: Jacquie McDonald

Members: Wendy Atkin, Frank Daugherity, Heather Fox, Alice MacGillivray, Doris Reeves-Lipscomb, Poonlarp Uthailertaroon.

Goal: The project idea was to explore what it means to have ‘legitimate peripheral participants’ in a CoP, and strategies to promote this idea when establishing a CoP - to overcome reluctance to commit because of fears of increased workload, and also to explore the literature in this area.

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The project ran over a three-week period as one component of a seven-week online workshop on Foundations of Communities of Practice, second trimester 2003. The project leader initiated the project topic and members of the workshop were invited to join the project team and participate in the planned activities and goals. Each team member contributed to the discussion (which was open to all workshop participants) and nominated to prepare final summary documents. Bronwyn Stuckey facilitated the project operation and also took part in the finale preparation of the project report. A project summary was prepared by the project leader.

Project Goal and Tasks

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