CPsquare

Over the past several weeks we’ve gathered feeds from all of the blogs kept by CPsquare members that we know of — and have made an effort to track the rest of them down. Those that we found now appear in one feed that makes for very fascinating reading!

The following page has a link to the combined feed, to an OPML file that you can insert into your feed reader, and it has an HTML version with the headlines from the 17 different blogs that we’ve identified so far:

http://www.cpsquare.org/member_blogs.htm <== no longer valid, as we’ve put links to individual blogs on the CPsquare’s front page

So the question comes up: is this the periphery or the center of CPsquare? Something to think about!

A resource that’s been developed in CPsquare would be more useful and could get help from the whole world is a catalog of books, articles and other resources about communities of practice. Version one of the “public” wiki is now open for use and contributions here:

http://cofpractice-biblio.wikispaces.com/

The hope is that it have the bulk of the most important resources and critical notes about the nature and importance of each resource.

This paper is an example of one of the activities that seems to always be going on behind the scenes at CPsquare — writing up and sharing our experience, in this case at the Webist Conference.

Participation in international virtual learning communities; A social learning perspective by Beverly Trayner, John D. Smith, and Marco Bettoni

Keywords: international virtual learning communities, international online communities, identity of participation, communities of practice, social learning perspective, e-learning, technology wishes

Abstract: A promise of new web-based technologies is that they provide learning opportunities for people distributed across the globe but who can participate across time and space in the same virtual learning community. How do they do it? In this paper we report on some of the experiences of a virtual learning community which has members from twenty-five countries across different time-zones and who communicate in English. Through a communities of practice perspective we focus on the social nature of learning and describe some of the challenges and design issues raised in this community as it explores and develops practices for learning in an international online environment. While our focus is on social practices, and on developing an identity of participation in relation to those practices, we also make some wishes for web-based technologies that would better support these practices in an international virtual learning community.

“Weaving Together Online and Face-To-Face Learning: A Design From A Communities Of Practice Perspective” by John D. Smith and Beverly Trayner come out of our collaboration in and around CPsquare and was presented at the AACE E-Learn 2005 Conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Abstract: Weaving together online and face-to-face learning improves the quality of working in both media. Based on the observations of nine different experiments that went through a similar process of weaving together these two media we share our observations of outcomes and an evolving design framework from a community of practice perspective. Arguing that weaving participation using different media in succession is different from blended or hybrid learning, we suggest that careful design of an online ramp-up can make a face-to-face event more potent, and the subsequent online collaboration more productive. Key elements of this design process are inclusion, interaction, and social structure designed for the negotiation of meaning. We offer heuristics that help trace the threads from first online contact to the development of productive relationships at later phases in an emerging community of practice.

Download the paper

The connection between the Foundations Workshop and CPsquare has always been close in the sense that people who’ve participated in the workshop seem to end up being major contributors to (and beneficiaries from) CPsquare and we’ve often sought to recruit guest speakers from the CPsquare membership, but the connection hasn’t always been obvious or direct. During the past year it’s seemed important to strengthen the connections in ways to support both spheres of activity.

Almost a year ago Joitske Hulsebosch, Ancella Livers, and Meena Surie Wilson did a project in the February 2005 workshop where, building upon a previous project, they querried workshop participants and CPsquare members for stories about cross-cultural issues in communities of practice. The result was a fascinating report called Cultural Crossings. Unfortunately it’s taken a whole year to make sure that everyone involved agreed with the authors that it was OK for their stories to be shared. In the meantime, the first author, Joitske Hulsebosh has blogged about the project and the guidelines and it’s obvious that they could be useful to a wider audience.

In September 2003 a group of academics and practitioners from around the world met in Amsterdam to discuss ‘phase change’ in a community of practice. Online participation preceded and followed the face-to-face meeting, providing different opportunities for exploring the issues and gathering insights. The Amsterdam Dialogue built on earlier work in 2002 – the original Setúbal Dialogue. Some participants were involved from the start; others have joined along the way; all share commitment to developing their professional practice and understanding the dynamics of community and knowledge development.

At various times in our journey we have thought about working together to create a final document, even a book, about what we learned from the experience. In fact we speculated that producing a concrete outcome is both a sign of maturity (which we aspire to) and an incentive to further development. However, as with many good ideas in distributed communities this has not (yet) come to fruition. In the meantime it would be a pity not to share some of our notes, reflections and work-in-progress and so here they are. The intention of each paper was to write a summary of the sub-topics that were part of the online and face-to-face workshop at the conference at Amsterdam. Each person, or group of people, interpreted this task in a different way so our shared learning is offered here in different forms. Each chapter remains loyal to the interpretation of the members who wrote it rather than to any overriding genre for the document as a whole. This offering represents an eclectic exposition, ranging from poems and diagrams from flip-charts to more formal and analytical papers situated within theoretical frameworks. Each section represents an experiment with genres and approaches, and provides a springboard for ongoing discussion and further research.

Download the 38 page report: Notes on Phase Change in a Community of Practice

Etienne Wenger’s proposal “Learning for a small planet; a research agenda” is available on Etienne’s website. About 60 members of CPsquare and their guests are discussing the document for the next 5 weeks.

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”.

Download file

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.