Communities of Practice

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Communities of practice are essential mechanisms for knowledge generation, knowledge exchange, situational and experiential learning in a knowledge economy. Students explore the four traditional components of a community of practice: community, domain, learning, and practice, as well as expanded dimensions of time, scale, growth pattern and network structures. The conceptual framework is applied to communities of practice in emergency and disaster response, e-science, Formula 1 racing, community gardening, beekeeping, citizen journalism, sports, politics and education. Today, every community of practice has some presence of non-human actors (e.g., artificial intelligence, smart systems, etc.). How do non-human actors affect the community structure, social relationships and interactions? What does it mean to establish mutual engagement with a non-human actor? What role do non-human actors play in a community of practice? Emerging diagnostic methods and instruments are applied to assess the health of real-world communities of practice. Diagnostic models are applied to the four components, leveraging both qualitative and quantitative research methods.