International social learning networks

by Mr George Roberts, Graham Attwell, Tore Hoel, Nick Kearney

This paper interrogates three international social learning networks working in and through Web2.0 environments. The question we will discuss is if, and if so how, these networks are communities of practice.
� UK: Emerge, supporting the JISC Users and Innovation Programme
� Norway: TERIA, social software to enhance discourse on learning technologies
� Spain: Work and Learning Together Project

Communities exist on many scales and few communities can be called communities of practice (CoP) in the strict sense. Communities of practice are emergent organisations with tacit but recognisable signs of identity. The three networks discussed in this paper demonstrate their identity through:
� shared goals: establishment and practice of new discourses in educational and learning technology development;
� shared values: openness, mutual engagement, joint enterprise and a challenge to traditional forms;
� shared symbolic artefacts: Web2.0 technologies applied to learning.

We start from the position that although it is commonplace to recognise CoPs, the processes underpinning their development are still poorly understood. The application of CoP theory in instrumental circumstances almost always presumes the pre-existence of groups sharing CoP attributes.

In the paper we will:
� uncover local, community-specific goals, values and artefacts
� identify common cross-cutting themes
� expose and problematise what works

Communities of Practice?
The Emerge, community presence project was established to support the JISC's User and Innovation programme; 33 project teams applied to be a part of this experiment and have engaged in a programme of formal and informal structured learning events and semi-structured information sharing sessions within a community with a "semi-permeable" boundary. It is a complex social space with tasks designed to encourage characteristic interactions within CoPs: mutual engagement, joint enterprise collectively negotiated, and a shared repertoire developed over time (Wenger, 1988).

The TERIA network is an attempt to establish a CoP around the introduction of social software to enhance discourse on learning technologies. The TERIA project shows that new practices of information sharing and dissemination challenge established administrative and political cultures. It is easy to find, install and support software that facilitates advanced community practices. However, the cultural, social, administrative and political barriers to an open discourse on issues "owned" by vested interests persists.

The Work and Learning Together Project (WLT) was created with the objective of developing a model for facilitating and nurturing informal learning processes in SMEs, using the CoP as a framework. Given the emergent nature of CoPs, one of the paradoxes the project faced was the need for instrumental action to facilitate the development of CoP-like activity, which ran the risk of stifling the kinds of informal processes that needed to be cultivated. One of the chief objectives of the project was to find ways of balancing these requirements.

ID Number: 1166

Date: Tuesday, 4th September 2007

Time: 1415

Location: Law and Social Sciences Building, Room B62

Theme: Learning and internationalism

Presentation: IntSocNetworks.ppt (The file which you can access from this link is the responsibility of the author of the Abstract to which the file relates, not ALT.