Week 3

Evolution of an Online Education Community of Practice
Mark Schlager, Judith Fusco, and Patricia Schank

Given the title, “Evolution of an Online Education Community of Practice,” this chapter was a bit of a let-down. I realize that these blogs are not necessarily meant to be critiques of what we have read, but rather reactions to the theses presented, I feel a bit at a loss as to how to structure my thoughts around what seemed to be, in essence, an advertisement for “Tapped In,” albeit couched in educational terms and presented with some useful self-reflection.

Part of my negative reaction likely has to do with the age of the text itself (2002), which has colored my personal reception of many of the readings. It seems remarkable that seven or eight years can make a book seem quaint, but in this time, and on this topic, it feels like a am perusing a dusty old diary I found in some old great-aunt’s attic. If I can take this perspective, then, as a bit of an anthropologist musing over past societies, the pathway from then to now is, of course, worthwhile and useful knowledge.

One of the first things that struck me when reading the first few pages was how little, in my experience, professionals actually utilize ‘best practices’ such as those that are discussed, explored, and researched by good CoPs. Part of the issue, as noted by the authors, is lack of funding and well-developed infrastructure needed to maintain many reforms that are introduced into teaching communities. There is also simple resistance to change, of course. In addition, for both online and local CoPs, who among us has the time or energy to delve into the world beyond our classrooms and then work to introduce new and improved methods? I’m not arguing for continued stagnation at all, believe me! However, I am extremely sympathetic to teachers that are expected to include such involvement into their daily lives. As a teacher of college Spanish (beginning some 20 years ago), I was delighted with the CDs and online activities that emerged relatively early in my career, but they rapidly became a burdensome distraction that hindered rather than helped. Things have changed a lot, and I love the technology that is available to me and my students, but it was sometimes a painful transition.

The authors present some research into the level of use of TI, and I took time to look at that site to see if it was still viable. It appears to be active, though I inferred that use had leveled off, if not declined somewhat, since publication. Given the other resources and communities now available, I was actually a little surprised that TI did seem to be surviving.

The authors present some of their data regarding types of discourse (business, meeting management, technology-related, and social), comparing the quantity of a category of discourse between face-to-face and online meetings. They report that, not surprisingly) initially business-focused utterances in online meetings are lower than face-to-face, but that, as participants become accustomed to the technology and decorum, that the two venues are comparable. This however, ignores the question of quality of utterances, which would have interested me more. The other question I had was with regards to number of active participants; is it easier to sit quietly and not contribute in an online meeting versus face-to-face? In my experience, the answer is “Yes, usually it is.” If this is so, does this diminish the overall quality? That would be an interesting question to examine, though perhaps difficult to operationalize (and I’m sure it’s been done – if anyone can point me to a good article or two, I’d be appreciative).

I was interested in the statement that “corporations found that such CoPs work best as catalysts for innovation and learning when they exist outside the institutional controls and constraints of individual organizations (Cothrel & Williams, 1999)” p. 132. This makes a sense, and I can imagine that the rate of change (innovation and disintegration) will increase in many fields due to the ability to overcome insularity through use of the internet. New ideas will find support in outside communities that might have been ignored in the local, established organization.

I wonder, is the old-guard pushed out and replaced more rapidly in online communities? That is, it is natural that individuals with knowledge and expertise (in some ways, the leaders) are eventually displaced by others that have made their way up the ranks. But if there is a sort of flattening of authority, whether right or wrong, where young upstarts can claim leadership just because their number of posts comes to exceed that of all other members in a very short period of time, is there a danger for overall loss of knowledge? Expertise is hard-won, as we know. It is not a matter of looking something up on Wikipedia, but having the knowledge as one’s fundamental understanding, and being able to access it immediately and manipulate it easily with other bits of knowledge – isn’t this what leads to insight and innovation? There is a genius to a ‘new mind,’ certainly, whereby one is ignorant of the rules that bind everyone else, and this can lead to a brilliant way of ‘thinking outside the box’ (because, for that person, there is no box). But this is rare. It is the building of knowledge which comes with focus, patience, and work that propels knowledge (individual and societal) forward.

Man, I must be old.